Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Data from forests in the Alaska panhandle translated into music - the results are very nice:

"To represent the changing forests of the Alexander Archipelago in music, Sawe used a different instrument or group of instruments for each of the five conifer species Oakes measured—piano for yellow-cedar, flute for western hemlock, cello and bass for Sitka spruce, violin and viola for mountain hemlock, and clarinet for shore pine. In the clip above, each note represents a tree, and its pitch and how hard it’s hit corresponds with tree’s height and diameter. (Lower, shorter notes stand for younger trees, while higher, longer notes stand for older ones.) Dead trees are represented by dropped notes—gaps of silence that widen as the sonification moves from the cooler study plots in the north to the warmer plots in the south."

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