Researchers Make Mount Etna Sing

The Interfacer writes "Predicting eruptions will become easier now scientists are using technology to translate the patterns in a volcano's behaviour into sound waves. "The research project, which brings together experts from Europe and Latin America, digitally collects geophysical information on seismic movements before using data sonification to transform them into audible sound waves, which can then be 'scored' as melodies. The resulting 'music' is then analysed for patterns of behaviour and used to identify similarities in eruption dynamics and so predict future activity."

Comments

...and next up on the Mt. Etna hit parade...

[FlyByPC]

"I feel the earth... move... under my feet..."

Dirk Gently

[SmellsLike]

These 'making music out of nature' studies always remind me of that space ship in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. Where the ship was anaylysing all the maths of the planet, and turning it into beautiful music which was then given to one of the classical composers.

Having listened to the Etna sounds though its not quite Mozart. Both the audios are at the bottom of the article and not slashdotted yet. It'd be cool if they could explain what was happening at what points in the melodies. Also sounds a little like a 3-year old smashing a keyboard.

Re:Dirk Gently

[kfg]

It'd be cool if they could explain what was happening at what points in the melodies.

Let's just say that when you hear Asus you'd better C# and run or you'll Bb.

KFG

Re:Dirk Gently

[Troy]

It'd be cool if they could explain what was happening at what points in the melodies

Uncovered by the research: When the volcano is about to explode, it sounds like Yoko Ono.

Grant sucker-uppers?

[MikeWasHere05]

I'm thinking the "convert raw data to music and then extract valuable data from music" step is just in there to ooh and ahh the grant boards. How can that be more efficient than just looking at the raw data?

Re:Grant sucker-uppers?

[semiotec]

The point is to change the data to a format that is easier to process.

For example, if you just look at the wav spectrum or frequency spectrum of a piece of music, it's difficult to tell who was the composer. However, if you re-package the information into sounds, then it becomes much easier to analyse or identify, at least by humans.

Of course, this is the reverse of what they are doing, i.e. their original data is not sound-based, but the idea is similar, they are hoping that the volcano's data (which is a wave form of sorts) is easier to process in the form of sounds by human ears than by looking at the graphs.

Re:Grant sucker-uppers?

[poopdeville]

The problem is that most pattern analysis algorithms are computationally expensive. Usually on the order of 2^n computations, unless the researcher is particularly clever and managed to use domain specific knowledge to speed the algorithm up. Reducing your data set by a few orders of magnitude can be the difference between running an algorithm in a day and running it until you're dead.

The up-shot is that instead of making the scientist interpret musical patterns for insights into volcanos (or whatever the researcher is studying), the pattern analysis algorithm will do it for him by correllating patterns to physical phenomena. Indeed, even if it were computationally feasible to perform the calculation on the original data set, data smoothing (say, by lumping subsets into discrete classes as in the article or approximating by statistical analysis) is a good idea to help avoid over-fitting the data. This improves predictive robustness, especially for time-series algorithms.

Another example of reinventing the wheel, poorly.

[aschoeff]

How is what they're talking about not some subset of fourier analysis? Come on, recasting the data as sound waves? You mean, shifting the frequency domain from ELF to human-audible? What in the world is the point?

They must be using some software package originally written for audio guys, and are unaware that the "conversion" they are talking about is conceptually nothing more than editing the sampling rate constant in the datafile.

I am never surprised at the dearth of researchers competent in data analysis in our country.

Your tax dollars at work

[mosb1000]

It can be less efficient. It's not like they care, they're fucking around all day and collecting a paycheck while the rest of us pay to support them. Although they did invent the term "sonification technology" so at least they're providing us with a little entertainment. I know I laughed when I read that line. What a bunch of pure bullshit.

Prior art

[mattr]

Ken Goldberg created an art installation called Memento Mori that translated seismic data received over the net in realtime into deep bass rumblings driving a surround sound system. The big bass woofer was under a floor you could lie on to feel it. He didn't need a 622Mbps connection either..

And incidentally DANTE seems oblivious that the Dante project by NASA was a multilegged robot descending by rope into a volcanic crater.

I don't mean to overshadow their scientific achievements but lack of memory by networked prdroids bugs me.

Re:Obligatory

[Mr. Bad Example]

> But will the volcano run linux?

Yes, but only Caldera.

And they are recruiting Network Engineers ...

[jose.de.arce]

DANTE seems to be Recruiting some network engineers, but they don't mention Volcanos. Maybe is in the small print in the employee contract.

Cheers.

Re:Obligatory

[andrewman327]

Congratulations, good sir. It is entirely possible that that is the geekiest joke ever made on Slashdot. You have combined Linux and esoteric valcanology. Wow.