The sound of servers turned into electronic music

Technology 19 May 2014
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You can make music in the oddest places

(Image: Ryan McVay/Getty Images)

Listen to that server sing. The ambient hum of European data centres has been turned into electronic music. The first composition, based on machines at Birmingham City University in the UK, was released online last month.

Most data centres generate a kind of white noise from the whirring of many small fans cooling the servers. Their movement occurs at many different frequencies, resulting in a nearly full spectrum of sound. But each centre has a different number of fans spinning at different speeds, creating its own “unique pitch,” says Matt Parker, the freelance composer behind the music.

After recording each centre, Parker strips out any undesired background noise. He isolates different frequencies to build a harmonic scale, playing around with the different sounds as they unfold.


Are you being servered?

In the long run, he hopes that the music will pique people’s interest in what happens to their digital data. Modern devices run quietly, making it easier to forget about the immense machinery required to make them work.

“Ultimately, the information that we’re using on our mobile phones and things is being transferred somewhere else,” Parker says. “I wanted to find a way to make a reminder of the physical and mechanical nature of the cloud.”

Parker plans to visit data centres in southern England and Sweden next.

“I want to create a whole body of work reflecting these different places and the sounds that they create,” he says.

Listen to the raw recording of the data centres.

And listen to Parker’s remix here.

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