Dr Kelly Snook - Concordia
Kelly Snook joined us as our Woman in the Lead of the 24-hour Creative Labs at MTF Stockholm, and we couldn’t have picked a better person for the job. She’s a music producer, engineer, instrument inventor, and former NASA researcher - literally a rocket scientist.
Kelly joined Jamillah Knowles on stage to talk about her work, the inspiration of Johannes Kepler, the idea of “investigative music”, Radical Inclusion, the Music of the Spheres, and her brilliant Concordia project that brings together astronomy, Virtual Reality and musical performance to bring to life the radical and incredible ideas of a book that celebrates its 400th birthday this year.
AI Transcription
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
music, people, musical instrument, concordia, mtf, sound, tech fest, spheres, rocket scientist, instrument, world, kelly, mathematics, book, kepler, johannes kepler, astronomy, science, technology, play
SPEAKERS
Kelly Snook, Andrew Dubber, Jamillah Knowles
Andrew Dubber
Hi, I’m Dubber. I’m the director of Music Tech Fest, and this is the MTF podcast. Now something that was a really big deal for us at MTF. labs.com was that we not only had 50% women at the festival across the board, we also had women in the lead of all technology areas, and not just women, brilliant women. Dr Kelly Snook joined us as our woman in the lead of the 24 hour Creative Labs, and we couldn’t have picked a better person for the job. Kelly’s a former NASA engineer, literally a rocket scientist, who left to become a musical instrument maker, and not just any musical instrument. The Concordia project brings together astronomy, virtual reality and musical performance to bring to life the radical and incredible ideas of a book that celebrates its 400th birthday this year. Kelly joined Reuters journalist and MTF anchor Jamillah Knowles on the interview stage to talk about your Johannes Kepler, investigative music, Concordia radical inclusion, the music of the spheres, science and art, truth and beauty. Kelly is an exceptional human being and a brilliant example of the intersection of ideas that you’ll find at MTF as you’ll hear, enjoy.
Jamillah Knowles
So, those of you who have been around the Music Tech Fest, may have seen this woman doing incredible things. I saw you last night standing on a table. And as you do
Kelly Snook
it, I’m always sober. I have I don’t drink. So
Jamillah Knowles
Oh, you mean both? tables? It’s just a good purpose in it. Yeah. Or then. So we’re, for those of you who are not aware this is Kelly Snook. And you’ve been leading the 24 hour Creative Labs here? That’s correct. Yeah. All right, then. So what is that what has been happening?
Kelly Snook
Well, very early on. I, we had, you know, some teleconferences to plan this Creative Labs and from the descriptions on the website. We weren’t even quite sure what is the difference between the hack lab and the creative lab. I think the difference, the only difference is the words, in order to attract a diversity of people. So it’s, it’s a hack, it’s a it’s a 24 hour hack the same way the hack lab is a hack, which is the idea that people come together. And for 24 hours, they plan and build, and kind of demonstrate something that they’ve built a musical instrument toy, an idea for a future instrument or piece of music technology. And they have 24 hours to do it. There’s a competition, there’s glorious prizes. And what we’ve done is we’ve combined the hacklab now and the Creative Labs so that we have like a very, very wide diversity of people in the room. And we’ve allowed them to self identify with different different things that are their areas of expertise from design to we have a paper clips on my
Jamillah Knowles
audio on my shirt. So listen back, you’ll be wearing a different assortment of different paper clips,
Kelly Snook
I’m wearing some paper clips, and what these paper clips signifies that I either have an interest or an expertise in certain areas. The blue one is means InDesign, the pink one is programming. The red one is hardware electronics, the yellow one is something else, which I forgotten at the moment. And the white one is asked me could be anything. So and this is this is because people are coming from such a wide diversity of backgrounds, we want them and they don’t know each other. And they have 24 hours to make something. So if they’re trying to, to figure out who to work with, you know, this was part of our icebreaker to get people to know each other. So yeah, it’s very, we have dancers and choreographers and graphic designers and developers and musicians and artists and producers. So it’s really just really good fun.
Jamillah Knowles
And so it was that definition, as you were just outlining changed things then because I’ve said to people before, who are not necessarily in the tech community, you know, or you should meet these guys, they’ve been building this app, or they’re doing this thing and stuff and they say, Oh, I’m not a coder. Yes, you’re way too scary to go to a hack.
Kelly Snook
Anything. Exactly. I think this was just a ploy to get people who are scared of the word hack, or who think that hacking is just for coders to come and work together. So and it worked. And we have some amazing teams of people that you otherwise wouldn’t find together, working on new ideas that programmers alone would never think of. So, yeah, I think we just had to get people over that initial hump of where they think they belong, and to discover each other and to discover a new way of belonging.
