Japan quake seismic wave data, "sonified" (audio)

Sonification of the great Japan earthquake , by Micah Frank.

Tectonic is a realtime seismic analysis and sound synthesis system. Sound is created in realtime by earthquakes as they occur across the globe. A tightly integrated system between Max/MSP, Google Earth and Symbolic Sound's Kyma processes earthquake data that is translated into sound synthesis parameters. A USGS XML feed is parsed into numerous fields including magnitude, elevation, time of day and geographical coordinates. These data are mapped to synthetic spectrums and processed by granular, aggregate and subtractive synthesis.

Earthquakes off the east coast of Honshu, Japan - Friday March 11, 2011 by Micah Frank (BB Submitterator, hanks, Speedo)

• [avraamov]

  to me it just seems inappropriate.

  nobody is learning anything, and if we’re just talking aesthetics, then that’s up to him, but count me out. there must be things to try his max patch out on where the corpses have at least cooled…

  @numcrun – exactly.

• [minordian]

  Most of that seems to sit well alongside the last part of the track Nightdust by Ashra (from the New Age of Earth album) that I happened to have playing when I loaded that sound file up…wasnt sure actually if the ‘sonification’ was actually playing as it just melded into the track as a bed of noise that seemed strangely well suited.

• [Anonymous]

  If this is actual sonage of that 9.0,.it is not of nature. the cresendo’s are timed and enenly spaced as each high was a freq blast to the faultline and attempt to eventually trigger the event.
  Russia tested a nuclear device “inadvertenly” at a fault line in the late 80′s that set off and what followed shortly after was a major earthquake in one of her waring separating states that distroyed a city and killed hundreds. This sonigram has constants unlike other sonic readings implying that this quake may have been created using a frequency device placed correctly along a faultline which needed a little teasing to trigger the event. (My observations only) as i would not put it past a foe to create such a disaster to cripple Japan and avoid implications that would otherwise follow an allout attack by land. (see siezmetic readings and compare)

• [Anonymous]

  These high frequencies seem odd with violence of the earthquake.

• [flappy]

  I’m not sure why they didn’t just use sampled duck quacks.

• [Lady Katey]

  FYI this audio player thing is kinda buggy- it played a bit when it first loaded and then another bit when I scrolled past it (I haven’t moused anywhere near the ‘play’ button). The first one scared the pants off me a I had left my speakers turned up last night!

• [Anonymous]

  This must have jangled the nerves of a lot of whales

• [zikman]

  chilling in its’ own right

• [burritoflats]

  I was expecting something along the lines of a Motorhead song, but this sound synthesis more resembles a pretty, delicate Philip Glass composition

• [numcrun]

  Wow it’s almost like being there.

• [Anonymous]

  The beginning sounds like I Wanna Be Adored.

• [juepucta]

  Man. The way the thing goes cuckoo bananas at minute 3 is like something used to torture Kirk on Trek. This is some annoying shit.

  -G.