Month: March 2020

National Water Dance – NOT Cancelled

With all of the rescheduling of public events local, national and global, there is one event that will go on next month. National Water Dance 2020 will happen as scheduled on April 18th 2020 at 4 pm EST. This biannual movement choir in honor and healing of water will take place across the country all at the same time and streaming across the web. This announcement came from NWD last week:

WE ARE STILL DANCING! Wherever you are on April 18 at 4:00PM EST, alone or self-quarantining or with a small group in an open space, we will begin with the shared gesture and end with the shared gesture and your personal movement will fill in the middle.

We are fortunate to be living in the digital age – as we are asked to observe *“physical distancing,” we are able to close that distance by linking together through social media.

This challenge is forcing us to re-evaluate what we are doing and how we are doing it. Let’s find that deeper meaning in our dance, whether in a group or alone. We can dance wherever we are and livestream it on Instagram and Facebook. 

More than ever the world needs our hope and energy. Let’s move forward together and flood the social media networks with our dances on April 18th.

My crew at the idiosyncratic Beats of Dejacusse (iBoD) had big plans to create a watery like container at PS 137 with live plants and flowers by Lee Moore Crawford, and space for movers and viewers. Now we have constrained as we must, so will feature Jody Cassell as Durham’s National Water Dancer streaming live from her home. Jody will move to a recording of Carnatic Water Music, which will be released by iBoD on Bandcamp in April a week before the event. We will keep you posted as to how to link to the performance and pre-order the digital EP.

Mark your calendars for Durham’s National Water Dance April 18th at 4 pm.

Covid-19 DNA Remix

In the midst of everything going viral all around us, my friend @abstracta.audio pointed me toward Eric Drass’ sonification of the DNA sequence of the Corona virus. The National Institute of Health has released the transcript of the sequence, which can be found on their website https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947.3 Eric, who makes all kinda wild art at Shardcore.com, assigned note combinations to each letter of the genome sequence (ATCG in various iterations) and you can listen to it (and upload the midi file) here: http://www.shardcore.org/shardpress2019/2020/02/28/the-sounds-of-covid-19/

I am fascinated by his process and hope he will give me an idea of how he did it. I am very interested in using notes/pitches/frequencies to sound out data. Eric created a 16 note scale. The top four notes and the bottom four notes are the same notes one octave apart. The eight notes in the middle do not repeat. Each measure of the midi file has 4 beats, the first beat has 2-3 notes stacked, then these notes repeat singularly over the 2,3,4 beats. How this relates to the DNA sequence I have not figured out.

Anyway, my remix begins in the middle of the midi file. There are five voices assigned to voice the midi notes. Percussion, pizzicato strings, and some other odds and ends of sonic dross. I slowed the bpm way down to 100. The piece sounds mincing, impish, serious and ominous in places. AND, you want it to end before it actually does!

Have a listen – it runs a bit over 6 minutes.

Covid 19 Remix Eric Drass

Listen to Your Gut: Engaging the Public with Science and Sound

On Friday, March 20th, Dr. Erin McKenney and I will present our work on sounding the data from her doctoral dissertation, which focuses on changes in Lemur baby gut microbiomes as their diet changes from birth to weaning. (See this post for further information: https://wp.me/p5yJTY-tD ) We will also preview some of the findings and sounds from the Sourdough Project through the Rob Dunn Lab at NC State.

Our presentation is sponsored by Duke University Science and Society, and is one of a number of talks and presentations presented by this department. The program is open to the public and a pizza lunch is served. You can register at this link: https://scienceandsociety.duke.edu/engage/events/upcoming-events/ Scroll down the March calender to our event, click on it, scroll down and register.

I hope to see you there!