InSight project and the new piece “Symphonic poem SEIS, InSight No.1”

Being a seismologist at IPGP with its first seismometer SEIS on the red planet for the NASA InSight project (led by Philippe Lognonné), I am actively involved in the project to analyze marsquake seismograms. During a science team meeting in Pasadena just after the landing (November 26^th, 2018 my birthday!), we were impressed by a video made by Andrew Huang who started to make music on instrumental noise sent from Mars. At the end of my talk, I said “challenge accepted” and promised to write a small music for the upcoming science team meeting in Paris on June 2019 featuring the seismic noise from Mars. InSight Suite No. 0 or later the third movement Seismic noise on Mars of the symphonic poem was recorded during the Paris Internationale Festival 2019 (thanks to Performance Agency Production). Subsequently, I asked Thomas Ferrand (UCSD postdoc and professional poet) and Pauline Bonnet (IPGP PhD candidate) to write poems for InSight. These became the second movement, Poems that Vibrate, Pauline and Thomas, of my symphonic poem - the first classic music on martian seismology!  The first movement Pictures of Dream is accompanied by images drawn during several famous Friday beer ateliers in IPGP, organized by Aurélie Coudurier. The first full performance took place Fall 2019. [full article]

See the full research highlight to find out how to participate in the sing-along.

Contributed by Nobuaki Fuji, Université de Paris, Institut de physique du globe de Paris, CNRS