MIT News

MIT News


What does a sunrise and sunset sound like?

February 08, 2022

Using a new sonification toolkit, designed but MIT's Digital Humanities Lab, senior Moises Trejo was able to turn a sunrise and a sunset into sound. What the toolkit does is convert the annual times of sunrises and sunsets in a particular location and turns them into a simple soundwork. Depending on the settings it either becomes a two-voice melody (in a strange tuning) or a gradual modification of an evolving sound, or somewhere in between. In this piece the lower tone of the chord is the sunrise time, and the higher tone is the sunset time. The time course of the piece represents the days in the year, as sunrise and sunset gradually move further apart from each other (as the days get longer) and then move towards each other (as the days get shorter).

Listen to the article: https://soundcloud.com/mitnewsoffice/audio-article-the-sound-of-a-sunset?si=76714eafe06742f698b283a79d713750&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Read the article: https://news.mit.edu/2022/sound-sunset-sonification-toolkit-0209