hertz is an innovative research and development project, and the creation of experienced Lead Artist Juliet Robson. It is supported by arts commissioning programme Unlimited, which celebrates the work of disabled artists, with funding from Arts Council England. hertz diversely marries four fields of study: art, astrophysics, mathematics and meteorology. The project aims to allow audiences to discover what noise, trapped inside stars in space, sounds like – and what it looks like in the shape of patterns it creates. Further, hertz aims to translate infrasound, which we cannot hear, into physical sensations people can experience.

Dr Andrew Gibbs – whose PhD is in Applied Mathematics from the University of Reading – is collaborating on the project and here, describes his role on the team and what first drew him to hertz

What first attracted you to the project?

I received an email from the Lead Artist Juliet Robson and it intrigued me. I didn’t know what she really might want from me – she simply said she wanted to work with anyone who knew about sound waves. I replied and said I had done a lot of work with them and modelling them for my PhD so that they look aesthetically pleasing – like ripples on a lake, you could say. Then the more we talked, the more interested I became. Combining science with art is a great concept.

Have you ever collaborated with an artist previously?

No, I haven’t. I have friends who are artists, so it is nice now to actually get involved in that discipline. My PhD heavily involved computational modelling, but never actually creating anything real, so to speak. It is nice to have the opportunity to do that now through hertz. 

Describe your background Andrew.

I have spent a lot of time at the University of Reading. I completed my undergraduate degree there. I then took some time out working before returning to start my PhD, which I have just finished. I really enjoyed it. I love working with sound in general and I like to play music in my spare time. My PhD broadly focused on sound waves and what happens when they hit obstacles. What bounces back? The idea that the human voice sounds different in a small, contained space compared to how it sounds in a large expanse. For example, if you are constructing a new car: how noisy will it be when you are sat inside it? Or if you are building a concert hall: will the acoustics be terrible or fantastic? The findings from my PhD have a large range of applications.

What is your role on hertz?

I am the go-to maths guy on the team. If Juliet has questions in terms of understanding how the maths is affecting something she is working on, I try to explain it to her in a semi layman way, so she doesn’t have to go away and try and translate the answer from a dense academic textbook. I give her the nice version. I am also writing some software, which will allow us to take the sonic frequencies of stars and adjust them so we can see where the patterns form in the audio range.

What specifically intrigues you about the project?

I guess in short creating something that everyone can find interesting, combining maths and physics and art. I think it is an important concept and also really lovely. For example, we all go through our day-to-day lives and use GPS on our smartphones or on our sat-navs in cars, but without really understanding how it works. I hope people come away from seeing hertz and want to find out and understand more. Hertz all starts from taking visual measurements from stars. From that we can deduce what they sound like and from that we can fire sound waves through a plate, which causes vibrations and forms unique patterns.

How will working on hertz benefit your own practice?

Like I have said, finally making something physical is really nice for me – rather than writing computer code and models. Working with Juliet and the other collaborators on the project has already been a great experience. It is going extremely well. Juliet is very impressively on top of everything.

 

hertz is an innovative research and development project, and the creation of experienced Lead Artist Juliet Robson. It is supported by arts commissioning programme Unlimited, which celebrates the work of disabled artists, with funding from Arts Council England. hertz diversely marries four fields of study: art, astrophysics, mathematics and meteorology. The project aims to allow audiences to discover what noise, trapped inside stars in space, sounds like – and what it looks like in the shape of patterns it creates. Further, hertz aims to translate infrasound, which we cannot hear, into physical sensations people can experience.

Here, from her South Oxfordshire studio, Juliet talks about what audiences can expect from the work and also reflects upon the moment she discovered Unlimited were backing her idea

When did you first have the idea for hertz?

It was not one idea, but more a perfect storm of ideas. It was ideas I had had in my sketchbook and it came from research I carried out and then discovering something which became a catalyst. The trigger was about six months ago when I was carrying out research and I learnt that scientists had discovered that stars make sounds like musical instruments. I put that knowledge together with ideas I had previously had and began to look for people who could help me.

Describe hertz in brief?

The work uses hidden frequencies which are generated by natural phenomena around Earth and also by stars. We are connecting the songs of stars to Earth’s hidden resonances through three prototypes which will translate those sounds into visible and tangible experiences for audiences.

