The Sound of Coffee: A Symphony of Climate Data and Cultural Memory
This project is a deep listening into the heartbeat of Costa Rica: its coffee fields. Conceived as part of an advanced scientific research laboratory, it translates a year’s worth of micrometeorological data—the invisible exchange of matter and energy between coffee plants and the atmosphere—into a three-movement orchestral suite. It is a work of parametric sonification where scientific precision meets cultural resonance.
The Core: Data as a Living Score
The research measures the vital signs of a coffee agroecosystem in Poás, Alajuela, over 2023:
- Fluxes: The breathing of the field (CO₂), its transpiration (H₂O), and the transfer of atmospheric momentum.
- Forces: Wind speed within the boundary layer and precipitation.
Each dataset becomes a distinct instrumental voice in the orchestra. The algorithm maps data magnitude to musical pitch and uses the data’s temporal envelope to modulate the dynamics (volume) of each note, creating an auditory graph of the field’s physiology.
The Composition: Seasons as Movements
The final piece, “Your love Made this caffeinated garden grow,” is structured like a concerto for data:
- Dry Season in the Shade: Captures the tense, restrained energy of the dry months.
- Transition Season in the Shade: The shifting, uncertain bridge between climatic states.
- Rainy Season in the Shade: Reflects the lush, turbulent, and life-giving downpours.
A profound artistic choice grounds the work in musical history: the tonalities are borrowed from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (“Summer” for the dry season, “Winter” for the rainy season), drawing a poignant parallel between the European classical tradition of pastoral representation and the contemporary scientific observation of a Costa Rican coffee field.
The Immersion: Soundscape as Context
Beyond the sonified data, the work incorporates a field-recorded soundscape from the exact coffee plantation. This layer roots the abstract data in a tangible, sensory reality:
- Dry season: Birdsong and quiet.
- Transition: Footsteps on the earth between the plants.
- Rainy season: The percussive rhythm of rain and distant thunder.
This transforms the piece from a mere data translation into an ecological portrait, placing the listener physically and emotionally within the cafetal.
The Exploration: An Ambient Reverie
A secondary version, “Your love Made this caffeinated garden grow slowly,” distills all data streams into a single, treated piano part. Drenched in atmospheric effects, it becomes an ambient meditation. While its fidelity to precise data transmission diminishes, it powerfully demonstrates the raw material of scientific measurement as a source of pure, generative beauty and emotional texture.
Conceptual Harvest: Science as Cultural Legacy
This project operates on multiple levels:
- As a Scientific Tool: It provides an alternative, accessible channel for data interpretation, potentially useful for visual impairment inclusion.
- As an Artistic Practice: It treats the coffee field—a cultural and economic pillar of Costa Rica facing climate threats—as a co-composer. The data is its score.
- As a Cultural Act: It answers the song “Dicen los de allá…” which speaks of a sleeping coffee field in the heart of San José <./dicen-los-de-alla.wav>. This work wakes that field with sound, asserting that the nation’s scientific data is a form of cultural memory worthy of preservation and aesthetic contemplation.
It is a proof of concept that the tools of physics can not only measure an ecosystem but can also sing its story, blending the logic of flux equations with the poetry of a place.
Listen to the whole Garden: