Hypate Project

Project

Imagine a concert in which bells made from moon rock are tolled. Or some maracas in which dust from the surface of Mars resonates. What does music made with materials from outside our planet sound like? What would be the acoustic properties of those instruments?

At Traginer Music Research Lab we have set out to answer these questions. We know that wherever human beings go they will look for a way to make music, just as they look for shelter and food. In that sense we are not so different from those humans who tens of thousands of years ago carved flutes from mammoth bones or began to become familiar with ceramics. And now that Humanity is looking out into the universe, expanding the possibilities of planetary habitability, nature offers us a new sonic horizon. The Hypate Project was born to conquer it.

Research

During this research, we have managed to create small bells using different types of lunar regolith simulants and, in parallel, terrestrial ceramic materials. In this way, we can carry out a comparison of the acoustic properties between the musical instruments created. To reach this milestone, we have used conventional and unconventional manufacturing techniques, such as microwave sintering, spark plasma sintering or ceramic 3D printing.

The final goal, in the medium term, is to use real lunar and Martian regolith to give life to the instruments previously tested with the simulant. Perhaps in a few years these instruments will be used in concerts on our planet (or, who knows, on other worlds).

Thus, the Hypate Project articulates music, musical acoustics, ceramics and planetary geology with the purpose of opening the field of study for new disciplines, such as exoacoustics or exoluthery.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL University of Arizona

Team

Aware of the demands and breadth of vision that this research requires, we have formed a team based on academic excellence and experience.

The neurologist Oliver Sacks said that we are homo musicalis . Music is an intrinsic part of our identity as a species. Therefore, in the same way that the Greek muse Hypate personified the highest string of the lyre of Apollo, god of music, the Hypate Project wants to embody the human desire to discover the music that awaits latent anywhere in the universe.