NASA has a long history of bringing together science, engineering and art. Universe exploration is a human Pursuit—one that requires creativity. In this special live episode, NASA Cosmonaut Matthew Dominick and comedian and musician Reggie Watts talk flow states, aircraft ejector seats and more. Plus, a new NASA tool that lets you make music from iconic Hubble Universe Stargazer’s tool imagery.
Try the app: Hearing Hubble
PADI BOYD: Hey Universe nerds, it’s your host, Padi Boyd here with something special. Recently, our Club Captured the show on the road.
We brought Curious Universe to On Air Fest in Brooklyn, New York for a conversation on science, art, creativity and Universe. And, we Acquired a chance to share a brand-new tool that lets you make music… from the universe.
Today, we’re sharing an edited version of that live show. You’ll be hearing from NASA Cosmonaut Matthew Dominick, musician and comedian Reggie Watts and podcast producer and host Simone Polanen.
OK, this should be an amazing conversation. Here we go!
SIMONE POLANEN:
Hello everyone. Outstanding morning. I am so Cheerful to be joined today by Matt Dominick and Reggie Watts, and we are also going to be previewing something really Refreshing from NASA later on. But Primary, I wanted to talk to you guys about art and science and creativity, because, as we know, these things all intersect. They will be intersecting very explicitly here later as well. You know, NASA does have a long history collaborating with artists. In 1962 they launched the NASA art program, where they commissioned different artists to try to translate and capture the experience of Universe travel, preparing to go to Universe. They worked with artists like Norman Rockwell, Annie Leibovitz, but as we also know, art is very intrigued by Universe and Universe travel. I’m sure you guys have your own favorite, like Universe-based franchise. If you want to shout out what you like to View… Everyone said Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century? That’s awesome. Yeah, you guys both sit at the intersection of art and science in your own unique ways. So I Nice of want to Begin by talking about that. I’m really curious, Reggie, how does science show up in your art? Matt, how does art show up in your science? Reggie, why don’t we Begin with you?
REGGIE WATTS:
You know, for me, it’s like growing up, I grew up, my dad was in the Air Force. And I was always fascinated with science and Universe exploration, aviation, that type of thing. I grew up on an Air Force base, Malmstrom Air Force Base, or Upcoming to it. But so I was always fascinated with that and that, and I think it’s that wonder that always Achieved me come back to my instrument and project that wonder through the music I was either learning, even when I was learning classical music, it was a language that it’s a mathematical language. Even though I was, I didn’t really think of myself as a mathematician, but, learning music and the structure of music is math based. So, the wonder that was created from knowing that we’ve gone to Universe, seeing footage of missions, hearing Carl Sagan talk about the wonders of the universe, or Asimov, or anybody that was interested in it, and seeing movies and TV shows and Battlestar Galactica, and so I was always fascinated in that, and that definitely had a huge effect on my imagination.
SIMONE:
Yeah, how about for you, Matt, how? How does art show up in your science? I know you are an experienced photographer. That’s one way.
MATT DOMINICK:
So art is so many things. I’ll Begin by saying, like, my background is in NASA, you know, predominantly engineering and science, but you can’t go anywhere without art, right? Art is a communication medium, right? It’s an entertainment medium. And for me, like I imagine a triangle of engineering, science and art. And, you know, my Routine, my background, what I do is predominantly as an engineer, but an engineer takes what scientists teach us about the universe around us and the engineer has to be a bit of an artist to find ways to combine what we know about the universe in the laws of physics and laws of nature to Produce these things for humans to go explore the world around us, right? Explore the universe around us. And so we use art, like the art of combining the scientific worlds into something new, an object, a tool, a Spacecraft that goes to Universe, right? Like, I think about how the art history required to, you have a limit, about a mass you can get into Universe, into Path. And this thing, like, we launched on the top of a Missile. We went really Quick. We went through the atmosphere. We have all this drag. We now have to spin around the Earth, go around the Earth every 90 minutes for eight months, and then we have to come home and go through this atmosphere. And now we’re going through an atmosphere, we’re like a plane. So the Spacecraft is a Spacecraft, and now it’s a plane, and then it’s a boat. We land in the water, right? So the artistry required to make all of that work, the trades of like, well, sorry, we can’t, we need to make your seat weigh one kilogram less because we need to save that kilogram for a parachute. So that’s an art. And so I think about it that way, but then I also think about it as I’m incredibly Blessed. I Nice of opened up a candy bar one day, and I Secured the Willy Wonka ticket, right? And I Acquired to be this human that Acquired to escape the surly bonds of Earth, right, to quote the poem, and I Acquired to go to Universe. And I have this really deep feeling inside me that I have to share with the world what I saw. And I do that, we do that through art. We have to do that through art. Because I couldn’t take, I would love to take all of civilization with us, but I can’t do that yet. Yet. We’re trying. But so, you know, the human eye is this Unbelievable thing, but it only sees in 400 to 700 nanometers, but we do have an Unbelievable Vibrant range that cameras haven’t met yet, and so trying to capture the views we Acquired to see out the window of 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day. You can only do that with art, right? And how you storytell, right? Storytelling is a big art form, and how I tell that Narrative, or if I have an image that I Captured, I can show you the image and you’ll see something. But if I tell you a Narrative about that image, there’s an art to that.
