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SYSTÈME SOLAIRE

Messier 104 (M104 for short), located about 28 million light-years from Earth, is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo cluster. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is angled nearly edge-on allowing a view of its bright core and spiral arms wrapped around it. Spitzer's infrared view of M104 shows a ring of dust circling the galaxy that pierces through the obscuring dust in Hubble’s optical light image. Spitzer also sees an otherwise hidden disk of stars within the dust ring. The Chandra X-ray image shows hot gas in the galaxy and point sources that are a mixture of objects within M104 as well as quasars in the background. The Chandra observations show that diffuse X-ray emission extends over 60,000 light years from the center of the M104. (The galaxy itself spans 50,000 light years across.) In sonifying these data, we can listen to each type of light either separately or together. Either option begins at the top and scans toward the bottom of the image. The brightness controls the volume and the pitch, meaning the brightest sources in the image are the loudest and highest frequencies. The data from the three telescopes are mapped to different types of sounds. The X-rays from Chandra sound like a synthesizer, Spitzer’s infrared data are strings, and optical light from Hubble has bell-like tones. The core of the galaxy, its dust lanes and spiral arms, and point-like X-ray sources are all audible features in the sonification of these data.

M104 Sonification

Kepler: Star KIC12268220C Light Curve Waves to Sound

MSH 15-52 is a cloud of energized particles blown away from a dead, collapsed star. This image includes X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (orange, green and blue) as well as the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE (purple). X-ray data have been combined with infrared data from the Dark Energy Plane Survey 2 (red and blue). In sound, the scan goes from the bottom to the top. The brightness of the Chandra data of the cloud has been converted into rough string-like sounds, while the blast wave is represented by a range of pitches of firework-type noises. The IXPE data are heard as wind-like sounds. The infrared data are mapped to musical pitches of a synthesizer sound. The light curve, or brightness over time, from the dead star’s collapsed core is heard in pulses that occur almost 7 times every second as it does in the original data.

Credits: Images: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./R. Romani et al. (Chandra); NASA/MSFC (IXPE); Infrared: NOIRLab/DECam; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Schmidt; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)


Chandra/IXPE/DEPS2 B1509 (MSH 15-52) Sonification

Chronicle #2 forms the second instalment of the Drone Chronicles series, a collection of experimental drone songs produced by rhubiqs.

On this second instalment rhubiqs turns his attention to processing and layering ethereal vocals into a blissful drone movement.

On Chronicle #1 rhubiqs masterfully layered immersive and industrial synth layers to form a captivating drone sequence.

Further instalments in the Drone Chronicles series are expected later in 2025 & beyond.

Chronicle #2

The Bird’s Companion is the Ambient project of Casey van Wensem, a musician based in Victoria, Canada. Having first explored music through piano lessons as a child, his passion for creating original compositions has helped him  hone a sound that blends elements of minimalism, modern classical, and post-rock, drawing inspiration from the likes of Steve Reich, Nils Frahm, and Mogwai. Since adopting The Bird’s Companion moniker in 2015 with a self-released EP called After the Fire, Casey has released music on 1631 and, some may recall his debut EP for Whitelabrecs ‘The Edge of the Sea’. He also collaborates widely across genres in his local scene.

A Place Outside of Time is a collection shaped by dreamy, cinematic nostalgia. The album was crafted using a range of acoustic and electric instruments including piano, electric guitar, baritone guitar, banjo and various synths. Plucked piano strings and layered guitar feedback provides a tapestry of sound that feels both intimate and expansive, evoking lost memories and distant places.

At the heart of this record lies a meditation on memory and the fragility of tradition. Inspired by a chapter from Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, where an entire town succumbs to amnesia, the album imagines music as a vessel to retrieve what’s slipping away. Track titles such as The Memory Machine hint at this deeper narrative, as Casey reflects on the fading wisdom of elders and the challenge of preserving their stories in an age dominated by rapid digital change. Casey reflects “Many of the titles on the album are taken directly from the text of this chapter. For example, The Memory Machine is a reference to the machine built by Jose Arcadio Buendia – a machine that spins images of a person’s entire life before their eyes, so they can retrieve their memories in the midst of their amnesia. I was also thinking a lot about my family when making the album, especially my grandparents and my wife’s grandparents, who have had a major influence in my life”.

When we feel lost, we can return to our memories as a source of hope by remembering the miracles and joys of our past and of our ancestors. Through its layered melodies and wistful textures, A Place Outside of Time invites listeners into a world where memories are treasures to be unearthed; an act of quiet rebellion against forgetfulness, and a journey back to the roots of who we are.

Credits:
Written and produced by Casey van Wensem
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong
Photography by Casey van Wensem
Art and design by Andrew Heath

A Place Outside Of Time

wlr183 The Bird's Companion - A Place Outside of Time

ll tracks on this album were created using analogue media, tape loops, and non-musical noises. Tape and vinyl defects become elements of the composition here. In the modern digital era, people are losing touch with tangible reality and living nature, plunging into an artificial, synthetic, and virtual environment. The naturalness and uniqueness of simple things are becoming rarities.

This album was first released on Élan Vital Recordings on September 1, 2021, then was re-released on Rhymes Music in 2022, and now, slightly reworked (brought to perfection), is finally coming out on Chitra Records.

Produced and mixed by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)
Mastered by Dionis Afonichev
Cover picture by Yulia Rychkova
Cover design by Dionis Afonichev

Lost Rarities

Cowboy Terry

Daniel Jack

Participation mystique refers to the innate human connection to symbolic and imaginative experiences. This symbolic realm exists before or alongside our ability to think analytically or rationally. The idea is strongly linked to projection, as these symbolic or mythic elements naturally extend themselves into the world around us—into people, places, and things, just like how we unconsciously assign color to what we see.

Participation mystique is not just a psychological concept, but an aesthetic principle – a lens through which we perceive art as more than just something we observe; it becomes something inhabited.

In artistic terms, participation mystique can be thought of as a dissolving boundary between the self and the image. In this perspective, any manifestation of art can be perceived not just as an external object, but as an extension of the viewer’s unconscious. Colors, shapes, and atmosphere resonate with inner archetypes – mythical, primordial, emotional – before the mind can name them. This is why abstract compositions can seem hauntingly familiar, or why certain symbols – like a spiral, a doorway, or a shady forest – draw out something ancient, deep, and unconscious from us.

Produced and mixed by Dionis Afonichev (Dionisaf)
Mastered by Dionis Afonichev
Cover picture and design by Dionis Afonichev

Participation Mystique

Reihe OP7 Next Level

One year and three trips around the Sun later, NASA's Parker Solar Probe heard some weird, sci-fi sounds from plasma within the solar wind -- and those sounds may answer unanswered questions about how the wind forms.

Parker Solar Probe - Whistler Mode Waves 1

Parker Solar Probe - Langmuir Waves

Parker Solar Probe - Dispersive Chirping Waves 2

Parker Solar Probe - Dispersive Chirping Waves 1

Parker Solar Probe - Dust Impacts

Original space audio recordings provided courtesy of NASA and The University of Iowa. https://space-audio.org/

Jupiter Orbit 1

Juno: Musical Tones from Jupiter Waves Perijove 4

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is a not-for-profit center for engineering, research & development. Likes and follows ≠ endorsements.

Parker Solar Probe - Dust Impacts

Johns Hopkins APL

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