Weather Set to Music
When composer James Bulley and computer scientist Daniel Jones first met, they had a philosophical discussion about where music, art, and computing meet. That talk led them to Variable 4, a sound art installation that translates weather conditions into musical patterns in real time. After spending one year researching prevalent local weather conditions, the pair installed the weather station at two outdoor UK locations—the Soundfields festival in Kent and Snape Maltings in Suffolk.
The station measured eight parameters of local climate, including wind speed, rainfall, solar radiation, humidity, and temperature, and fed the data into two computers that used custom algorithms to influence different elements in the musical score—movement, note levels, pitch, tempo, and expression—by switching between prerecorded snippets from 24 separate movements. Bulley even composed different movements for each installation.
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