Jamillah Knowles
So Kelly, yourself, I’m going to start delving into your world. I know. You mean you’d be even category Just online, which I think is a bit unfair because you do so many different things. But the word that comes up quite often is rocket scientist.
Kelly Snook
Yes, I do get to pull that one out of my pocket from time this is kind of a legendary Yeah. The times when it’s most useful is when I’m trying to solve a problem. And I just remind myself, okay, you hear a rocket scientist, you should be able to figure this out. It’s just for basically for self self empowerment. More than anything else. But, yeah, so I did my education. My my PhD is in aerospace engineering. And I worked at NASA for 19 years as a civil servant in the United States doing planetary science, and astrophysics, and a little bit of astronomy and engineering. So, yeah, I’ve got that. But I always really thought was, I always felt a little bit like some pretty serious imposter syndrome, because I only went into engineering in the beginning, because I was too scared to do music. So it was just a way of avoiding my destiny. But it’s all led back here anyway, so I wasn’t able to avoid it. And now I just, I’m doing music, music tech. And actually, what I’ve discovered along the way, is that they’re very, very similar. In fact, making technology for scientists is quite similar to making technology for musicians, scientists, and musicians actually have a lot in common. And because a lot of it is about mathematics, and expression of mathematics and the world in different ways. So yeah, as it turns out, going from a rocket scientist to a music technologist, whatever, producer, whatever you want to call me, whichever hat you want to put on, they’re not actually as different as one might think.
Jamillah Knowles
That’s amazing. So I don’t know, I’ve been accidentally unemployed before, but I’ve never accidentally been a rocket scientist. So it’s actually
Kelly Snook
it was a little bit of an accident, because and it was primarily fear driven.
Jamillah Knowles
shapes in physics, exactly.
Kelly Snook
Like it kind of process of elimination, all the things that sounded the scariest I eliminated the music, it was that the top of the list of scariness and engineering sounded, you know, the least threatening? So that’s what I did.
Jamillah Knowles
And so now, you work with something called Concordia? Is that correct?
Kelly Snook
That’s right. That’s the name of my musical instrument that I’m building. It’s a kind of a re uniting of all of my interests of science and space, and mathematics and harmony and music. It’s an it’s a musical instrument that’s being designed to celebrate the 400 anniversary of the publication of this book, which is called epitome of Copernican astronomy and harmonies of the world, which was written by Johannes Kepler in 1619. And in this book, he lays out the three laws of planetary motion, which he discovered by searching for musical searching for music in the in the solar system, so the music of the spheres. And so to celebrate this 400 anniversary, I’m creating an instrument that allows people to play the music of the spheres in virtual reality. So that’s, that’s the Concordia project, instead of just a very much a uniting of science and music into one instrument that becomes both a scientific instrument out of musical instrument. Okay, now,
Jamillah Knowles
what people wouldn’t be able to see on the recording back of this interview is that is an awfully well thumbed
Kelly Snook
car, oh, yes, I’ve been trying to understand this book for 19 years. So I bought it 19 years ago, when I decided this was going to be part of my destiny, I had no idea really even how to approach it. And it’s very, very difficult. In one of my margins, I say, here, Kepler is trying to work out gravity. Which actually, in this part of the book, this is the part that helped Newton discovered gravity. So it’s very, like it’s kind of a historic text. But it’s very dense, very difficult to read. And very difficult to understand until someone else helped me along with another book that I’ve also got with me as a prop describes Concordia.
Jamillah Knowles
And so I mean, it the music of the spheres is a very romantic phrase. It is Yeah. Do you think that science is adequately described in these ways anymore? I mean, quite often, you know,
Kelly Snook
by no means is science described in this way.
Jamillah Knowles
Even just kind of trying to describe I mean, I’ve written stuff about, you know, the gravitational wave discovery. Yes. And trying to make that into an analogy, I guess without being awful about it. Because I work in the media I want. I want everyone to understand how Yes, how deceivingly exciting it was. It is so exciting. Yeah. Another sound Yes. Yes. Extraordinary. Oh, so good. And the What I was trying to maybe what I said to people is I, you know, if you were on a lazy river in a boat, you dragged your finger through the water, and you saw these waves come out. I know a lot of journalists, we’re all kind of on the same thing, because we were mangling our tiny journalist minds into a world of physics that we were struggling with. Does music does Concordia help draw those together a little more, so people can feel what you’re talking about.