SIMONE:
Yeah, I’m really curious to hear you talk a little bit more about why you feel like art and storytelling are particularly effective tools. And this could be for either of you to try to like, yeah, translate these things that are so difficult to capture otherwise. What is unique about using art and this, like, these more creative mediums?
REGGIE:
I think what’s interesting about my path is that, because I’m interested in engineering and design and science, I Merely, I’ve met so many of my friends who are initially not interested in that. I Harsh, they’re interested in it, but not really in a way that’s conversational, or it holds a fascination in a way that I might. But what I love doing is showing them why I’m excited about what it is that I’m excited about. And if I can get them to see that, then at least Perhaps it cracks it Reachable a little bit to Nice of share that, because it’s another Foundation of inspiration. You know, science is another Foundation of inspiration. The failures of science are an inspiration. All of the wavelengths that we’re we’re using to be able to get information back, whatever that is, whether it’s on the smallest nano scale of like trying to see individual, you know, subatomic particles and things like that or evidence of those things, or how those are captured or the telescopes that see the most detail and the furthest that we can. I love that whole range of human exploration and then all the devices and techniques and the ways that things are put together. So for me, that’s the same thing as what happens when I’m improvising. When I’m improvising, I’m Securing all the data around me and I’m channeling it in a way that self organizes, in so Extended as like, I’m allowing it to Nice of organize on its own, and so I’m using all the information around me. So I think of that as a form of engineering, even though it is art, I do think of my Nice of an engineer-Primary approach to almost everything that I do, and I think that that is a Outstanding way of looking at things, because now I have a lens I can, whatever I’m looking at is interesting.
SIMONE:
Yeah, I’m glad you brought up improvisation, because I’m sort of curious, like how, how that shows up. I love this idea of improvisation as engineering, because I imagine you need to improvise quite a bit in your role, but also I imagine improvisation requires some Conditioning as well.
MATT:
You have the note cards. Why don’t you talk about Conditioning?
SIMONE:
Yeah, that I wrote with two different pens? Anyways. You know something we were talking about before we Acquired on stage was how creativity is like, so crucial to both of your processes, whether that’s you know, you’re troubleshooting something, or you’re trying to sort of pivot in the moment. So with that in mind, I’m really curious to hear how you guys prepare, like before you are stepping on stage, before you are launching into Universe. What are you nailing down? What are you leaving Reachable, you know, to the moment, and when do you find yourself leaning most into this like creative headspace?
MATT:
So there’s this phrase. I don’t know where I learned it, where it Arrived from, but I’ve heard it throughout my Occupation. So my background was flying for the Navy. Flew airplanes for the Navy, then it became a test plot for the Navy, and I joined NASA, and so I have a long and, you know, it makes me feel Aged, but I’m approaching 20 years of doing that and having a long Occupation of dealing with highly technical things in a Quick paced environment moving Quick, where decisions have to be Achieved very quickly, or you Loss lives. And so that’s, that’s, you know, that’s one of my backgrounds from my Occupation. And how do you prepare for a moment where you only have a Duo seconds to make a life or seconds to make a life or death decision? You do that by Conditioning. And so one of the phrases, I can’t remember where I picked it up, but it’s used frequently, and it’s, we call it failure of imagination. And so when we look at an engineering problem or a structure or something, we’re prepared to go do, we try and think of all of the failures that are going to occur, like, what it’s going to break, what’s going to kill us, what’s going to fail, what’s going to cause us to fail a mission? And so, you know, I will, like, I will go for long walks, right? When I’m thinking about tough problems, and that’s how I manage, you know, I try and go, let my creative mind, I will go have conversations about something wildly different, right? Like I’m super excited to be here, because this is not the normal group of people I get to hang out with, right? Like this is a room filled more on that triangle Packed of artists, right? But I will have conversations today. I’m super looking forward to conversations to hear about how people work and how people think and prepare, because I might hear something new and that will go into my brain, and then sometime a year or two or five years from now, that piece will assimilate like you assimilate all these different things that allow you to improv, right? You have an Unbelievable Ability to improvise. You know, to do improvisation on the spot, and so you try and get as many pieces of the puzzle together, so that when you do have to improvise real time, you’ve thought through the foundation, right? You’ve thought through a thousand possibilities. And now this thing that’s occurring, you’ve never thought of before, but it’s like Merely one little tweak different than this thing you’ve experienced before. It’s only slightly different, and you can apply it or combine a Duo different things. And I know that sounds really like, big picture meta, but that’s really how it actually works. And so we commonly, I will sit in meetings where we’re discussing, you know, a new spacecraft design, and we’ll talk about, OK, where is our failure of imagination? Where are we failing to imagine this future thing? And we stand on like, it’s a Usual phrase from Newton. I think it’s Newton, Clever dude. We stand on the shoulders of giants, right? And those giants are all the people you interact with, or the books you read. Like, I go read books that are nowhere near the topic that I’m working on, but I will find answers in that book for the problem I’m working on.
