Francesco Rampichini
in collaboration with
Fabio Peri
Scientific Director - Civic Planetarium “U. Hoepli” - Milano
introduces
  Hear the Stars
a journey across constellations through interactive acousmetric maps



 Orion's acousmetric map.
INTRODUCTION
Discover the constellations through Acousmetry®, by way of interactive sound maps based on the astrocartography, was an of the first applications that I believe achievable, starting from the theorization of my system.
 I was convinced that the development of this idea would open, also to blind people, through the experience of listening, a sensitive further and original way to know those bright aggregation of points in which the human imagination sorts the sky.
After a couple of years of tests and observations I submitted my project to Fabio Peri, Scientific Director of the Planetarium of Milan, that shared it with enthusiasm.
I came thus, on a continuous experiments and comparisons, at the creation of a dedicated interface allowing - with a simple movement of a mouse – to listen to the map of a constellation, and its single stars, identifying its location and magnitude (the second through the light/sound intensity matching).
Stars and galaxies send us their light radiation after a very huge distances crossing. Since the speed of light in vacuum is approximately 300,000 km/sec., the Moon we see - at an average distance of 376.000 km - is of a second ago, the Sun of approximately eight minutes before, while Proxima Centauri, the closer star after the Sun, is already of four years ago (40,000 billion km).
The Hubble telescope allowed us to photograph galaxies whose signal started eight billion years ago! Therefore, looking at the Sky, we penetrate not only the space, but also the time.
It is not a coincidence that in Sanskrit, ancient language of the Indo-European family from which come many of our words, “sound” is say Svara and "light" is Svar : the two phenomena are united in their phonetic affinity.
 Here are conjugate the intents of an operation without precedent, aimed to the widest audience to whom we want to tell:
"light is sound, listen to it".
© Francesco Rampichini 2006-2010
to learn more write to: info@musikatelier.it