Kelly Snook
That is exact precisely the reason for making this instrument. He Kepler says something in this book, which is really funny. And I’m just gonna paraphrase because he writes in, you know, 400 years ago language, but he says something like, I’m laying this out for you, God has finally revealed his his grand order through this mathematics, use your art to express this in the world. And I’ve laid it out there, even if it takes 100 years for technology to catch up, basically. And it’s been 400 years. And technology is just at the point where we can make this into something that you can experience viscerally like, with your ears, and with your eyes, and maybe other senses as well like feeling tactile feedback from this instrument. But that is the whole point is to take something that has been reduced to boring mathematical equations, and make it make it mind blowing. Again, I worked for a very long time at NASA. And there’s something weird about the way that we present things sometimes with, especially to other scientists, that if you’re, if, if it’s super freaking cool, then it’s for the kids or it’s not actual science, or you know, that you kind of have to make it sound dry and boring in order for it to be legitimate in a way. And so I kind of wanted to switch that up a bit. And, you know, give people permission to experience the, the incredible intrinsic harmony that we have, in our in our reality, one place where it’s expressed, just so simply is the movement of the planets, but it’s really everywhere and in every structure that we have in life. And so eventually, I’d love there to be musical instruments that you can play or that you can experience that give you insights into all sorts of different kind of truths through beauty. these are these are both in a way, these are both concepts that have gone out of fashion, truth and beauty, like truth, people are even asking what is truth? Is there a such thing as truth? Does truth matter? You know, this is actually a conversation that’s happening in the United States. There’s like, you know, people are claiming that it’s it actually, there’s no truth. It doesn’t matter. It just truthiness. truthiness. Just politics, just red or blue. And then beauty. Also, I think beauty in art has also had a had a, we had a falling out with beauty. And in some of the fields of art, like the more the more random and ugly it sounds in a way, the more cool it is, or the more avant garde it is or whatever. But I do think that our brains are wired to recognise beauty and to recognise truth. So if we create an instrument that you play that accesses both truth and beauty, that that has a power that we’re wired to respond to. So I can’t personally just can’t wait to play this thing.
Jamillah Knowles
And so I mean, the the idea of training to play a musical instrument, I mean, if anyone who’s listening, anyone in the room has done this, you do hours and hours of repetition of practice, you get to know something that is usually a physical thing. And some days you resent it, and other days, you know, and then there’s the day that you panic when you have to do a recital or a concert or, you know, it’s a performance in the end, usually, I mean, obviously, we play for our own pleasure as well. It’s nice to see something I mean, I’ve seen, I’ve noted here that you’ve got to turn investigative music. Yes, exactly. Yes. So what does that mean? How does that change the way we think about music?
Kelly Snook
That’s such a great question. I’m so happy you asked that. Because I think one of my motivations for building this instrument is exactly that. I feel like I feel like we’ve gone away from something that’s very deeply important about music, which actually, if you look at the history of music, especially in the West, Western mediaeval Christianity defined music in a way that had nothing to do. Music didn’t used to be about self expression. It wasn’t even considered an art. Music was part of the quadrivium, which was science, mathematics, geometry, or science, mathematics, geometry, astronomy and music. And it was in that category of tools. investigating the universe. And it was because of this way of looking and using music and using musical relationships that actually was rooted in the philosophies of protagonists thousands of years ago, that that that was the world that Kepler, Johannes Kepler was born into thinking of music as an investigative tool, not as just some kind of toy to play with to express ourselves, but actually something that holds the secret to life, the secret to, to everything. The What did you call it? The one on to look it up. Yeah, he really thought that that the the whole, like his theory of everything, actually, the previous speaker was saying it as well, like that waves are one of the one before that everything, the Theory of Everything is waves. And it really is, and he knew that and, and so that he was trying to access literally the key to understanding reality by looking at music and the solar system. And so that, I don’t remember the original question, but that
Jamillah Knowles
that’s fine by me.
Kelly Snook
But, you know, that’s super exciting for me, getting to bed and getting back to using music for that. And it you know, okay, yeah, your question was about, yeah, I remember now. So. So using using music as an investigative tool, investigated. Music is like a return to that. I think, actually, the future of music, at least partially is a return to mediaeval definition, where we use it to investigate, to convey information, and to convey information in ways that visual things and mathematics and written the written word count, which is something very strangely wired in our brains that’s connected directly to our emotions, it’s connected directly to our memory, it’s connected directly to our learning, it’s connected directly to our sense of smell. And if we can use music, that in a way that actually makes use of that, for teaching, for learning for understanding than this is, you know, I think we’re starting to actually get to the point where as a society, we’re using music, what it’s partially what it’s for, and not just to play with, not just to make ourselves feel good, but actually, actually to, to make us understand our oneness, to make us have be conscious of who we are as human beings, and how we relate to each other, and how we relate to the universe. These are very, very deep human. It’s a very deep human need. And I think music is part of the key to that.
Jamillah Knowles
So, you know, Kepler, the spheres, the planets, rocket science, music, mathematics, astronomy, they aren’t he I don’t think I’ve interviewed anybody who’s quite so fearless about taking things that are quite often held sacred to people and separate. Do you often get to work? I mean, the Music Tech Fest is a great place to smash all of that away.
