Forget AI-generated music, this music was composed using DNA sequences

As a molecular biologist, talking to the public about my work with DNA has often felt like trying to translate a foreign language. This got me thinking: could these scientific ideas be presented in an artistic way, to help people engage with them?

The intersection of science and art is important for a few reasons.

It’s not just about how art as a medium can help advance science – it’s also about using science to inspire new artistic creations. Indeed, ecological art is a burgeoning art movement that’s transforming the way we view and interact with nature.

Read more: I created a Vivaldi-inspired sound artwork for the Venice Biennale. The star of the show is an endangered bush-cricket

For me, the collision between molecular biology and art took me to a surprising endpoint: composing music through the editing of DNA sequences.

In a soon-to-be-published paper, I detail my method of using digital DNA sequencing to compose music. Rather than having biotech or medical applications, I did this solely for the purpose of scientific outreach.

I’ll be the first to admit this approach seems a little strange. But I hope it can inspire young people to consider careers in which the arts and the sciences converge.

DNA sonification for public engagement

My journey began innocently enough with the use of audio for data analyses. I would convert DNA sequences into audio – a process of “sonification”, turning data into sound – by assigning base and base combinations along the sequence to corresponding musical notes.

I developed six “sonification algorithms” to process sequences into distinct audio notes. By listening to the resulting audio outputs, I was able to identify patterns, mutations, and tell apart RNA molecules that code for proteins from those that don’t.

The early outputs were minimal and robotic, prioritising data analysis over artistic expression.

But people began to see musical qualities in the audio. This prompted me to make the audio more harmonious, by mapping DNA sequences to different harmonic intervals. While I didn’t change the sequences, this mapping made the resulting audio sound more “musical”.

I also published a web tool (see the video below) that shows the sonification of the DNA sequences.

I made deliberate aesthetic choices, such as mapping DNA motifs to major or minor musical scales.

I recently modified the code of the web tool to generate digital music files from the sonified data. I can now use music software to manipulate these files, such as by assigning instruments, or changing the tempo.

In the context of outreach, the next step was to introduce musicians to this DNA-generated audio. My aim was for myself and the musicians to use this audio to create music that simply sounded good, rather than having a scientific function.

Freestyling on the big stage

Earlier this year I began writing DNA sequences from scratch to compose my own music, with choruses, bridges, codas, and anything else my limited musical knowledge will allow.

One approach I took to edit the sequences was to repeat a phrase many times, with each repeat having a new mutation (subtle change), so the sound slowly evolves over time.

I have also been using specific units of genetic code, called “codons”, to start (ATG) and stop (TGA) sequences and create new musical sections. It was important to highlight these units of code since they play important roles in gene expression.

I played some of this music through a custom modular synthesizer earlier this month at the International Conference on Auditory Displays.

This setup allowed for real-time experimentation with the track, making an interesting collision between the worlds of molecular biology and performance art.

Releasing STEAM

My journey with DNA sonification illustrates how music and art can be powerful tools to communicate scientific concepts to a wide audience. It also underscores that creativity is alive and well in the sciences.

Logical scientific approaches can complement artistic ones, and I hope this will inspire more people towards the fusion of STEM and art, or “STEAM”.

The intersection of these two domains is a fascinating place to be, and one where human interaction with data helps tie everything together.

I will be performing more of my musical compositions in Sydney on August 12, at an event called Synthetic Compositions – Music made from artificial DNA sequences, as part of National Science Week.