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The Voice of Æolus

Data Visualisation | Instalation

And ever, if you hearken well,
You still may hear its vesper bell,
And tread of high-souled men go by,
Their thoughts conversing with the sky.

Rumors from an Æolian Harp
By Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)



Visualising a year's worth of hourly New York wind data, to generate a digital sea of waves and digital Aeolian harp.

An Aeolian harp is a stringed instrument that produces musical sounds when a current of air passes through it. Aeolian sound is produced by wind when it encounters an obstacle, resulting in trailing vortices with oscillatory behavior. The Ancient Greeks believed the sounds of the wind were the voice of Aeolus, the God of Wind.







Fixed objects, such as buildings and wires, cause humming or other constant sounds called aeolian tones. These eddies can have strong periodic components, resulting in a steady tone. Frequency varies with the velocity of the wind, each doubling of the wind velocity results in an octave increase in the tone, allowing up to a six octave variation in a strong, gusty wind.

Aeolian harp by Douglas Hollis, San Francisco:


#Touchdesigner #GenerativeSound #Python #DataArt

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