Eerie sounds of Earth’s magnetic field

In October 2022 an audio installation using Data Sonification methods premiered in Copenhagen. The project was a sonic representation of Earth’s magnetic field played on a 32-channel speaker system dug into the ground of a public square. The project was a massive success – particularly online with close to a million plays on ESA’s SoundCloud and thus proved a great opportunity to showcase the important work in Earth Observation done within the Swarm community.

The audio installation is an artistic representation controlled by magnetic field data through a sonification method called parameter mapping. The output of the 32 speakers was controlled individually by fluctuations in the magnetic field strength at 32 locations on the globe. Data was taken from the GGF100k – a global field model going back 100.000 years – and condensed into a 5-minute sequence composed of 32 different tracks running simultaneously. Six different parameters were mapped to various qualities of the audio playback (volume, pitch, filter, sample playback speed); these included the three components of the magnetic field at the core mantle boundary, the rate of change, and the field average at surface level.

The soundtrack was meant to give the listener an impression of a living planet in constant flux and is build up from recordings of natural sounds in various combinations. This presentation will describe the approach and give a demonstration of the results. In addition, it will briefly discuss data sonification as a method for inclusion and science outreach.