Inspiration

Video sonification was the subject of a NASA Hackathon I participated in, but never got satisfactory results for. With more knowledge, I decided to tackle the problem again.

What it does

Sonifies space videos! It detects objects on the circumference of a circle, then converts it to notes based on their size and brightness.

How we built it

It is built in Python and relies on Fluidsynth for making music and OpenCV for detecting objects.

Challenges we ran into

Objects not being detected, larger objects that stayed on the circumference for multiple frames making an unpleasant sound, poor performance, and audio encoding issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The fact that not only does the sonificatation work, but sounds intriguing and captures the essence of space, in a way.

What we learned

I learned more about computer vision, music theory, and got to explore some cool parts of space!

What's next for Space Video Sonification

I'd like to make different colored objects produce different sounds. I'd also like to harmonize stars and nebulae with different scales. I might also implement a small AI model to better classify stars versus galaxies. I'd also like to create a web interface where users can easily sonify their own videos--I already bought the domain sonified.space.

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