Witness 3

Available from June 5th 2020

Witness 3

Michael Begg and Clodagh Simonds

https://omnempathy.bandcamp.com

“And you are watching, are one of the watchmen, you find the next one by brandishing a burning stick from the brushwood pile beside you.

“Why are you watching?

“Someone must watch, it is said. Someone must be there.”

Franz Kafka, At Night

Live positional data from the International Space Station, and the earth monitoring family of satellites from the European Space Agency, including Sentinel 1, 2, 3, 5, Cryosat and Terra is streamed in real time, processed and realised as music by Michael Begg’s Witness Engine – a series of software programmes that transform environmental and climate data into musically meaningful realtime compositions. (https://witnessengines.com)

For Witness 3, the turning of the satellites, their orbital patterns and relationships to each other trigger choral clusters composed and arranged by Clodagh Simonds.

Programming and composition, Michael Begg

Choral composition and arrangement, Clodagh Simonds

Live data streams courtesy of European Space Agency, Copernicus Programme

JSON feed from n2yo.com

Clodagh Simonds is published by Mutesong

 

The other WITNESS Recordings (all available on Bandcamp)

Witness 1 – Live capture of satellites during the time of the British Prime Minister announcing the Covid19 lockdown restrictions.

Witness 2 – The Weather Engine sonified live weather data streams during a period of several days during lockdown. The recordings were then overlayed upon each other to illustrate the breakdown in the perception of time passing when our routines are broken. Time stretches, expands, the days roll into one, and memory becomes confused, fallible.