New device helps artist create first-ever cloud-generated music album

Justin Wiggan, a United Kingdom-based artist, created a device called a cloud scanner that allows him to collect, light and shape interference patterns in the clouds.

If you’ve ever wondered what clouds would sound like if they made noise as they zoomed across the sky, you’re in luck.

Justin Wiggan, a United Kingdom-based artist, created a device called a cloud scanner that allows him to collect, light and shape interference patterns in the clouds.

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Patterns from the cloud scanner, which was created in collaboration with artist-engineer Dominick Allen, are then converted into signals that are translated into musical notes via synthesizers.

The bio-sonification of the clouds is Wiggan’s approach to capturing, then translating, the sounds of nature and turning them into music.

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All of the music produced from the notes created by the cloud scanner has now been turned into the first-ever cloud-generated music album, Skydentities: Cloud Scanner, which will be released on Aug. 2.

During the production of the album, which took place between October 2023 and January 2024, Wiggan invited guest musicians to respond to the cloud-generated sounds, which then resulted in a musical dialogue between nature and humans.

The first track of the album, Altocumulus, was released on Wednesday to commemorate World Environment Day.

"I hope this music inspired and created by clouds encourages listeners to engage with nature and their surroundings in meaningful ways, to take in the skies into people’s daily mindfulness routines as part of new wellbeing rituals," Wiggan said.

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Cloud Scanner provides connections to several cloud types, including cirrus, cumulonimbus and stratus.

Wiggan has been fascinated by sound since he was a child when he was told he might lose his sight, inspiring him to train his sense of hearing.

And this isn’t Wiggan’s first nature-inspired soundscape project.

Internal Garden is a recent project that features the immersive soundscapes produced from the bio-sonification of plants, trees and flowers.

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