Music of Reality presents an interdisciplinary concert inspired by the research of Paola Rizzoli, Professor of Physical Oceanography at MIT. A native Venetian, Paola has been studying the “Venice Problem” of floods, rising seas, and climate change for her entire career, and will explore the topic in a series of lectures woven throughout the concert. 

Lectures will be interspersed by musical performances drawn from the Venetian past and the highpoint of the Renaissance, together with contemporary works that provide perspectives on climate change, the vulnerability of sealevel cities, the power of humans over the sea and our climate, and the complex psychology of safeguarding the environment in the modern era. 

Student Caroline Rozendo, from Object-Based Media group at the Media Lab, will present a data sonification experiment developed with colleague Helena Rong at the end of the event.  The project, Sonified City, explores a more experiential way of understanding information about our environment. Every tree in the city of Cambridge is mapped to musical notes, which are played as a tune when the user traces a path on the map. The project uses open data available at Cambridge GIS Data website.

LECTURER: Paola Rizzoli, Professor of Physical Oceanography in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MUSIC: Works by Venetian composers Barbara Strozzi, Claudio Monteverdi, Sigismondo D’India, Benedetto Ferrari, Domenico Obizzi, Carlo Milanuzzi, and Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, performed by soprano Camila Parias and Nathaniel Cox on theorbo.  Also featuring music by Tigran Hamasyan and a premiere by David Ibbett, performed by pianist Sophia Vastek.

Tickets at: https://www.artful.ly/musicofreality