Living Data Concert

Join us for the Living Data Concert

This free, live, participatory event is equal parts science, story, and sound. Real data becomes live music, poems turn into textures, and you’ll listen to the world in a totally new way.

With performances by Walker Smith, Aura Walmer, Tristan Peng, and Jordan Wirfs-Brock, as well as opportunities for audience participation, this is not your usual concert.

Details

Friday, November 7 • 6–8 PM

Chism Recital Hall (Hall of Music, Whitman College)

Free and open to all, with reception featuring light snacks to follow.

00:00:00

UNTIL EVENT STARTS

PERFORMERS

Aura Walmer

Aura Walmer is an information designer, researcher, artist, and audio enthusiast. She uses interdisciplinary methods to combine data, art, and sound for the purpose of communication and learning. She currently works for University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, and recently completed a journalism fellowship to build an open-source data sonification toolkit: https://www.sonificationkit.com/. Her data-driven projects and sound design work can be found on her website, at www.aurawalmer.com.

Jordan Wirfs-Brock

Jordan Wirfs-Brock is an assistant professor of computer science at Whitman College whose research explores how we might develop sonic archives of personally meaningful everyday sounds. Her practice sits at the intersection of data, design, and storytelling, examining how sound can bridge human experience and computation. Through projects like Your Life in Sound and the Resonate Data Lab, she investigates how listening — both human and machine — can become a creative and critical act for understanding data and ourselves.

Tristan Peng

Tristan Peng is a Music Technology PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology exploring interaction design, spatial audio, and sonification. A creative technologist and musician, his work aims to democratize music through technology -- creating accessible, artful, and interactive ways for people to experience sound. His current projects investigate how data can become a medium for participation and how immersive audio spaces can evoke emotion and understanding in ways that traditional visualizations cannot.

Walker Smith

Walker Smith is a “musical chemist” whose research and artistic practice focus on converting the periodic table into a musical instrument and composing element dance parties. He has appeared as his spectral alter-ego Roy G. Biv on stages across the U.S. and Europe, performing his educational multimedia show The Sound of Molecules. As a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford University, he is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer-Based Music Theory and Acoustics, continuing his exploration of how chemistry and sound can intertwine to reveal hidden patterns in the natural world.

LIVING DATA CONCERT