Lecture Performance: Das wohltemperierte Periodensystem

In the organizer's words:

Roy G. Biv is a musical chemist - or perhaps more of a musical alchemist - who creates colorful soundscapes from chemical elements by translating light into music. Each element has a unique visible emission spectrum - a rainbow-like "fingerprint" that can be used to determine the chemical composition of everything from the smallest rocks to the largest stars.
By translating spectral colors into tones, he develops microtonal scales and thus creates an individual musical alphabet for each chemical element.
He is less a composer than an element whisperer who translates the complex language of light into humanly audible music. Join Roy on a synaesthetic journey through time, space - and the music that lies hidden in the elements around us.

Roy G. Biv is the spectral embodiment of Walker Smith, a PhD student at Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Walker Smith has been a visiting scientist at the ligeti center since mid-June. He is the world's first music chemist to ask questions such as: Is the periodic table a musical instrument? Do helium atoms have parties?
He earned a double degree in chemistry and composition from Indiana University Bloomington, where he developed "The Sound of Molecules" - a multimedia music and science show that has wowed thousands of people in the US and Europe.
As part of a Fulbright Scholarship in the Netherlands, he developed the "Interactive Musical Periodic Table", a project that was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society and received over 50 international media reports.
His research and artistic practice explore the scientific, educational and musical possibilities of turning the periodic table into a musical instrument and making molecular music audible. His favorite color is purple.

The language of the lecture is English.
Free admission.
No late admission.