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Album Info
Release Date: 2020-09-26Label: Hard Return
Data sonification of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) genome sequence (Hunter & Wei, 2020). This coronavirus has a large genome compared with other viruses, at nearly 30,000 bases long, compared with 8,000 for the common cold and 13,500 for the flu, which is one reason why COVID-19 is a difficult disease to deal with (Fischetti, 2020).The genome data was converted to MIDI files using a program written in Mathematica. Each of the 4 amino acid bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine) was split into a separate MIDI file. These were edited/composed in Reaper and played with a drum synth and Razor. A repetitive bass pattern, based on the first few notes, provides a bit of structure that helps to show that the rhythm and melody never repeat exactly. The drums and melody play versions of the same sequence but with different pitches and instruments, so they voice the same data in different ways. The melody's scale is based on Jins Saba, a 4-note fragment of Maqam Saba, an Arabic scale.
Hunter, C. & Wei, X. (2020). Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus genome assembly, chromosome: Whole_genome. GenBank. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/LR757995.1/
Fischetti, M. (2020). Inside the Coronavirus: What scientists know about the inner workings of the pathogen that has infected the world. Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/interactive/inside-the-coronavirus/
Guy Birkin's blog post about the release:
aestheticcomplexity.wordpress.com/2020/10/11/sars-cov-2_lr757995_1c/
Also available as mp3