StarSound

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StarSound

StarSound is an audio visual installation to make radio telescopes and their recorded data interactive and to present it in an immersive, understandable and exciting way, by auralizing and showing the live data from a radio telescope that searches for hydrogen in the universe in an artistic, but also informative way. The project can be used and understood by the general public and there is minimal knowledge required to enjoy and understand the installation, so that visitors do not have to be further educated in the science of astronomy or the functionality of telescopes.Dealing with radio telescopes often requires major knowledge in astrophysics, which makes it hard to encourage people for the science of astronomy . Today's astronomers mostly only deal with numbers while examining places in the universe, optical telescopes cannot reach anymore. Most data gained and recorded with those astronomical instruments is very interesting for astronomers, but quite complicated to understand for the general public. It is StarSound’s intention to make this recorded and sophisticated data attractive, interesting and exciting for people who may not have a deeper knowledge and understanding of astronomy and astrophysics.StarSound is a walkable installation, enabling a user to interact with the astronomical instruments of Blackrock Castle in Cork and experience their data, provided through a cooperation between the Blackrock Castle Observatory and Cork Institute of Technology. The visual output is an immersive representation of a map of the stars surrounding earth. The user points on a certain position on the map and through that, adjusts the direction of the telescopes, which then provide an acoustic representation of the live data received from that particular position. Hence, the user can get an impression of what the positions in the universe ‘sound’ like.