Markus J. Buehler is the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT, a material scientist, and a composer of experimental, classical and electronic music, with an interest in sonification. Using an approach termed “materiomusic” (https://soundcloud.com/user-275864738), his work explores the creation of new forms of musical expression – such as those derived from the innate vibrations of biological materials and living systems – as a means to better understand the underlying science and mathematics. In recent work he has developed a new framework to compose music based on proteins – the basic molecules of all life, as well as other physical phenomena such as fracture singularities, to explore similarities and differences across species, scales and between philosophical and physical models. One of his goals is to use musical and sound design, aided by AI, as an abstract way to model, optimize and create new forms of matter from the bottom up – across scales (e.g., from nano to macro) and species (e.g., from humans to spiders). Markus J. Buehler is the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT, a material scientist, and a composer of experimental, classical and electronic music, with an interest in sonification. Using an approach termed “materiomusic” (https://soundcloud.com/user-275864738), his work explores the creation of new forms of musical expression – such as those derived from the innate vibrations of biological materials and living systems – as a means to better understand the underlying science and mathematics. In recent work he has developed a new framework to compose music based on proteins – the basic molecules of all life, as well as other physical phenomena such as fracture singularities, to explore similarities and differences across species, scales and between philosophical and physical models. One of his goals is to use musical and sound design, aided by AI, as an abstract way to model, optimize and create new forms of matter from the bottom up – across scales (e.g., from nano to macro) and species (e.g., from humans to spiders). This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

If a virus could sing | Markus J. Buehler | TEDxBasel