What do you hope audiences will take away from seeing the final work?

We hope audiences will take away many things from seeing and experiencing hertz. We will be holding an open studio here in South Oxfordshire, giving demonstrations and making presentations, which will be interactive. We ultimately want audiences to have an extraordinary experience. We want the work to be accessible, tangible and inspirational, and to shine a light on work scientists do. My dad was a research scientist and a botanist, so I grew up learning about the natural sciences. He was incredible skillful, making things which are difficult to grasp fun and accessible and interesting. If hertz can achieve that we will be very happy.

What do you hope personally to take away from the project?

I hope to build an ongoing relationship with the people and institutions I am collaborating with. I am learning a huge amount myself at the moment and getting inspiration for future projects. This is Research & Development, so I hope to reach a point where the project can go forward. I am ambitious for hertz and I hope to extend my practice in this exciting area.

How exciting is it to collaborate with first the Astrophysics Department at the University of Birmingham and the Meteorology Department at the University of Reading, and also individuals Professor Bill Chaplin, mathematician Andrew Gibbs and meteorologist Graeme Marlton?

It is very exciting. I am still pinching myself that all of this has come together. Bill, Andrew and Graeme are all working in cutting edge areas of research, and the prototypes we are creating for hertz will reflect that. It is exciting for me to work with scientists and it is exciting for them hopefully to work with an artist.

How did the four of you come together?

After first having the idea for hertz – making the sounds of stars tangible – I got in touch with Reading university, where I completed my MFA, because I was very interested in reconnecting there. I sent out a call to action really to see if there were any scientists at the university who would be interested in collaborating on this project and also had expertise and ideas on making hertz’s vision happen. Graeme Marlton works with infra waves, which are very low inaudible frequencies and he came back to me. Andrew Gibbs, who is a mathematician and a musician and whose PhD is in an area of acoustics, came back to me. I then contacted Bill Chaplin at Birmingham and asked if he too would be interested in helping.

What were your emotions Juliet when you first heard you had won the Unlimited award for 2017?

I was jumping and down. It is a fantastic and highly regarded award from Unlimited which has now been going since 2012. Applying is quite a lengthy process. You first make an expression of interest and put in a short proposal, and once you are successfully through that stage you then put together a much longer proposal. Unlimited has some amazing partners and allies like the Arts Council, British Council, Spirit and Southbank Centre. Artsadmin, Shape and Unlimited really support you. They want your project to work and particularly support artists who have faced barriers previously in their careers. They help level the playing field for those artists, which is fantastic.

What is the next key milestone now for hertz?

The next key milestone is to build the prototypes and to gather the data we need. We are building a Chladni plate, which is a metal plate you send vibrations through. You sprinkle say sand on the top and the sand magically moves into beautiful geometric patterns according to natural frequencies. Dr Andrew Gibbs is currently writing algorithms so that we can take the sounds of stars, pass their frequencies through the Chladni plate and then see what visual patterns the stars make. The other aspect of hertz is to do with the hidden sounds of our planet. Graeme Marlton is going to be installing a sensor in my back garden, which is going to be fun. It will gather infra waves from we don’t know where yet but, for example, the sensors he uses in research can pick up the imperceptible sound of a glacier moving. We want to explore how we feel those vibrations at too low a frequency for us to hear. We also plan to build a machine or a subwoofer which can pick up infra waves in real time, so if for example you are sat in front of it, it would lift the hairs on your arms in real time with say a deep ocean wave off the coast of Brighton.

 

 

Watch this space for information about HERTZ: ‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration’ – Nikola Tesla.

Imagine being able to hear the stars singing; imagine the sound made visible and our bodies resonating to the inaudible symphony of our own planet. Our fascination with the stars has inspired our myths science, art and philosophy. Research and development for the artwork HERTZ brings that fascination to life.

HERTZ, named after Heinrich Hertz, describes the pitch of any given audible, inaudible note or frequency and is the title of this R&D project which connects two happenings: stars singing and invisibly vibrating to the accompaniment earth’s hidden resonances.

Artist Juliet Robson, working with Meteorologist Graeme Marlton, mathematician Andrew James Gibbs and astrophysicist Professor Bill Chaplin, will develop prototypes of ‘instruments’ that translate these secret sounds into visible and tangible experiences.

