chels: sciencesoup: What Phi (the Golden Ratio) sounds…
Posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2012 at 12:56
sciencesoup:
What Phi (the Golden Ratio) sounds like
Science and art collide in Michael John Blake’s musical translation of the Golden Ratio, a mathematical constant with the value of 1.61803398874989…onto infinity. Blake created the melody by taking the first 39 digits and assigning each number a note, setting the tempo at 161.8 BPM, and then doing some excellent arranging. Who knew math could sound so amazing?
This is so brilliant. Toph and I were talking today about that song version of the Higgs finding, and we were also discussing a piece he’s writing based on Morse Code and a centrifuge machine, which reminds me a lot of this and the visualization of the different melody lines (which is really genius).
I love the idea of science and art intersecting. It shows how science is a creative endeavor, that math is an elegant art, that music is made of numbers. This kind of mixing together reminds me of that children’s game where you interlace your fingers to make a little church. All these things I enjoy – art, science, math, music – coming together to make something so cool. And maybe they’re not really “coming together” at all, because maybe they’re not separate to begin with.