And the winner is...
08 May 2009 | Cambridge, UKDANTE’s Domenico Vicinanza was awarded the Outstanding Young Persons (TOYP) Prize 2009 by the Junior Chamber International (JCI) Italy, a UNESCO-affiliated organisation. The motivation for the award was: “for bringing research and culture together by applying new technologies to art and music and developing innovative scientific techniques that are also able to help geophysicists predict volcanic eruptions”.
Domenico Vicinanza with fellow prize winnersDomenico Vicinanza with fellow prize winnersDomenico made a name of himself by developing a sonification technique that translates seismic waves into sounds. The resulting 'music' is then analysed for patterns of volcano behaviour and used to identify similarities in eruption dynamics and so predict future activity, notably from Mount Etna in Italy, Tungurahua in Ecuador and Pinantubo in the Philippines.
But that's not all: the created melodies inspired artists to ‘re-use’ them in a creative way as scores for dance performances, such as for ‘The Mountain’ recently performed in Washington, closing the loop between art and technology. It is GÉANT and its interconnection to Asia via TEIN3 and Latin America via RedCLARA which make this sonification process and thus this fusion of art and science possible in the first place: without the bandwidth and computing power of research and education networks this data challenge could not have been met.
The award ceremony took place on 2 May at Borgo di Artimino,Tuscany, Italy during the JCI Italy Annual Congress.
Congratulations, Domenico!
