Birds singing, frogs croaking, animals walking, the sound of rain hitting trees, ponds, and the wet soil—if you listen to this video with your headphones you would believe you're listening to the recording of a rainforest. But the truth is that you're listening to space:

CHORUS consists of brief tones which sounds like a chorus of birds at daybreak created when electrons hit the Earth's atmosphere. This new audio composition has been created for the Trajectory Installation at Leicester University by Andrew Williams. It makes use of data collected by the Cluster 2 Satelite in 2001 using LWR (long wave radio.) Through a process of transposition and filtering the signal (which are naturally outside of the range of human hearing) the tones become audible. Andrew has shaped the material and developed a performance structure using a multi speaker difussion system to recreate the spatial qualities of the Earth Chorus within the gallery space. Andrew is Leverhulme Artist in Residence at the Space Research Centre, Leicester University.


It's a clever trick, but it's still impressive to hear how it sounds so similar to an actual rainforest.

Talking to sci-news, Williams said he "was quite shocked at how similar electrons hitting the Earth's atmosphere sound to bird song. Collectively, it is surprising to hear that space has an almost animalistic quality to its sounds which I have been quite struck by."

Advertisement