High-Level Project Summary
The goal of this project was to leverage computer scripting, pixel art, and audio visualization to give people the opportunity to interact with data gathered by the Parker Space Probe. Professionals accomplish data analysis through rigorous means that efficiently quantify large amounts of data, possibly across many phenomena. The method developed by our team instead focuses on an empathetic design by engaging with users intuitively through audio. The audio component is complimented with an audio visualization tool, and stylistic pixel art to immerse users with a fun, welcoming interface based on our solar system.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
This project focused on making data from the Parker Space Probe easy for people to interpret. While astrophysicists have a frame of reference for things like electron count, others might struggle with having some intuition for what this means. However, humans have an instinct for audio and expressing data as sound and music will give a wide audience an intuitive understanding of solar weather. While this project focuses only on a limited dataset, there is no reason that this cannot be extended to a multitude of other phenomena. For example, particle counts could be represented by a frequency within human hearing, and different particles could be represented by different waveforms. Additionally, this project gives an opportunity for artistic representation of the data, as opposed to just scatter plots and trendlines.
The primary tool used outside of the Parker Space Probe for datasets was Python. Python is a powerful tool: it is open source, has libraries for data analysis and handling I/O, and can easily be modified and improved upon by anyone else. Since one of the goals here is to promote the artistic representation of data, using an open source coding method enables others to come up with their own signal ideas and express data in new, intuitive ways. Additionally, all art was produced by our team using Asesprite, a graphic art tool focusing on pixel art. All GUI assets not produced this way were part of python. All art is based on the images from NASA, as listed in the references section.
The code itself is largely a user interface through Python. By use of a slider, the user can choose a certain location, denoted by an image of the Parker Space Probe. Based on the location chosen, a signal will be constructed to represent the electromagnetic (EM) spectral density at that location. This is done by representing the relative harmony of the Earth's EM spectral density as an A major chord - as the spectrum is regulated here for communication - and representing the increasing spectral density from the Sun as cacophonous triangle waves whose power decays with increasing frequency. While this data is not directly from the Parker Space Probe it is inspired by it. The team observed a general trend of increasing spectral magnitude as the probe reached the sun, and that there was some frequency dependence on it. The code is constantly checking for user input and will update the waveform and screen accordingly. At any point, the user can press a button and the script will break the code into bits processable by a computer's sound card. The script then plays whatever signal they see.
Space Agency Data
Our team used Parker space probe data from NASA, and datasets were observed and recorded from the Parker Space Probe Science Gateway. Our team chose to model the power spectral density captured by the FIELD system. Data at various locations throughout its flight path were observed and mapped to the representation in the code so the users could experience the changes in power spectral density as the probe left Earth and closed in on our Sun.
Hackathon Journey
The project was very interesting, as none of us had directly interacted with actual space agency data from a probe before. It was really great to have some real-world connection to our code. Additionally, while we have a little coding experience in an education setting this open-ended project gave us far more freedom to solve the problem - artistic coding and human interaction with it is not something they teach in college.
We did have a hurdle in processing the data from the Parker Space Probe. We would have liked to use data directly from the instruments and represent, point for point, the instruments' data in a way that's interactive. However, formatting and extracting the data proved to be more complicated than we had hoped. While we were able to finally get data from .cdf files it was not soon enough to incorporate them into our project. We settled for interpreting the data and using the general trends as inspiration for the final product.
We would like to thank our significant others and our families for supporting our interests!
References
All coding was done with Python and all art was done with Asesprite. Data used was from the Parker Space Probe's FIELD instrumentfound atthe science gateway at, 'https://sppgway.jhuapl.edu/'. The solar system model was based on images and information from, 'https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/our-solar-system/overview/'.
Tags
#music #audio #solarweather #solar #pixelart #python #code #sofware