Worlds as Metaphor

It's been several months ago that I tweeted about how planetary or exoplanetary thinking is making its way into the human psyche. It became more apparent when a "planetary" model of organization surfaced in the design of User Interface (UI).

You know, we live in an age of data explosion. So much that you need an effective interface design to interact with data in a meaningful way. That's why this "planetary" design hit a sweet spot in organizing and representing your music collection. I remember Last.FM had some solar system visualization back then, but this working interface from Bloom rocks.

I felt compelled to write this post after I came across a more detailed exposition of how this "Worlds" interface was created. I am amazed how the representation of data about artists, albums and songs fits in place "naturally" with how nature has organized stars, planets, moons, and galaxies. It almost seems to say that music and nature are intertwined. And it is intertwined!

All this just proves that it is most elegant to use Worlds as Metaphor, not just in interfacing with machines and data, but in interacting with ideas!

Links:
Creating New Worlds
Worlds, Not Windows

Brainwave: On The Sound of Planets

The room was packed. There was a grand piano on the side of the stage, which I thought Philip Glass was going to play while Greg Laughlin would sing for an opening number. But no, both men went straight to their seats and started the discussion right away.

This is Brainwave, one of a series of events at the Rubin Museum in New York City that features Artists and Scientists together in an engaging conversation. This time it was the Laughlin/Glass duo. An Astrophysicist and a Composer discussing the Music of the Spheres. 

Laughlin started with an overview about how just a few years ago, it was mere speculation that other worlds orbited other Suns. And now we have known hundreds of exoplanets at our disposal to analyze. He then proceeded to view our solar system on the Systemic Console, a software he wrote on java.

The Systemic Console is somewhat a simulator, with GUI controls that allows you to play around with planetary properties such as mass, period, eccentricity, and so on . It can then plot charts and graphs, and generate wav files, or "sonify" the planets.

Then he played the sonification of how the inner planets in our solar system sounded like. It was "bland", as Laughlin described it--to which Glass disagreed, saying "no" in a manner as if waking up from a sleepy trance. From then on, Glass periodically injected deep thoughts into the conversation--often catching Laughlin offguard while in the middle of his hand gestures explaining planetary orbits. On the first occasion, Glass raised the question of a 'Cosmic Ear'. He asks, "Is there someone out there listening to the sound of these planets?" The discussion that ensues sometimes ends up with Glass discovering the answer to his own questions, often ending in wonder and amazement. For example, he reached the conclusion that "this exercise makes it personal" as he tried to reflect upon our ability to generate sounds from planetary orbits and to actually listen to them.

For a moment I thought I heard Laughlin say that there is no music of the spheres. We simply use technology to generate audible sounds that we can relate to. But to which Glass remarks that this sound is the incident that makes him interested.

Laughlin mentions that a few seconds of the clips spans a thousand years of a planetary system's evolution. Glass follows up that the resonances that Laughlin describes is actually what musicians often think about.
Then they talked about how they admired Kepler, who tried to make sense of planetary motions. Briefly touching upon the life of the man to whom a planet-hunting telescope is named after.

As I listened, I realized that Glass is curiously funny. Quite a surprise from what I thought at the beginning that he might be grumpy. While Laughlin is soft-spoken and mellow. Together they make a perfect balance.

Laughlin played sounds of other varieties of exoplanets with different parameters. Some of them actually sounded good, like an intro from an ambient song. Then he plotted the orbital evolution and stability of our own solar system. But this time changing the mass of any planet in a what-if scenario alters the stability of the other planets as well. The sound generated by the oscillating system sounded very eerie, like psychotic ghosts singing a comical requiem.

The question and answer portion ensued, with the audience dealing some good questions, eliciting good answers in turn. The discussion ended in a deep and mystical way, as both men reflected upon the great unknown and the mystery that surrounds us in this universe. And that is fascinating, Glass says "That's where Art and Science meets..."

Exogazing: A New Music Genre that FITS!

In a fit of joy and delight, I've just learned that the band called A New Silent Corporation (ANSC) has picked up on "exogazing music". This is what they posted,

"Apparently there's a new name for our music genre, it's called exogazing. Like watching out to other worlds. Which kind of fits."
-- ANSC

This is the first time that a musical artist has expressed approval for the name of their new genre. And I'm very happy to hear it from this exogazing band. What is even more amazing to me is the last word of their quoted statement, "fits". Yes, it truly fits! Because aside from the semantic meaning of that word, there is also a technical match that truly puts their words in perfect context! It amuses me because "FITS" is a kind of file format used by planet-hunters to transfer lightcurve data. FITS has "an extraordinarily effective form of compression(!)" as Greg Laughlin says from his blog at oklo.org. In a broader context, FITS is actually the standard data format used in Astronomy.

As everyone knows, the etymology of exogazing comes from an exogazer's musical preference when gazing at the stars. “Exo” means “out”. Thus, to Exogaze simply means to “gaze out”. The term originated from a hobby of exoplanet enthusiasts called "Exogazing" which simply means “looking up in the starry night sky and pondering other worlds.” Exogaze music is the type of music recommended while stargazing and exogazing, and thinking of otherworldy stuff. Shoegazing (another genre) is looking down, while Exogazing is looking up.

The absence of lyrics prevents exogazers from being distracted by words. The melodic and atmospheric quality of exogazing music complements the mysterious expanse of space. And the almost-depressing and uplifting aura matches that lonely feeling that one gets when staring out into the night sky--where the feeling of insignificance, and appreciation of a fleeting chance at life, is entwined in an inexplicable mood.

In a nutshell, exogazing music is marked by these general characteristics: it has no lyrics, instrumental, and moody. It intersects with the post-rock genre and involves psychedelic plus ambient overtones. The songs are mostly a mixture of electronic and guitar-driven compositions, and typically uses computers and gadgets to make. Some examples of artists that create exogazing songs are: Caspian, Moonlit Sailor, Pelican, Lymbyc Systym, The American Dollar, Mooncake, Metavari, Glowworm and so on. See more from this list of artists that belong to this new genre here.

It's worth saying that discovery and exploration also occurs even in the field of music. And I am very excited about the unexpected musical discovery that has sprouted from the exploration of this new field of exoplanet science.