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OSF composer puts genome code to music By Bill Varble "TCACCCaggaTggagtCCAGTGATCTGACATggatGAT" may never replace "Stardust," but it�s music to Todd Barton�s ears. The composer�s latest project involved setting the human genome to music. The genome, the biological map of what it means to be human, was completed by scientists last year. In an experiment reminiscent of the scene in Steven Spielberg�s "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" in which humans and aliens try using music to communicate, Barton assigned tones to the nucleotides in the genome, then put his imagination to work. The result is two compositions, an undulating one that may remind some of Barber�s "Adagio for Strings," and a jazzier tune-poem exploring the percussive aspects of the idea. A story about Barton and his compositions aired on National Public Radio Tuesday, and he�s been inundated with calls from scientists, doctors and others. "I�m always interested in exploring different material," says Barton, whose day job is composer in residence at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. The Human Genome Project is the international research program (along with a private effort by Celera Genomics) that culminated recently in the map of the human genome, or all the chromosomes in a human germ cell. It�s the nucleotide sequence of human DNA in terms of the 36,000 genes that are the "instructions" for the development of, say, a person and not a fruit fly. It�s long been recognized by scientists and philosophers that the genome would have momentous social, ethical and legal implications. But musical? About a month ago, Barton called up a Web site devoted to the Genome project. "I found the letters a, c, g and t representing the nucleotides," he says. "I interpreted upper- and lower-case letters as octave shifts. It was just those letters going across the page. There�s thousands of them. "I typed them into a sequencer using the keyboard, translating a, c and g into those notes, and the default translated the t into an f (there is no t note). I�d transpose them up or down an octave and make them twice as long or as short. I worked with strings, vocals, sustained sounds of notes. Even if it�s arbitrary, the relationship to the pattern would remain the same." Among those who have called Barton to interest him in their genome projects were a spokeswoman for a future conference at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and an agent representing a performance artist in Oslo, Norway. Barton has a concert coming up April 1 at the Craterian Theater in Medford, but he doesn�t know if he�ll perform genome tunes. "It�s foremost an exploration," he says. "Somewhere in the back of my mind I was hoping to connect with people who have biological knowledge." The project may call to mind fractal art, computer-generated images based on mathematical formulae such as the Mandlebrot set that show infinite detail (like clouds and other patterns in nature) no matter how much they�re enlarged. "The whole thing about fractals is, it�s the same pattern twisted on all these different axes," Barton says. "So the double helix (the twisting structure of DNA) definitely has a resonance to fractals." Yeah, but can you dance to it? For more on Todd Barton�s genome compositions, go to www.mind.net and click on genome music. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.