On Friday, I encountered a BBC program of data sonification feature from Slow Radio, “A Sonic Journey Across the Universe.” It got me thinking about the ways that I reach for astronomical concept-symbols when I write hymns and how celestial concepts fit into the ways I engage with the Gods at my shrine and in my writing, from my preferred methods to ground and center to the epithets and/or sunthemata (signatures/traces) that I feel most comfortable celebrating for some deities, such as Apollon and Belesama.
Another creator, Kimberly Arcand at Chandra Labs, created a NASA sonification album based on data from the Chandra X-ray observatory.
The sonification of data is becoming increasingly important for outreach in science, as it can be more intuitive for audiences to hear the differences between healthy and out-of-balance ecosystems when dissonance is present in an acoustic landscape. (Here’s more about how it is starting to be used in Earth Sciences.) The astrophysics sonification makes for an incredible meditative backdrop to contemplative activities for the Gods, and it could be paired with hymns for celestial deities from the Orphic hymns and other compilations. I wrote a hymn for a Goddess that could also be part of a practice like that.
Enjoy, and have a good rest of your weekend.
KALLISTI 