Media art, music, astrophysics

Media art, music & astrophysics
Gavin Starks - media art and music

Gavin has been exploring the intersection of astronomy, music and technology since the 1980s. This long-running creative practice has resulted in performances, presentations and research across five continents: combining astrophysics data, generative composition and digital art into a body of work released under the name Binary Dust.

The creative constellation has engaged in dozens of multidisciplinary projects over decades: collaborating with artists, astronomers, engineers and institutions to explore data as an art material and the cosmos as compositional source.

“The mathematics of structure, as spoken through grains of rendered sound, hewn from binary dust…”

You can read more in the introduction or jump straight to Adventures in Acoustic Cosmology. Full archive at binarydust.org.

Performances and presentations have taken place across:

United Kingdom USA Canada Australia Antarctica Hong Kong Spain France Denmark Germany Latvia Switzerland
Highlights
Royal Astronomical Society, National Astronomy Meeting – presenting acoustic cosmology research
ISEA – International Symposium on Electronic Art
DEAF Biennial – international festival for electronic art
Cybersonica festival
Bandits-Mages
Acoustic Space Lab, Latvia – 10th anniversary of the RT32 radio telescope
Development of Soniverse – mathematical generation of sonic cosmologies
Recent releases
2025 SonifyDSS – generate sounds from a galaxy
2024 Autonoe – first wave of the quantum tide
2022 Escape into the Multiverse – an acoustic cosmology

Listen on:

Binary Dust constellation

Collaborations have included AmbientTV and Manu Luksch, RIXC, and Arts Catalyst, as well as the core Binary Dust collaborators below.

Astrophysics research & development Prof. Andrew Newsam Cosmology, software, papers
Piano & cosmology Peter Clive Piano and cosmological interpretation
Artefact design & creative Adrian Philpott Binary Dust visual identity and artefacts
Player electronics Alexei Blinov Hardware and electronics development
Ideas & cosmology Ulyana Gumeniuk Artist; conceptual development
Cosmology Aidan Keane & Andrew Conway Cosmological research and ideas
Artist Jaako Mattila Visual art and performance

Full archive, recordings and research at binarydust.org