A collection of music is “sonifying” data collected about extreme weather and rising sea level in an attempt to communicate the science of climate change. The composers are hopeful that hearing dynamic scores of classical music will help people understand the impact of the warming planet.
WSHU’s J.D. Allen spoke with Molly James, an oceanographer and doctoral candidate in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Connecticut. James and her team were awarded a $1,000 grant through the 2023 Connecticut Sea Grant Arts Support Award. The money will help pay for the next phase of their project, “Harmony of Nature.”
WSHU: So, from my understanding, you're taking data about climate change, and turning it into classical music. How does that happen?
MJ: Yeah, it started with a friendship that developed during the pandemic between myself and Hea Youn Chung (Sophy), who's a professional pianist in South Korea. And we got to know each other better over Zoom. And I was explaining a graph, a figure called a “wind rose.”
And a wind rose, specifically, is a summary figure that shows the wind direction and the wind speed. And it's a circle like a compass. So when I showed that to Sophy, she immediately thought it looked like a music score. And we decided to try this project of taking data like what I showed her and turning it into music. So it's a lot of conversations around what the science and the data is telling us, and then how Sophy was interpreting it musically. And we did some experiments of a one-to-one measurement of air temperature. And this is the route that we've created a map to take the data into a music note. But it also was a bit more abstract as well.
WSHU: I should say you already have put out an album called “Harmony of Nature,” with this composition of music that's based on climate data. But I really want you to explain the process of you look at this data from the wind rose, and then you are matching it to what to create notes that goes on a music score.
MJ: Yeah, so the first step was proof of concept, we really didn't know what we were doing. So, I'm the scientist of our group — the oceanographer. So yeah, my main job was trying to first scour the databases for interesting data sets, essentially. So we looked at buoy data. So yeah, wind speed, wave height. And depending on the data type, it was a slightly different translation. For example, we had a time series of wind speeds, winds directions and then the corresponding same time series for wave height. And scientifically and conceptually, there's a direct relationship between the wind and the waves.
So, the way that Sophy arranged the music was in a piano four hands arrangement. So, it's two people playing on the same piano: one is in the higher register, one is in the lower register. And one person was the wind, one person was the waves. And so there was a direct feedback between the data and the musicians. So the higher wind speeds corresponded to a different rhythm, actually, in this case. And then for the actual note, it was a number. So if you have a significant wave height of 15, that's maybe E-sharp. And then correspondingly, you assign the different notes in a scale to those different values.
WSHU: As a climate reporter, I look at these wind and wave charts, and I see a lot of wave-like undulating, and sometimes almost scatterplot-like, arrangements. I wouldn't think that those would be pleasant to listen to, but you've really got music here.
MJ: Yeah, it was very surprising. We were skeptical at first so that's why we're like, let's just see if this works. And it was surprising. With the initial recordings, and the initial compositions, we didn't do everything we could have. Like, whether it's notes or tempo or rhythm, key signature, all of those things can be explored. But we were just focusing on like, does this actually sound like music, at least in the beginning.
WSHU: As an oceanographer, you look at change over time. And when you look at, say coastal erosion over 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, 100 years: you see trends, but you also see in relationship to climate change, you see a definitely a degradation. How do you make climate data sound not depressing? This music doesn't sound depressing. But I would be fearful that it could sound depressing.
MJ: Yeah, I definitely understand. The sea level rise is a concept that you mentioned that's been a focus of some of my advisors' work recently. And that's one that's affecting all coastal communities globally. So that's one of the concepts that we're hoping to address with this next phase that's funded by secret. Because we have about 100 plus years of data from the tide gauges in Long Island Sound and in New York City. So yeah, the longer trends are something that we haven't explored yet. And we're going to, I think, that aspect of making it not sound depressing, and making it like communicating the science in perhaps a hopeful way, some sort of way to get people to spring to action.
Perhaps I think that falls upon, in this phase, our composer who's working with us now Max Lu, who has a very interesting combination of skills where he's studying computer science at Columbia University, and he's studying composition at Juilliard. So he's more familiar with some of the data science concepts than Sophy was in the beginning. And he has, I think, an aesthetic and an appreciation to bring these concepts into a musical form. That's appealing. So I think working with him in our next phase with the music it's a bit still showing the data in a meaningful way.
WSHU: Like…
MJ: The music that we're currently creating goes from a broad theme to a narrow theme. So we've decided to focus on waves in general. So we have a piece that's going to be from tsunami data, actually, which is a type of wave that's caused by a big disturbance from seismic influence. So tsunami data, actually, that's from 2011.
In Japan, the big earthquake that happened there caused the tsunami. Actually, Sophy was in Japan at the time. [She] was traveling to Japan to do a concert and her sister was living in Tokyo. So there's a personal connection there, too, with why we chose that dataset. And then we're doing music from the tide gauges and Long Island Sound and sea level rise trends. And the music is hopefully going to be arranged and orchestrated on a larger scale, not just solo piano or piano forehands. It's going to be either chamber music style. So woodwinds are stringed instruments in addition to piano. And ideally, we want to have a collection of music for a concert program and have something at an orchestral scale. So we're scaling up and focusing our themes as well.
WSHU: As an oceanographer, as a science communicator, what does the music say to you?
MJ: Yeah, I’m very much an amateur musician. So I play trombone in [the Southeastern Connecticut Community Orchestra]. And I think music is is such a powerful tool because it we have abstract concepts in data, like you just see a figure and they're like, ‘Okay, here's a dot, here's a dot,’ like, unless you are really familiar with it, it's hard to interpret, but music is something that everyone can enjoy. And every one can find meaning in their own meaning as well.
So as a scientist and amateur musician, and music appreciator, I think it goes a long way for you can't necessarily summarize art with words you have to listen to it. And the graphs, I think, go well, like a visual aspect goes well with it to see time series. But listening, puts it into a deeper connection, I would say.
WSHU: Why is it important that we communicate science around climate change, especially in the Long Island Sound region?
MJ: Yeah, communicating science! As a scientist, I have a pretty strong belief that if you're doing science in a vacuum, and no one knows about it, and what's the purpose, really. So that's number one. It's if I'm doing science that is affecting and impacting people's lives, I want people to know about it. First off, and then specifically with climate change, it's not going away. And I think the faster that people are able to appreciate that fact, and that we need to take action, I think the better off we'll be.
And in Long Island Sound. I've grown up near the coast. I live in Groton, Connecticut, currently, and people in Connecticut love the ocean. I think, as an oceanographer, I can say that for sure. But in general, like there's, there's traffic on [I-95] going to Hammonasset Beach State Park, like people enjoy being outside and being able to understand what's happening to nature. And then understanding that it is impacting people directly is a way that we can move forward with action, I think.
“Harmony of Nature” by Hea Youn Chung (Sophy) and Molly James is an album from Sophy & Company. In this interview, the first and last track are “One Week in Incheon“, the second track is “Wind and Waves from the East Sea”. Sophy also riffs on draft they are working on sonifying tsunami data.
Listen to the recordings on Apple Music, Spotify, or Amazon Music.
