By Margaret Harris

A couple weeks ago, the physicsworld.com blog brought you some of the sights and insights from the AAAS conference in Washington, DC. Today I’d like to bring you a few sounds as well, courtesy of Lelavision Physical Music, a dance-sculpture-music duo who formed part of the sonic backdrop to “Family Science Days” in the conference exhibit hall.

Lelavision were at the conference to perform a piece called “Accumulations of change”, which they had developed with David Lynn, an Emory University biochemist, as a way of representing the origins of life and evolution. During the actual performance, Lelavision dancer/gymnast Leah Mann was a little too busy balancing on a rotating DNA sculpture (see photo above left) to talk to me. Fortunately, I’d caught up with her earlier, when her sculptor/musician collaborator Ela Lamblin was laying down some patterns of sound to use in their performance. In the clip below, you’ll hear him in the background, making a “tink-tink” noise with the spheres shown in the photo above right.

And here’s what it sounded like when everything came together.