So last night I was checking out the Cloud Gallery over at the Cloud Appreciation Society pages (I raved about the CAS site in a past post) when I stumbled on links to a couple of "sky diaries"—one in London and one in the Netherlands. I'm mad for both these pages. They tug at my internal organs and make me want to fall Up. Then I learned about the Cloud Harp Project:

Nicolas Reeves, a professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada, has invented The Cloud Harp—an instrument that creates music from the shape of the clouds above it. So far, it has played in six cities around the world—Amos and Montreal (Canada), Lyon (France), Hamburg (Germany), Gizycko (Poland), and Pittsburgh (US). When the sky is blue, the harp is silent, but with the first appearance of clouds above it, the music begins. "It uses a lidar," explains Reeves, "which is a laser beam directed at the clouds. Whatever bounces back to the instrument is measured and gives us an idea of the brightness of the cloud, as well as its height." A controller, known as a 'cloudist', configures the instrument so that this information triggers and controls particular musical sounds. He then leaves it to play the music of the clouds to passers by. Sometimes musicians are brought in to provide orchestrations by recording the samples that the harp plays. "It means that we can play the clouds of St Louis, Missouri, through an arrangement by Helmut Finski of Montreal," explains Reeves. In Amos, in Northern Quebec, the Cloud Harp was installed in the clearing of a park, surrounded by trees. "When there was a full moon," Reeves remembers, "people brought their sleeping bags and stayed the night next to the harp. They just lay there listening to the clouds—it was fantastic."

From the Cloud Harp Project page:

Broadly speaking, the pitch of the notes is lower and the notes are longer when the clouds are low; high clouds create high pitch sounds and shorter notes. The density of the clouds determines the volume. ... When the Harp plays, the laser beam that probes the cloud is needle-like: its diameter is about 30 meters at a 8000m (or 25 600 ft) height. This means that the reading is made on a very narrow spot, right over the Harp's highest tower.

I haven't had a listen yet. But I am intrigued. Possibly this is old news that's been on NPR or featured in the cheery bit at the end of a network news telecast. But it bears repeating, doesn't it?

[Photo from the feral private archives.]
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