Asteroid Tunes

Year: 2018-2019
Artist: Ryan Powell
University: Albion College
Major: Music
Title: Asteroid Tunes
Tags: Music
Genre/Medium: Music/Programming
Category: digital video
Current Location: Digital Only
Description: I created this app with the intention of it being educational, musical, and fun. I took the Solar System and scaled it down 31,536,000 times, turning the years of the orbital periods into seconds. Then I correlated the distance from the Sun to pitches on an 88-key keyboard. I chose these five asteroids because they each had very defining characteristics—each the largest of their kind. Essentially, the pitches are determined by the asteroids’ distances from the Sun, and the orbital periods become the rhythms that the pitches are played. It was a lot of fun to make, and I brought back some of my experience in Xcode, writing in Swift! Credit to fellow intern Jessika Raisor for the adorable asteroid artwork!
Artwork Link: https://psyche.asu.edu/gallery/asteroid-tunes/