SeismoSoundScape-Lab

The  SeismoSoundScape-Lab  was created around  the idea that seismology and musicology can mutually benefit from each other by reframing  phenomena  from one realm in terms of the other.  The  SeismoSoundScape-Lab  is a virtual lab space for a number of  projects and initiatives, all driven by curiosity and enthusiasm for transdisciplinary work in the fields of seismology, acoustics, musicology, and computer science.

Within our current research on Traditional Georgian vocal music for example, we exploit a seismologically inspired recording strategy - namely to record skin vibrations close to the larynx -  to separate individual voices for computational musicological analysis. 

For the extraction of information from seismic signals from earthquakes and volcanoes on the other hand, we explore concepts  and algorithms from the field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) research. This is motivated by similarities in the sound generation mechanisms in musical instruments on the one hand, and processes within the earth on the other hand.

In the context of investigating the melodic and harmonic structure of  large corpora of music, we use the geographically inspired concept of songs as trajectories on what we call chordscapes, which allows  for a quantitative (graph theoretical) yet still intuitive method to compare their chord progression structures.

Naturally,  our "expeditions" into the different soundscapes cross the science-art boundary  in unpredictable ways. 

Funding for our projects comes from different sources, such as the German Research Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, and UP Transfer GmbH of the University of Potsdam, all of which is gratefully acknowledged.