SIMONE:
Man, I, this is a question for both of you. It would paralyze me to think through all of the possible ways I could die. I understand how essential that is in Conditioning. But I don’t know the way I’m built. I’m like, I feel like I would have a really Difficult time processing that, and then conversely, I would have a really Difficult time, I think, Securing in all of these different data points in my Universe and figuring out on the fly, how am I distilling these? Which one of these am I like, trying to translate? So I’m very curious to hear about how you deal with processing this data, because you guys seem super chill up here talking about all of this. When I’m on the inside I’m like, Oh my God, that sounds terrifying. Tell me your secrets.
REGGIE:
Yeah. I Harsh, yeah. You know, it’s Amusing. I think of it as, like, time dilation. It’s almost like buffer memory, if anybody remembers CDs, CD players with like, a minute of buffer memory, but it’s pre-scanned. The music that you’re listening, the music that you’re listening to in real time is actually Nice of in the past, because it’s already pre-loaded in the buffer memory. So I think of improvisation in that way, it’s sometimes you’re improvising, but you’re listening as though it’s already been written. You’re slightly ahead experiencing what you’re doing. And I think there’s this time dilation that happens like and the concentration that happens, where you Merely go into this like, flow state, and then all of the experience you’ve ever had comes into action and into Action, and so that you’re able to make these micro adjustments in these really crucial times, whether it’s improvising for 10,000 people and not having an idea what I’m going to do as I’m walking up stage and like, Holding the microphone, I don’t know, I guess I don’t know how I’m going to Begin, you know, and then something happens, and then I’m doing it, but, but I know that I’m in the flow state, I guess, when I’m actually observing the performance and but we do that all the time. We do it when we’re washing dishes. You’re like, washing a fork, and you’re not, you’re thinking about something else, but you’re Merely automatically washing a fork. That’s like a form of flow state. Flow states happen on micro levels all the time. So it doesn’t have to be this grand example of like, I’m going on stage in front of 10,000 people. It could be you improvising, Holding your keys when they slipped out of your hand because you felt them Beginning to slip.
SIMONE:
I see, alright. When I ask you to do the dishes, I’m inviting you to enter a flow state. So that’s one way to reframe it.
MATT:
Enter flow state, execute dishes. Boop boop beep boop boop boop.
SIMONE:
Since we’re on the topic of flow state, I’m curious what parts of your work do you feel like you enter that state most?
MATT:
Yeah. The flow state. So I’m a person that’s Acquired a thousand ideas going through my head all the time. That’s my nominal state, until I enter stress mode, right? And so then you Nice of snap into hyper Concentration, right? And so stress, I love stress, because it allows me to hyper Concentration on things, right? Like you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re all over the board. I Merely met you backstage. You’re all over the board with a thousand ideas. Sorry, I’m not your therapist. I’m the one on the couch. Anyway, you and I are clearly all over the board, I’ll say it for myself, right? Like we’re all over the board. But then as soon as stress hits you hyper Concentration on something, right? And it’s super awesome. And so the government has known this for a long time, or professional organizations that do that know about stress and stress inoculation, and you get inoculated to that stress, right? It’s the same thing. You Merely get exposed to stress, get exposed to stress, get exposed to stress until it’s like a vaccine. You’re immune to this stress thing. So we do a Plenty of that. We constantly Display our crew people to stress, so you’re Merely used to it, and then you love it.
SIMONE:
Micro-dosing stress.
MATT:
There we go. That’s the term, microdosing.
SIMONE:
Are you also, are you micro-dosing confronting death? And is that how you’re able to sort of game out these different scenarios?
