The VSimulators team were thrilled to receive funding for a Creative Fellowship from the Arts & Culture Department at University of Exeter to explore the translation of movement data into music - a process known as sonification. A collaboration between Domenico Vincinanza, Dr Genevieve Williams and Julie Lewis-Thompson, this exciting opportunity provided a unique opportunity to explore links between music, science and vibration data. The fellowship sought to widen public engagement in the VSimulators project and human factors research, creating an enduring legacy of music developed directly from the data created in VSimulators and supporting the evolving practice in this novel science field.
Domenico, who has undertaken similar work with CERN and NASA, commented
"this collaboration aimed to create music that will inherit the complexity, structures and unique properties of this one-of-a-kind infrastructure and its interactions with human movements. Working in synergy with the team of engineers and human movement scientist, this fellowship has continuously provide new perspectives into data and new opportunities for public engagement".
Genevieve, added
"Domenico thinks about science and art in parallel processes which opened up a way of understanding the science in an engaging format and could capture different aspects of the numbers we work with everyday. This allowed us to understand and communicate characteristics of the data which could otherwise be overlooked".
The final data for the project was captured shortly before the VSimulators facility was closed as part of the Covid19 lockdown. However, the team continued to work together remotely, with Domenico using lockdown to further explore his creative abilities in producing some amazing musical scores from the VSimulators movement data. Examples of the music can be found on the Case Study page or by clicking on this link to access the Arts & Culture Creative Fellowship webpage on Human and Structure Movement.
Julie, reflected on her experience of the project, commenting
"Seeing that crossover between science and data, and using music to interpret data is a really exciting. This innovative form of research exploring data is starting to be tapped but has far more potential. Its been wonderful to be involved in this collaboration. This isn't an end but a beginning"