Atmospherics, sounds reconstructed from data

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Atmospherics/Weather Works is a performance, an installation and a distributed software project aimed at extracting sounds from storms and other weather events. The sounds are generated directly from the original data of the event in a detailed and physically accurate simulation. This work is being developed by the american artist Andrea Polli, in collaboration with the meteorological scientist Glenn Van Knowe and the special effects designer Chuck Varga using the programming features of Max/MSP to generate suitable sound environments. On the website there are several performance and presentation videos which reproduce, for instance, the transformations of the canadian climate, with an unfiltered rendition of the three data sets (sun radiations, sunlight and temperature). Some researchers, on the other hand, are working at reproducing two historic storms which devastated the Long Island area in New York. They analyzed their data, then created the sounds, obtaining evocative and disquieting pieces which, as well as reconstructing unique events, underline the nature’s ability to autonomously generate complex rhythms and melodies.