Chestnut Hill<\/a> Skyspace, a venue and art installation. The black hole-inspired piece was one of three in an immersive concert, called \u201cThis Silent Music,\u201d centered on collective listening.<\/p>\nThe concert intended to create a space where people could sit with and work through discomfort, especially at a time when many feel overwhelmed and disconnected, said cocreator Liz Lang.<\/p>\n
\u201cI personally feel like I want to scream every time I open the news,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Massachusetts-based composer LJ White used black holes as a metaphor for this theme. He paired Phillipson\u2019s sounds with singing, a marimba, and suspended cymbals.<\/p>\n
To him, the chaos of the cosmic phenomenon reflected how marginalized groups can feel powerless and frustrated in society.<\/p>\n
The title of his piece, \u201cAt the End of it All,\u201d comes from the poem of the same name by Nicole M. Young-Martin, which is \u201cabout not being able to predict or control anything, but trying to be your best person regardless,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n
Sonifying a black hole<\/p>\n
Coming from a family of professional musicians and singers, Phillipson felt like the odd one out in choosing a career in science. <\/p>\n
She gravitated to researching black holes \u2014 areas of space where gravity is so strong, even light cannot escape.<\/p>\n
She thought sonifying black holes could make for an interesting outreach activity for students, while also helping scientists uncover novel information about black holes.<\/p>\n
When scientists sonify a black hole, they are not literally recording sound. Most of space is empty and \u201cdeathly silent,\u201d Phillipson said. <\/p>\n
Instead, they are interpreting the interactions around the black hole. <\/p>\n
Using telescopes pointed at the night sky, scientists can collect information in the form of images. Those visual cues, such as brightness, can then be translated into sound. For example, Phillipson decided that, if something brightened, that would translate to a higher-pitched sound.<\/p>\n
The environment around a black hole gets brighter and dimmer over time as material interacts with it \u2014 akin to a campfire brightening after being fed a log.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a translator between the light and the sound,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
A metaphor<\/p>\n
White produced and mixed Phillipson\u2019s black hole sounds \u2014 piecing them together into a collage that served as the background of his 13-minute composition. <\/p>\n
The audio had a \u201csort of circular sound\u201d and \u201ca lot of swooping,\u201d he said, emulating the spin of a black hole. There was a sense of \u201cthings moving around you in a somewhat chaotic way,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In this, he saw a metaphor for the experiences of marginalized groups who may feel frustrated and helpless. <\/p>\n
The piece featured parts where the singers scream with wild, unbridled vocals, as if reacting to catastrophe. Other sounds are associated with mourning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are happening that they can\u2019t predict or control,\u201d he said. \u201cI want [the piece] to be cathartic in some way.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also meant to inspire.<\/p>\n
Beneath the chaos of a black hole lies untapped energy that can suck objects inside if one gets close enough, White said. <\/p>\n
A black hole behaves like an \u201cinfinitely deep funnel,\u201d Phillipson said in narration included in the performance. Throw an object in, and it won\u2019t come back out.<\/p>\n
Black holes are also invisible \u2014 only detected by their interactions with other things. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not an energy source that is well understood or can be taken control of,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n
The same concept of invisibility could extend to groups of people who aren\u2019t in power right now, White said. For example, he identifies with the transgender community, which he says frequently gets talked about in relation to mainstream society, but often remains misunderstood.<\/p>\n
He hopes the piece helps people appreciate the power they have.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s all this latent energy that we have that we could harness,\u201d White said. \u201cWe\u2019re not helpless.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lang hopes to expand beyond last weekend\u2019s sold-out concert to perform in other Skyspace locations around the world. Light artist James Turrell has designed 100 Skyspaces globally, all featuring a room with an aperture in the roof, facing the sky.<\/p>\n
Cocreator Katy Avery was moved by the audience\u2019s reactions at the Philadelphia concert. People found themselves growling along and wanting to vocalize with the performers, embodying the kind of communal atmosphere she had hoped for.<\/p>\n
The person sitting next to Phillipson told her he felt like he had to hold his breath the whole time. It was a \u201cfeeling like you have a strong emotion and you don\u2019t know what to do with it,\u201d Phillipson said.<\/p>\n
She compared her own emotional experience to riding Space Mountain at Disneyland. At first it\u2019s dark around the roller coaster, with eerie, ethereal, sci-fi sounds \u2014 much like the soundscape created with her black hole sounds. Unable to see the tracks, the rider feels as if they are going into darkness. <\/p>\n
At some point in the piece, the singers came in with somber voices suggesting grief and mourning, with screams reminiscent of metal music.<\/p>\n
Those tumultuous sounds gave way to an ending note of hope and power.<\/p>\n
The two pieces that followed in the concert were more calming and contemplative.<\/p>\n
The black hole composition \u201cwas like the precursor to meditation,\u201d she said. \u201cFirst you have to cry before you can calm down.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Villanova astrophysicist Becka Phillipson wondered what a black hole might sound like. She…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[64,63,425549,292,128],"class_list":["post-855328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-physics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-black-hole-music-chestnut-hill-skyspace-villanova-research","tag-physics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}