Just Warming Up

2021-10-05

"Just Warming Up", from The Empty Fields uses surface temperature data to render what climate change sounds like. The GISS (Godard Institute for Space Studies - not too far from Code Owl Studios, The Earthly Frames' HQ) Surface Temperature data set contains monthly mean measurements dating back to 1880. To transform this data to sound, first, a Python script mapped the temperatures to a range of MIDI notes, while also creating drones for years and decades averages.

def step_average(sequence, step):

    """

    Creates a shorter, average list of numbers based on the desired steps

    Parameters

    ----------

        sequence: list

            List of integers or floats

        step: int

            The number of steps you wish to average. E.g. [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] with a step of 4 would return [10,24]

    Returns

    -------

        list

            The stepped list result

    """

    stepped_sequence = []

    step_sequence = []

    for sequence_number, sequence_item in enumerate(sequence, start=0):

        if sequence_number % step == 0 and sequence_number != 0:

            average = get_list_average(step_sequence)

            stepped_sequence.append(average)

            step_sequence = []

        step_sequence.append(sequence_item)

    return stepped_sequence

 

This MIDI was fed through analog and virtual instruments to create the track. You can find the source code here.