实时聆听地球卫星说“你好”

本项目由NASA与StudioKCA合作, Shane Myrbeck制作。

创意策略：丹-古兹，大卫-塞尔加多（NASA / JPL）；

展馆设计：Jason Klimoski，StudioKCA；

音频作曲和声学设计：Shane Myrbeck；

3D音频制作在ARUP SOUNDLAB中完成。

当站在Orbit的中心位置，无论你从哪听到声音，如果你指向声音的方向，那就是地球周围正在飞行的卫星的确切位置。NASA有19颗卫星研究地球，通过将每个航天器的轨迹数据与艺术家创建的声音进行匹配，我们允许它们在穿过天空的过程中表达“你好”，就像听到一只鸟从头上经过一样。以下是关于该项目的更多历史信息。

（以下所有图像：NASA / JPL-CALTECH提供）

2005年，我和大卫·塞尔加多一起去了加利福尼亚州的Goldstone，看到了巨大的天线与太阳系中的航天器交流。在沙漠中，气氛诡异而安静，但我们知道很多信息来回传递。由于卫星太远了，我们无法看到它们，因此我们想，如果我们能听到它们在哪里呢?

几年后，我在斯坦福大学音乐和声学计算中心认识了克里斯·查菲。在那里，我看到了一个充满了扬声器的房间，甚至可以放在地板上。当时该设备没有运作，但他们说，他们可以在房间的任何地方放置声音，我当时想，使用这样的声音系统不是很神奇吗？

我们试图将我们拥有的卫星数据转换为他们需要的数据，但当时我们拥有的数据非常难处理，不得不放弃。

在2014年11月的INST-INT会议上，我遇到了Shane Myrbek。他说他是一位音频工程师，我告诉他我曾听说过一个房间，其中扬声器到处都是，可以在房间的任何地方放置声音。他说“那是我整天在做的事情! ”

他在工程公司ARUP工作，可以在建筑物内模拟声音，非常酷。我们合得来。我告诉他我曾经的梦想，他非常激动。问题是，我们没有任何项目或资金可以做任何事情。

几个月后，大卫和我与NASA总部进行了一次电话交谈，他们说他们希望在纽约举行的世界科学节上有巨大的展示，并希望人们知道NASA正在研究地球。大卫小声说：“那个声音的想法怎么样？”所以我们发起了提案，神奇的是他们接受了。我们给Shane打了电话，他很兴奋。到这个时候，数据有点容易处理了，Shane开始发挥他的魔力。但是大卫问了一个重要的问题：“如果纽约时报想要报道这个作品呢？他们会拍些什么照片？它需要成为一种奇观对象，一些人们想要去看的东西。”那是一个至关重要的见解。如何拍摄声音装置的照片？人们可能不会为了看一堆扬声器而穿过城镇，但他们可能会为了奇观而前往。

大卫尝试了几种形式，但我们知道那不对，于是我们打电话给布鲁克林的StudioKCA的Jason Klimoski。我们在前一年在“变形计”上曾与他们合作，知道他们拥有惊人的才能。Jason和他的团队开发了几个概念，并向我们展示了其中之一，就是这个海贝壳的想法。这是一个令人惊奇的概念。它是一个聆听装置，一个奇观对象，也是一个能够以特定的方式容纳扬声器并产生环绕声音的形状。

Shane开始为NASA研究地球的19个不同卫星创建19个分别的“声音”。这证明比我们想象的要困难，但我们从这个过程中学到了很多，对最终产品感到兴奋。然后我们开发了一个我们认为有助于让作品变得有意义的故事。我们有一个卫星发射和一个声音，告诉你有关卫星的信息，它们在哪里以及正在做什么。我们与多人合作完善故事，觉得它太棒了，得到了批准。在巨大的推动下，它终于开放了…但这是一场灾难。故事根本不起作用。没人理解它，每个人都感到无聊，我们的心沉了下去，但我们必须迅速采取行动。我们与Shane合作，切掉了整个故事，只留下卫星此时的声音。技术上很难做到，因为需要大量编程，但也因为我们花了很多时间在上面，所以我们不舍得看到所有的东西都消失。但突然间，它奏效了。人们理解了它，感到与那些在天空中飞行的金属块有联系，帮助我们了解我们的地球。经过那么多年的努力，令人满意的是，人们可以听到我们多年前想象的东西。现在它在加利福尼亚州圣马力诺的亨廷顿图书馆。

Listening to Earth satellites say "hello" in real time

CREATED BY NASA IN COLLABORATION WITH STUDIOKCA AND SHANE MYRBECK.