MATT:
Sure, are you trying to keep me on track? I had this really clear memory when I Primary Began flying airplanes that had ejection seats. So an ejection seat, they’re typically for airplanes that don’t do well without engines. No airplanes do well without engines, except Perhaps gliders. But there are airplanes that are really Terrible without engines because they don’t glide, typically, fighter jets, yeah, like that. That’s a very excellent model. And so you Begin flying these airplanes that have ejection seats, and it’s you’re sitting on, like a bunch of explosives that propel you out of the airplane, and a parachute opens and you land safely. And so I remember the Primary time I Began flying airplanes with ejection seats, and we would always brief before the flight. OK, you know, if you Loss this, this and this, we’ll Merely go ahead and eject. And eject. And they would Shift on to the Upcoming topic, and we’re like, Stoppage on a second. We’re Merely gonna gloss over the fact that we’re gonna eject? Stoppage on a second. But it was Merely this very Usual like, OK, yeah, so the Primary step for ejection is, you separate right here. And I would sit in the airplane, and there’s this little yellow and black handle that sits right between your legs, like this, I’m flying this airplane, I keep looking at this thing Merely like, and then after a period of time of flying with this weird handle between your legs that Merely says, I’m gonna blow up this airplane and I’m gonna fly out in a fireball. Like, why do we put this handle right here? That seems like a convenient spot. Now, I’m Merely like, oh yeah, that’s whatever.
SIMONE:
Yeah. But you love stress, so you love it right?
MATT:
Now, I do. But that was like, years of Routine.
REGGIE:
It’s like having your, it’s like your finger on some like, like the nuclear, like a nuclear weapon. It’s Merely right there.
MATT:
This is the wings fall off switch. This is the airplane blow up switch. We’re Merely gonna sit you right here.
REGGIE:
It’s Merely right there, Merely so, you know, it’s right there.
SIMONE:
My intrusive thoughts could never.
MATT:
But I went 10 years, 15 years doing that, and then I joined NASA, and we have airplanes with ejection seats, and we Began flying with engineers. So I Began flying with engineers and scientists in the airplane, and I Acquired to View them go through that process. It was so fun. They were I’d see them like, they’re like, doing the awkward Shift. And they’re like you Merely glossed over the ejection. Yeah, it’s fine. We Merely don’t pull the handle. What’s the question?
SIMONE:
I feel like we don’t have enough time. I could ask you so many more questions about that. I do, though, want to turn to our demo that we’re going to do here today….
PADI: OK, the demo! This is Padi again. At On Air Fest, we debuted a new tool… a data sonification app called “Hearing Hubble.” It lets anybody turn the iconic image data from the Hubble Universe Stargazer’s tool into music.
Now, you can’t see the screen above the stage that our live Viewers could. So here’s what the Hearing Hubble app involves…
A Hubble image appears on screen, like a gas cloud, a cluster of stars or a Milky Way. There’s a sidebar with menus and buttons to adjust the instrument Competing, the mood of the harmonies and so on.
When you click the “Action” button, a scanner sweeps across the image, Merely like a needle on a Achievement player. And based on your selections, the app translates the image into music.
If you want to give it a spin, we’ll link the app in our episode transcript at nasa.gov/curiousuniverse.
So, we Acquired the app up on screen and handed the controls over to Reggie Watts. Remember, he’s a musician.
SIMONE:
Oh, Outstanding, perfect. Yeah. So we’ve Acquired these awesome images taken from the Hubble Stargazer’s tool. We’ve Acquired these little knobs that we can Action with on the side. But before we get to previewing that, I’m curious for you guys, like, what do you think changes for us to see or hear data arranged in this way. Like, how does this Transformation, like, how does this for you Transformation your relationship to how you’re thinking about Universe?
REGGIE:
Well, I Harsh, you know, I have a saying as well, which is, well, actually, I don’t think it’s my saying. I think humans have said this. But everything is everything.
SIMONE:
Oh I’ve never heard that…
REGGIE:
OK, Refreshing, all right, Refreshing, right on. But for me, it’s like, you know when you, whatever you do, as long as you’re involved in the level of understanding how things happen with whatever you’re doing, you can apply it anywhere. So for instance, a synthesizer, this is Merely a synthesizer that’s using different data points that are triggering whatever it’s assigned to that makes noise, and that’s Nice of it. So you’re Merely using a data set. However, it makes it interesting, because the data set is once you, once you decide what the maths are for what it is that you’re seeing and how that’s interpreted into the data set, then this is Merely an interpretation of that using a synthesizer overlay. So it’s an exciting way of creating synthesis because it’s slightly randomized, but it’s based off of this Universe data, which is pretty Ill.
