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SAN DIEGO, Sept. 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — The ProtoStar Foundation is collaborating with the Lei Lab at the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute (QI) to commission groundbreaking music that allows extraordinary and unprecedented ways of listening to nature.

“One of our priorities is to commission new works of art that contribute to our culture, enhance our understanding of the human condition, and empower, challenge, and transform us as a society,” said Gary P. Poon, president of ProtoStar. “The trail-blazing work that Lei Lab is doing certainly meets every one of those priorities.”

Award-winning composer Lei Liang, who is QI Research Artist-in-Residence and Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Music at UC San Diego, noted, “Much music has been created in the past using nature as a backdrop. Our team wants to listen to what nature can say.”

For their first collaboration, ProtoStar is commissioning A Book of Time. This unique piece is about listening to the earth’s own harmonies hidden in rocks. With geologist Emily Chin of UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Liang developed the idea to use X-ray fluorescence analysis of minerals to trace data points delineating their elemental peaks. These data points are then transformed through software created by Lei Lab member Gabriel Zalles, a computer music Ph.D. student, into harmonies that humans can hear.

Each phrase of A Book of Time will consist of notes from one mineral so listeners can literally hear the earth’s minerals sing. Co-commissioned by the Chinese Foundation for Performing Arts, the composition will be premiered by New York-based pianist Han Chen in 2024.

Established earlier this year with funding from Boston-based philanthropist (Snow) Dan Qin, the Lei Lab was, as stated on its website, “created with the conviction that we are living in the age of an inevitable convergence of arts and science” and that “creative listening offers unique potential for learning.” As part of the Qualcomm Institute, the Lab brings music together with technology, including through unusual collaborations with geologists like Chin and oceanographers such as Scripps’s Joshua Jones. Some of the Lei Lab’s current projects include Hearing Seascapes, Hearing Earth, and Inaudible Ocean.

About ProtoStar Foundation

The ProtoStar Foundation is a California nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization based in San Diego. It is part of the ProtoStar Group, a set of pioneering companies that find resourceful ways to fund, develop, or incubate innovative projects and organizations that have a unique, compelling, and impactful social mission. Among its projects is the founding and sponsorship of the ProtoStar Innovative Series at the Conrad in La Jolla, California.

Media Contacts:
For ProtoStar: Gary P. Poon, [email protected], (202) 360-1160
For Lei Lab: Mika Ono, [email protected], (858) 822-5825

SOURCE ProtoStar Foundation