Celestial Conversations
Code | Vox | Score
Bozcaada Gathering, June 2025
Celestial Conversations is a sound project commissioned for Bozcaada Gathering festival that transforms astronomical data into an immersive sonic landscape, drawing on principles of indeterminacy and non-human agency inspired by the compositional philosophy of John Cage. The work takes as its source the positions of 50 stars visible above Bozcaada Beach on the night of June 14th, tracked over one hour at five-minute intervals. Using this data and variables, twelve visual graphs were generated, each depicting different imagined constellations formed through randomised connections between the stars via data processing.
These constellation graphs were translated into sound via spectrogram analysis, producing raw sonic textures that form the base layer of the soundscape. In parallel, each star was analytically paired with its adjacent neighbours and observed for pattern changes over time. These relational behaviours were interpreted through a set of rules to assign each star a unique I Ching hexagram, invoking an ancient system of chance and symbolism to further distance the composer’s subjective influence.
Following Cage's Music of Changes, each of the 64 hexagrams were mapped to specific musical features—chords, silences, dynamic shifts, temporal modulations—creating a lexicon of sonic possibilities derived from a cosmic code. These mappings were not imposed arbitrarily; rather, the I Ching sequence was informed by the behaviour of the star data itself, allowing the stars to ‘speak’ through an ancient symbolic logic.
From this foundation, multiple distinct scores were generated, each shaped by different rule-based interpretations of the visual graphs. These scores informed the manipulation and layering of the spectrogram-derived audio, resulting in a series of celestial soundscapes that are as much about listening to chance as they are about listening to the stars.
Celestial Movements is an experiment in surrender—an attempt to hear what happens when the universe composes, when the sky performs, and when the artist becomes a conduit rather than a creator.
Press:
Bozcaada Gathering