Song of the Muons

BACKGROUND Particle collisions in high-energy physics experiments have been sonified since CERN director Georges Charpak invented the Sonic Spark-Gap Chamber in the 1960s. Current sonification projects at CERN are being conducted, such as the 'Quantizer' project, which transposes collision data into musical sequences. Yet this research is unique, as it investigates how to spatialize the data in a way that is indexical, meaning it is not changed into musical scales. CONTRIBUTION Song of the Muons is an 8 channel sound installation. In collaboration with CMS physicist Wolfgang Adam, I turned data from the Compact Muon Solenoid detector (CMS) into spatialized audio. The project sonically manifests high energy collisions between subatomic particles in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Data from CMS expriments is manipulated through a rigorously systematic and mathematically precise process of "relativistic Lorentz transforms" used by the CERN scientists to analyse the collision events. The composition sequence draws upon the spatial and energetic qualities inherent in the collision events. In essence the near-lightspeed events are slowed down in order to enhance their spatially expressive qualities, whilst maintaining their indexicality to the raw data so that, as Dr Adam stated, "nature is ultimately the source of the composition". SIGNIFICANCE This is the first spatial sonification of CERN data, and is a new method in using Loerntz transforms to generate sound. It was presented at the 'L' art et la science pour society', exhibition at Palais de la Musique et des Congres, France, as a component of the 2016 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference, funded by IEEE and CERN. The exhibition included an artist-talk tour of the works, attended by EU parliament members, former French minister for culture Mme Trautmann, former director of CERN Rolf Heuer, and director of the LIGO experiment Barry Barish, all of whom actively engaged in the installation.