Project description

Most forms of modern cooperation between natural sciences and artistic research are dedicated to artistic interventions to comment on existing insight in the natural sciences. With the KIEM project The Sound of Unknown Discoveries (SoUnD) we call for an experimental collaboration with feedback loops between researchers, aiming at gaining knowledge together. SoUnD joins an astrochemist, a sound-designer and a philosopher, with the aim to interpret interstellar chemical reactivity through digital composition to gain new and unexpected insight.

Chemical bonds can be interpreted as (molecular) frequencies, and this is at the heart of our hypothesis that it is optimally suitable to be explored as audible frequencies. Computational surface astrochemistry deals with the study of molecular ice mantles covering cold dust grains in space. Two themes can be identified where frequency analyses are important: (I) energy flow in molecular ices and (II) energy landscapes of interstellar reactions. We propose here to integrate sound composition and epistemological analysis into this research line via: (I) statistical sound, (II) musical diagrammatics and (III) sound-design diagrammatics. This way, we test how through experimental, creative composition, calculated astrochemical data can be made to resonate with intuitive understanding, so that what is not yet understood can emerge aesthetically.

To embark on this joint research project between the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities, a fundamental phase of learning to understand each other is necessary. The KIEM grant will be employed for that purpose and forms the basis for a comprehensive research project and follow-up funding.

Interdisciplinary approach

Combining expertise from the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities, this research brings together insights from the natural sciences (chemical reactivity) and artistic research (sound design).  

Sound designer Stephan Kraus, who is in the process of applying to the PhDArts program at Leiden University, has been embedded in the research group of Thanja Lamberts. As member of this group he is participating in several research group meetings and performs simple computer simulations on astrochemically relevant molecules by himself. This has allowed him to develop an understanding of how frequencies play a role in the analysis of chemical reactions. Using this knowledge, he experimented with different ways of composing a short piece to translate this information in the audible regime.

• interdisciplinary research
• kiem grant

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