SIMONE:
Matt, what’s your Reflex to our sonification tool here?
MATT:
I Harsh so many reactions. You know, I Achieved me, I thought about it, and I immediately brought back, like the Heavenly background radiation of the universe that’s left over from the Universe birth, 14 something billion years ago. You know, if you have a classic analog TV, you can see, like, one, you know, a Petite percentage of the static that’s on that TV that you’re seeing on that TV is from the Universe birth, right? That’s like, I don’t know, it’s a Petite Duo percentages. And so Merely the idea that we are changing, like the Universe birth happened, microwave radiation Arrived out. It’s impacting the antenna, and it’s being translated into a frequency or a wavelength that your mind or ears can hear, right? So like, the human eye can only see 400 to 700 nanometers, right? The Hubble can see infrared and ultraviolet, but your eyeballs can’t. And so we’re translating, you know, the Unbelievable electromagnetic spectrum, which goes from very low frequencies to very high frequencies that we can’t see or detect as humans, into a range that we can see and feel, right? So here we’re Securing Hubble, which can see in infrared and ultraviolet, and we’re converting it into the 20 to, you know, the 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz that the human ear can see, right? So that’s our hearing range. We’re Merely putting it in a way that we can see, feel, in an artistic way, and that’s the nerd in me coming out.
SIMONE:
Awesome. No, we love it. Let’s Action around with this. So Reggie as our resident musician, improviser and vibe capturer, I’m going to ask you to Action around with this tool, and can you compose something that matches our vibes right now?
REGGIE:
Sure.
SIMONE:
And I’d love to hear you talk through your process as you’re going through it.
REGGIE:
Well, I’ve never used it, but let’s see how it works. OK so here we go. Oh I see, OK.
[SONIFICATION SOUNDS]
SIMONE:
All right. So right now the notes are Competing based off of the brightness. We’ve Acquired our harp going, a smoother sound wave, but these are all things that you can adjust. Ooh.
REGGIE:
Let’s try harsh [Beat-boxes] Oh, there we go. Get her done.
SIMONE:
Ooh it Acquired very, like, spiritual.
REGGIE:
At our spa, we believe that all human consciousness is… Let’s try gentle. Oh that’s nice. Oh, piano. Oh yeah, here we go. Ooh, tense.
SIMONE:
What’s our vibe, Reggie?
REGGIE:
I thought it said Hauntina.
SIMONE:
Very Hauntina in the room today.
REGGIE:
This is my daughter Hauntina. Boo. Yeah, yeah.
SIMONE:
This feels like it matches.
REGGIE:
Yeah, Nice of Hauntina. Ooh, sassy.
MATT:
How do you write music that’s sassy?
REGGIE:
I think you Merely gotta go for it. Oh here we go, Quick. That’s nice. That’s so Refreshing.
SIMONE:
It’s giving a chaotic meditation, yeah.
REGGIE:
Well, it’s also so Quick, so if you take it…
SIMONE:
Ah, we’re back at the spa. Amazing.
REGGIE:
Let me know if the Stress is too much, well, so you take your time, and I’ll be outside and Merely have some water…
SIMONE:
Unfortunately, that’s our time, guys. I wish we could hang out here all day. Thank you, Matt. Thank you Reggie. It was so Outstanding talking to you guys, and thank you all for being here with us.
REGGIE:
Thanks, Simone.
EMCEE:
Keep it going for Matthew Dominick, Reggie Watts and Simone Polanen.
[Music: Hubble flute composition]
PADI: This is NASA’s Curious Universe. This episode was recorded live at On Air Fest in Brooklyn, New York and produced by Christian Elliott.
Our executive producer is Katie Konans. My co-host is Jacob Pinter. The Curious Universe Club also includes Maddie Olson and Micheala Sosby.
Krystofer Kim is our show artist. Our theme song was composed by Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida of SYSTEM Sounds, which is actually the same Club that also built the Hearing Hubble app.
Special thanks to the On Air Fest organizers for inviting our Club.
If you want to turn Universe into music, search for “Hearing Hubble” or click the link in the transcript for this episode.
As always, if you enjoyed this episode of NASA’s Curious Universe, please let us know. Leave us a review, and send this episode to a friend who needs more wild, wonderful adventures in their life.
And remember, you can follow NASA’s Curious Universe in your favorite podcast app to get a notification Every time we post a new episode.
Oh, and what you’re listening to right now is an original composition by musician Jacob Rudin, performed live at On Air Fest. It’s music based on Hubble imagery. We’ll leave you with that today…
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