CREATIVE STRATEGY: DAN GOODS, DAVID DELGADO (NASA/JPL)

PAVILION DESIGN: JASON KLIMOSKI, STUDIOKCA

AUDIO COMPOSITION AND SOUND SYSTEM DESIGN: SHANE MYRBECK

3D AUDIO PRODUCED IN THE ARUP SOUNDLAB

When standing in the middle of Orbit, wherever you hear a sound, if you were to point to the sound, that is the exact location of a satellite flying around earth. NASA has 19 satellites that study the earth and by pairing the trajectory data of each spacecraft to artistically created sounds, we allow them to say “hello” as they move across the sky, much like you hear a bird passing over your head. More about the history of this project below.

(ALL IMAGES BELOW: COURTESY NASA/JPL-CALTECH)

In 2005 I went to Goldstone California with David Delgado to see the Deep Space Network. There, we saw enormous antenna communicating with spacecraft around the solar system. It was eerily quiet out in the desert, but we knew a lot of information was going back and forth. Since the satellites were so far away we couldn’t see them, so we wondered, what if we could hear where they were instead?

A few years later I was introduced to Chris Chafe at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. There I saw a room with speakers all over the place, even in the floor. It wasn’t working at the moment, but they said they could place a sound anywhere in the room and I thought, wouldn’t it be amazing to use a sound system like this? We tried to translate the satellite data we had into the data they needed, but the data we had was really hard to deal with at the time and had to give up.

In November of 2014 I met Shane Myrbek at a party at the INST-INT conference. He said he was an audio engineer and I told him I had heard of a room where speakers were all over the place and one could place a sound anywhere in the room. He said “that’s what I do all day long!”. He works for the engineering firm ARUP where he simulates the sound inside of buildings before the are built, pretty cool stuff. We hit it off. I told him of the dream I had had and he was really excited. The problem was, we had no project or funding to do anything.

A few months later David and I were on a phone call with NASA HQ’s and they said they wanted to have a big presence at the World Science Festival in NYC and wanted people to know that NASA studies the Earth. David whispered “what about that sound idea?”. So we pitched it and miraculously they went for it. We called Shane up and he was excited. By this time the data was a bit easier to deal with and Shane started to work his magic. But David asked an important question “What if the NYTimes wanted to cover the piece? What would they take a picture of? It needs to be an object of wonder, something people want to go to.” That was a crucial insight. How do you take a picture of a sound installation? People may not travel across town to see a bunch of speakers, but they might for an object of wonder.

David took a crack at a few forms, but we knew it wasn’t right, so we called up Jason Klimoski at StudioKCA in Brooklyn. We had worked with them the year before on Metamorphosis and knew they had amazing talent. Jason and his team developed a few concepts and showed them to us, one of them was this idea of a sea shell. It was amazing concept. It is a listening device, an object of wonder, and a shape that could hold the speakers in the specific way they needed to point for the encompassing sound to work.

Shane started creating 19 separate “voices” for the 19 different NASA satellites that study the earth. It turned out to be harder than we thought, but we learned a lot from the process and were excited about the final product. We then developed a story we thought would help make the piece make sense. We had a satellite launching and voice to tell you about the satellites, where they are and what they are doing. We worked with several people to refine the story and thought it was great and it was signed off. After a huge push it finally opened… but it was a disaster. The story didn’t work at all. Nobody was getting it and everyone was board, our hearts sunk, but we had to act fast. We worked with Shane to cut out the whole story and just leave the the sounds for where the satellites are at this moment. It was hard to do technically as there was a lot of programming, but also because we had spent so much time on it we hated to see it all go. But all of a sudden it worked. People got it and felt a connection to those hunks of metal flying around in the sky helping us learn about our earth. After all those years, it was gratifying to have people hear what we had imagined so many years before. It is now at the Huntington Library in San Marino California.