SPECTRAL is a 4.1 channel spatial sound installation built from real measurement data recorded by instruments aboard NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP). The work translates spacecraft instrument data from humanity's closest-ever approaches to the Sun into an immersive, physically grounded sonic experience.

As the fastest man-made object ever made, orbiting closer to the sun than ever before, PSP moves through the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, the corona, withstanding an extreme radiation environment with solar plasma reaching temperatures in the millions of degrees Celsius. Its scientific instrument suites record data important to physicists including electromagnetic field fluctuations, plasma properties, and energetic particle activity invisible to the human eye. 

In this work, PSP is cast as the sole perceiving subject, its first-person perspective anchoring the piece. Four historic milestones from the immense journey of PSP form the work's focus: its first perihelion pass, its first crossing of the Alfvén Surface into the corona, its passage through a violent solar storm, and its record breaking closest approach. These four data segments form the work's four chapters, utilizing available PSP instrument data to reconstruct a deep-space auditory narrative traversing invisible magnetic fields and solar storms.

SPECTRAL is created by Yuening Cai (MSDA, Department of Computer Science), with scientific collaboration from Luke Kathmann (PhD student, Department of Physics and Astronomy). The project is supported by the Arts Integration Initiative Grant, awarded by the Hopkins Center for the Arts.