The Sound of Ice — Foresight Podcast Ep. 02
Listen to the numbers. From an ice-breaker in the Arctic to the keyboard of a piano, scientific indicators become music and gestures, a narrative made of science and digital art. An experimental tale of the emotions at the heart of research. This is how Judy Twedt creates data-driven soundtracks from sea ice.
In this second episode, we dive into the sound of ice and the stories of microbes. In the words of microbiologist Donato Giovannelli, “the whole planet is run by microbes, and they don’t care much about what humans do: the planet will keep functioning either way, with new animal species, new ecosystems.” The question is, what role will humans play in the future?
Foresight — Deep into the Future Planet, a podcast produced by the CMCC and FACTA.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcast or on your favorite podcast app.
Meet this Episode’s Guests
Judy R. Twedt climate data sound artist at the University of Washington.
She weaves together climate science and digital sound arts to create data-driven soundtracks that bring greater expression and immediacy to climate communication.
A native of Tacoma and a fifth-generation Washingtonian, she has a master’s degree in Atmospheric Sciences, where she used state-of-the-art global climate models to understand Antarctic sea ice variability.
Her pieces blend data sonification with natural sound recordings to promote greater awareness of our rapidly changing planet.
Her research combines work in Atmospheric Sciences and the program on Digital and Experimental Arts to create new sonic forms of climate communication and to study its impacts on listeners. No stranger to interdisciplinary work, her Bachelor’s degree from Colorado College was in History and Philosophy, with an emphasis on environmental ethics.
Donato Giovannelli is a microbial ecologist working on the microbiology of extreme environments.
He is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Naples Federico II where he works on the coevolution of Life and Planet.
He is also an Affiliated Scientist at the Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo, a Visiting Associate Research Professor at Rutgers University, USA and an adjunct scientist at the Institute for Marine Biological and Biotechnological Resources of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IRBIM) in Ancona, Italy, and a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), USA.
He is also part of a new non-profit institute dedicated to exploring the origins and nature of consciousness, YHouse, located in Manhattan, New York, USA.
He was recently awarded an ERC Starting Grant to look at the co-evolution of biogeochemically-relevant proteins and trace metal availability in the environment.