Kelly Snook
Yeah, to find your people. Yeah, yeah. The other people that are willing to smash that away. Yeah. Though, I’m definitely not fearless. And, you know, no, I took me until I was 42 to leave NASA. And that was a long time to be like, Okay, I guess I should do music. That is not, I’m completely the opposite of this. Like,
Jamillah Knowles
I was doing shows a lot of time,
Kelly Snook
then. Maybe, or maybe I needed to actually go through that to be able to navigate my way in this new music world, which is all about technology, whereas it wasn’t actually. And originally, when I was choosing what to do with my life, I don’t know if I would have had the confidence to to even take technology on if I hadn’t gone through that place where I shouldn’t have been in order to get to where I am.
Jamillah Knowles
And so although I’m pretty sure this is not going to be an easy one to answer, how would you describe them in? The answer is going to be come and play the instrument when it’s ready.
Kelly Snook
But no one helped me build it.
Jamillah Knowles
Come help me build my instrument. That’s even better. But how? How would you describe trying to find the sound of the spheres? I mean, it could be anything in our imaginations. And when we talk about spaces of vacuum, I’m so far out of my depth now in your journey into this field. hearing things. Sorry, hearing things in space. Not easy.
Kelly Snook
No, that’s right. And I mean, I think the first step is to get away from the idea that that things are literally generating sound, and to start understanding that, that mathematics and music and science and really language are they’re all just trying to express things about reality, but they do it in different ways. But mathematics and music, do it in Very, very, very similar ways in such similar ways that they’re pretty much there, they are the same thing. But we don’t often get to that final step of actually generating sound from the mathematics. And that’s just because historically, science has been expressed visually because it could be put in print. And we didn’t have the technology to distribute, you know, to disseminate information in any other medium besides print. And so learning how to, like write things, in language, and in the language of mathematics, and the language of actual language, German, Latin, English, these, these were the ways that we shared knowledge and shared information, just because that’s what was available to us now. We’re just at that turning point in society where we have like, exploded the number of ways that we can share our ideas with each other. And especially the technologies of sharing information through other media besides sound, if I besides written word, sound is the biggest and I think, most exciting and richest vocabulary that we haven’t invented yet for how to codify information, and how to communicate that. So how do I imagine doing that? I think it’s just going to be a lot of trial and error. So the first step that I’ve taken is to start to build the prototype that allows me to experiment with the mappings from the data to the sound to understand what is it that adds, adds experience? and adds my and adds to my understanding? And what is it that takes away from my understanding, or distracts me from what it is that that is cool about this, this information. And the thing is, that’s sometimes really easy to do if you know what you’re looking for. But sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for. So you then you just have to try stuff. And you have to invent a tool that allows people to experiment. And it makes it fun to experiment, because it could be really annoying to experiment. You know, if it sounds just so crap, that you’re just like, after an hour, I don’t want to do that, you know, you kind of have to have a starting point. But one way that I’m approaching this as that is to make it open source. And to make it modular. So anybody can create a set of mappings or tool to experiment with a set of mappings. Anyone can create a controller anyone can build their own cockpit of hardware to control this instrument. Anyone can, you know, design a way to display the information or to so as it grows, and as we learn more, we have more ways of exploring and expressing the data. And you know, that’s where the fun starts. When lots of people’s minds get to work on on this problem. How do we make this fun? How do we make this exciting? I’ll shut up because I think it’s our time is over. So I could talk
Jamillah Knowles
to you for much longer Kell, you really inspiring person to talk to I think it’s just really really and now I kind of want to make a musical insert which would be a horrible mess. But yeah, you can do you can just make
Kelly Snook
a Concordia module or just come to play it.
Jamillah Knowles
Come become play someone else’s. That’s probably the Thank you very much. And thank you so much for bringing the creative herbs to because I think
Kelly Snook
oh yeah, it’s great fun. People are hacking with the Concordia data. So that’s a really great place to start.
Jamillah Knowles
Yeah, brilliant. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, please.
Andrew Dubber
Dr. Kelly Snook, who’s open source Concordia project has seeded and inspired further work by a team of nine MTF innovators who have taken some of these ideas in brilliant directions folded in neuroscience computer, visualisations Eastern traditions, and generative music in a project that’s being showcased at our MTF Labs at ZKM in Karlsruhe. And has very much gone on to have a life of its own. And that’s the MTF podcast. If you’d like to be part of MTF in any capacity to connect with this community, work with brilliant people like Kelly and join us at events like this all over the world. Whatever your background or experience, go to Music Tech Fest dotnet forward slash register. We’d love to have you as part of the evergrowing global MTF community, and we’ll keep you posted on some really exciting events we have coming up quite possibly near you and sooner than you might expect. Look forward to talking soon. Have a great week. Cheers.
