Aerials: Generating music from network systems

A talk from EMF 2022 by Daniel Jones

On Saturday June 4, 2022 at in Stage C

I make generative systems that translate patterns, processes and data into dynamic musical forms, illuminating hidden structures from the world around us. This has involved creating immersive sound installations that respond to weather patterns, bacterial interactions, forest ecosystems, social network dynamics, and FM radio broadcasts.

For EMF Camp this year, I have created Aerials (2022), a new installation that translates electromagnetic signals from nearby mobile devices into sound and light, depicting the fluctuating Wi-Fi and Bluetooth transmissions of nearby devices as interlocking elements of an ever-changing musical composition.

I’ll give a quick tour of my past work, and talk through the process of creating the piece, the open-source libraries that underpin all of the sound design, sequencing and sonification, and some unexpected discoveries I made in the network layers whilst capturing and exploring RF data.