Through Interactive presentations and the ‘playing’ of those instruments, people will experience a sound track of the songs of the stars and the beautiful resonating visual patterns of their frequencies (hertz). They will feel the vibrations of the imperceptible movement of glaciers through their bodies, via chairs and objects and feel the hairs lift on their arm in real time with the inaudible frequencies of a swelling ocean wave off a distant coast.

HERTZ is Supported by an Unlimited award. In addition Dr. Graeme Marlton and the Meteorology dept. at Reading University, Prof Bob Chaplin and the Astrophysics Dept. at Birmingham University and Mathematician Dr. Andrew Gibbs  have committed in kind support and match funding to HERTZ. Dr. Graeme Marlton will be giving a presentation on developments so far in April 2017 at the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna. (Scroll to bottom of page to see the poster from the conference including links to infra frequencies of Mount Etna and an F16 aircraft.) 

Introducing the collaborators and the ‘science bit’:

Astrophysicists Bill Chaplin and technicians at Birmingham University have been using data from the Kepler project, which has recorded the ‘singing’ of over 2000 stars in our galaxy. Asteroseismology is a rapidly growing field of astronomy and professor Bill Chaplin leads a team from within the International Kepler Asteroseimic Science Consortium (KASC) responsible for the study of stars similar to our own Sun.

“Stars resonate like musical instruments. KASC may be able to use this ‘music of the spheres’ to help us understand the origins of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, that have their origins in processes occurring inside our Sun, so we are better able to predict for example the occurrence of certain events like severe, solar storms and their effect on us.” Bill Chapman.

Through a number of research visits the artist will explore Birmingham’s star sounds archive and select raw frequency data of star sounds with Dr. Bill Chaplin. These frequencies below our range of hearing will then be transposed up and made audible. Next, through using algorithms written by Andrew Gibbs, (see below) we will build a prototype ‘instrument’ to create beautiful oscillating geometric patterns of star songs made of vibrating salt granules generated on Chladni plates.

Andrew Gibbs’s PhD in applied mathematics, specialised in modeling the interaction of acoustic waves with certain two-dimensional obstacles. – A key part of acoustic wave modeling is predicting the frequencies at which resonance and other phenomena occur, such as the formation of Chladni patterns. Andrew will design algorithms and simple experiments which can be used to predict the shape of the Chladni style plate on which patterns will form, when specifically, excited by sounds of stars.

 Also, at the University of Reading, through the Atmospheric InfraStructure Research in Europe (ARISE) project, Meteorologist Dr. Graeme Marlton has access to infrasound data from international stations of many natural and man-made phenomena below the human range of hearing, such as imperceptibly moving glaciers, earthquake tremors, volcanoes, oceanic waves and even comets hitting the earth. The stations are constantly recording and storing this data, of which only a tiny amount from specific events is used in research. And sees the light of day.

HERTZ will use these ‘forgotten’ infrasound signals to provide modulated vibrations that will drive a silent subwoofer to shake a chair, wheelchair or object, so that we can experience the hidden resonances of these phenomena.

In addition, an Infra wave sensor with another subwoofer audio speaker will provide low frequency tones of events, but from sensors picking up signals in real-time. Participants will experience this, through for example the hairs on their arm being lifted in conjunction with invisible frequencies natural happenings.

Blog 2 May 8th 2017

HERTZ at the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna

In April this year Dr Graeme Marlton attended the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna where he delivered a poster for the Art Science session at EGU about infra sound and how it was being used for HERTZ.  Having been collecting infra sounds of the planet through his use of sensors in research Graeme is keen to make those inaudible sounds and their uses understood by the wider public.  We were excited to be able to present the poster at an international conference and begin to get the word out about what we were doing.

The recent successful application to Unlimited for Research and Development means that as soon as contracts are signed and the money is in the bank the real work can begin!

Click on HERTZ to see the poster.

Below are two infrasound clips, one from an F16 jet aircraft and the second from the Mt Etna Volcano. Both are made audible by playing the infrasound at 200x the original speed. (Courtesy of Peiter Smets of the Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI).)

F16:

 
Mount Etna: