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A physicist from the University of Glasgow has teamed up with an artist to turn cosmic rays into music for a series of performances during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Dr David Mahon has partnered with Lomond Campbell, an artist who makes music using self-built instruments, to create a unique instrument called the muonophone.
Transcript
00:00It all started when the University of Glasgow got in touch with me and said here do you want
00:10to build one of your music machines using our muon detectors that can detect harmless radiation
00:18in the atmosphere that comes from cosmic rays and I said yeah of course I do.
00:30My name's Loman Campbell, I make music using unconventional instruments that I build myself.
00:45I'm bringing a show called Mewo to the Edinburgh Festival this year which will be part audio
00:50visual installation, part live performance and at the heart of it are these muon detectors.
00:56So right now I'm in my studio and I'm building a music machine called the muonaphone which
01:03I'll play live as part of the performance.
01:15So sonically whenever a muon particle is detected a musical event will happen so that might be
01:21just like a single note or a sequence of notes playing and the sound of it will be shaped
01:26by things like strength and the position of the muon and this will create like an evolving
01:32soundscape but I don't want the whole performance to be determined by muons so I'm currently writing
01:38parts that I can play along so it becomes almost like a duet between me and these cosmic forces.
01:45There's also a visual element to Mewo and I'm working on visuals that will react in real time
01:58to muon detections and this will make up the installation and also be part of the live performance.
02:05So for Mewo the idea is that you'll be able to experience this invisible radiation in real time
02:17hearing it in like a musical way and seeing a visual interpretation of it and all the while
02:24you can know that what's happening in front of you is being generated effectively from these massive
02:33nuclear events in deep space that are so huge that they're almost beyond comprehension.
02:54I'll see you in the next video.
03:10I'll see you in the next video.
03:12Bye.
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03:23Bye.

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