suNEARth is an interface translating radio sun observations into compositions with field recordings collected on Earth. A composition follows a linear data spectrogram which is translated into sound using visual pattern recognition. The algorithm searches through the collected and archived field recordings and finds the best visual matches in the audio spectrograms. In this way, the sun observations are not compressed to the audio spectrum but rather manifest in recognizable recorded sounds or a total mess, as the sun and Earth can be.
The interface was developed by Gianluca Elia and Francesco Bigoni and was part of the objectives for PhD research addressing sun-Earth cohabitation by Pepa Ivanova.
Pepa is inviting PIFparticipants to perform the sun collectively. Anyone willing to record sounds, describe and categorize them, as well as try the interface or even advise on improving the methods and upgrading the code, can join. Other types of data recordings using spectrograms as output are also very welcome.