SGU | Unplucked

The Sound Gardens
of The Universe

Floral arrangements made with the spectrograms of radio emissions from different sources in the Universe.

UNPLUCKED &
Pablo A. Padilla Jargstorf

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The Sound Gardens of The Universe

You may be familiar with that famous line ‘ there is no point in screaming in space, nobody can hear you’. Although slightly dark, there is a point to this statement. Indeed, sound doesn't travel through space. For that to happen, space would have to be filled with air and not be an almost perfect vacuum.

But space is everything but silent, and it certainly isn’t empty. Not just the multitude of stellar objects, with their solid, liquid and gas components, but also plasma. Plasma is the word given to the fourth state of matter, a gas that is so hot that some or all its constituent atoms are split up into electrons and ions, which can move independently of each other. The nature of these electrically charged particles makes them subject to differing magnetic forces in space, generating electromagnetic vibrations which can be detected and recorded.

Mankind is now able to ‘listen’ to these amazing ‘sounds’ through specially designed instruments carried on some of our space probes, capable of recording electromagnetic vibrations within the range of human hearing (200-20,00 Hz).

Until we are able to travel ourselves, these amazing probes, carrying poetic names such as Cassini, Stardust, Galileo, Voyager, Juno, Van Allen, and many others whose names have become very familiar, bring closer to us the echoes of these corners of the Universe.

Unplucked in collaboration with international artist and designer Pablo A. Padilla Jargstorf (www.jargstorf.com ) invites you to take a stroll through the richness of these waves in space, starting with our own solar system.

About the Artwork

From spectrograms to flower arrangements
The creative process for this design begins with the selection of the sound conversions of five cosmic phenomena carried out by NASA and ESA.

The transformation of these sounds into floral arrangements is done in two steps.

Step 1 - Sound Visualisation - How it works

First we need to visualise the sounds we've chosen.

Spectrograms are used to visualise sounds. A spectrogram is a 2D or 3D visual representation of the frequencies of a sound as they change over time. There are many types of spectrogram, but they usually look like this:

In a spectrogram, one axis represents time and the other shows the frequencies. The third parameter in a spectrogram is the amplitude of a particular frequency at a particular time. Amplitude is measured using a colour scale, and in a 3D visualisation it is also measured in height.

Step 2 - The blooming transformation of a spectrogram

Once we have the spectrogram, we select a sector and begin to manipulate it, both chromatically and volumetrically.

A. From 2D to 3D

B. Spherification

C. Twist

Initial sounds and their floral arrangements

Plasmaspheric hiss

Plasmaspheric hiss waves as heard by NASA’s Polar mission as it passed around Earth.

Credits: NASA/University of Iowa

Detail of the Plasmaspheric hiss' spectrogram.

Plasmaspheric hiss flower arrangement.

Wailing Leonids

Tracks left behind by the November 2000 Leonids shower, as detected by ESA scientists.

Credits: European Space Agency

Detail of the Wailing Leonids' spectrogram.

A Wailing Leonids floral arrangement.

Radar echoes from Titan's surface.

This recording was produced by converting into audible sounds some of the radar echoes received by Huygens during the last few kilometers of its descent onto Saturn's moon Titan.

Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Detail of the radar echoes from Titan's surface.

Flower arrangement with the radar echoes from Titan's surface.

Cassini: Saturn Radio Emissions #1

Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which were monitored by our Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. .

Credits: NASA