“Voices of Stardust” was born by the romantic idea that human beings came from the universe as a
chemical reaction. We could be made of stardust!!!!!…. magical cosmic elements coming from comets because all the elements they are made of – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, are all the things that matter for evolution.
Meteors release electromagnetic radiation in the visible portion of the spectrum, but the fact that they also release very low frequency (VLF) waves, which has been studied less but has become a big inspiration for my work. The project focused on research, interception and recordings of the “echoes” of this fascinating phenomenon, focusing on the different types and intensity of their signals. This included to detect the two different characters of their signals: VLF (very low frequency) and VHF (Very high frequency). Each meteor generates a unique signal based upon its mass, velocity, angle, and direction of entry into the atmosphere.
During one year time, (depending on the high intensity of the phenomenon), I focused on out door recordings in specific days, time, locations( far away from the acoustic pollution of the city, in different natural environments). Specific types of meteor storms were recorded: (Geminids, Alpha Centaurids, Quadrantis, March Lyncids, Eta Aquriids, Lyrids, Daytime Arietids, Leonids, Perseids). All the recordings were done with the use of antennas, (some of them self-made) , specific analog VLF receivers, and SDR software . I have used the collected sonic archive to compose a piece for a multichannel performance, within which a psychedelic hissing and crackling noise of several meteor storms is orchestrated into a sonic opera where the singular brief echoes is identified as a timbre of a unique voice that will move in a musical choral flow .
“Voices of Stardust ” is a reflecting, poetic, and critical thinking about the strong connection and interaction between energies from nature, the Universe, in relation to our life and techno society – their mutation in time and space, their origin, the unpredictability of their signals.
To compose a piece for live performance with their „voices“ is an attempt to dive into the kind of subliminal signals this phenomenon can carry with it, a kind of “musical-mirror “of the beginning of our existence.
A special thanks to Stefano Bologna & Sergio Lera from the Astronomical Observatory
(Associazione Astrofili Urania) for technical advise and support.
This project was kindly supported by Musikfonds , Neustart Kultur Stipendienprogramm 2021
