Voices Of The Cosmos

Voices Of The Cosmos project combines efficiently the achievements of astronomy with electroacoustic music. The creators use the original extraterrestrial signals and sounds received by radio telescopes (e.g. pulsars, magnetospheres of planets, Sun, aurora borealis, masers) and other radio devices, sometimes they use sonifications and archive recordings from space missions. Instrumental tracks integrated into the processed rhythms and tones of the “space sounds” are created with electronic instruments, both digital and analogue, as well as various acoustic objects.

The project has been presented many times in scientific institutions and at music festivals, in the form of audio-visual concerts, also in the version extended with astronomy lectures and sky observations. It is a unique initiative in Poland, which uses the original space recordings, including from a 32-metre fully steerable single-dish radio telescope located at the Institute of Astronomy of the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.

Electronic music and radio astronomy are inventions from the first half of the 20th century. From the very beginning, both areas were permanently associated with technical progress and new technologies that determined their development. Artistic productions such as “VOTC” kind would not have been be possible without the achievements of modern astronomy. Outer space with the necessary technological support to convert radio waves into acoustic waves is full of the source of sound phenomena: noises, vibrations, pulsations, shreds of melody, grunts, as well as chaotic and mysterious sounds, often difficult to determine.