URSA Engage 

URSA Engage at Oregon State University is a program that pairs first- and second-year undergraduate students, including new transfer students, with faculty mentors for hands-on research or creative projects. It is designed to foster early academic engagement, with participants often receiving funding and mentoring in fields like science, engineering, and the arts.

URSA Engage — Live Performance

Friday: 1:30 – 3:00 PM

URSA Engage — Expanded Live Performance
Saturday: 2:00 – 1:30 PM

Project #1

Tate Bio: Tate is a first-year physics and materials science student. For this project he has mainly been exploring how to extract data from photos and map it onto known objects in the night sky. He has always had a passion for space and the universe, and this project has given him the opportunity to explore that through astrophotography.

Mason Bio: Mason McCanta is a zoology major and music performance minor with a strong interest in topics like evolution, astronomy, and photography. He plays French horn in the OSU-Corvallis Symphony Orchestra and the OSU Horn Choir, and enjoys wildlife photography in his free time. Both of these interests led him to this project, where he is exploring both music composition and astrophotography. Combining the arts and sciences has been a lifelong passion for Mason, so this project’s interdisciplinary approach has been highly fulfilling. 

August Bio: August Dubal is a biochemistry and Molecular Biology major, with a minor in Biological Data Sciences. They grew up in Happy Valley, Oregon, spending time reading, catching bugs, and creating art. Life sciences have always intrigued August; from identifying wildlife to protein kinases. Further, art has been a constant in their life, particularly music and drawing. August loves singing, and has sung in choir for a decade. During this project, they have had a ton of fun combining music, scientific data, and visuals into one sculpture.

General Audience Abstract:

This is a work by Tate Parker, a first-year physics major, Mason McCanta, a first-year zoology major, and August Dubal, a first-year Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major. Our group was interested in how the night sky has offered guidance to humans across time and location. Every culture has their own stories of the stars, and their respective maps. When reflecting on our trip to a dark sky location, we agreed that one of the most important ways that humans interact with stars is through navigation. Thus began our pursuit to represent the feeling of looking to the stars for guidance, through music and visuals. To tie together our photography, music, and sculpture, we chose several images and used plate-solving software to extract the coordinates of the stars in the image. Using these coordinates, we extracted things like mass and brightness from star catalogs to decide how we were going to “play” the stars. Our musical composition was inspired by the different emotions invoked by the night sky, from awe and curiosity to silliness and creativity. Then, we mapped this composition onto the night sky images from earlier to act as our symphony. Finally, the sculpture’s inspiration was drawn from the structure of crystal lattices. Like paths on a map, lattices are deeply interconnected, which is why we thought they would evoke the link between our planet, the stars, and the rest of the galaxy.

======================

Project #2

Title: Claves Celestes

Bio: Aidric Curtis

Aidric Curtis is a first year major in Electrical Engineering and minor in Music. He plays trombone and has contributed musical and compositional experience to the project. He intends the presentation of this project to leave an impression of the creative and scientific wonder that our sky and the astronomy around us represents.

Bio: Calvin Howarth

Calvin Howarth is a first year Honors Bachelor of Science dual major in Mathematics and Data Science who is passionate about photography and computer science. His work on this project focused on the visual side with astrophotography and creating an interactive experience. Through this process he discovered how photographs can be more than what they simply represent.

Bio: Isaac Ward

Isaac Ward is a first year Honors Bachelor of Science in Bioengineering with a minor in Music Performance. Isaac’s interest in this project has been tied into the technological side of sound production, as he is ever curious to discover new means to creating sounds that are completely heard to the human ear. His work on this project has deepened his understanding of the goal of interpretive data analysis, and kindled a curiosity for pattern recognition in sound and physics.

General Audience Abstract

Claves Celestes creates opportunities to interact with the stars; its design is derived from astrophotographical data to make a characteristic ‘sound of the stars’. Our goal with Claves Celestes is to place the sound of the stars into the hands of the audience, providing tangible connection to the stars. We mathematically sequenced data from our own star photos taken in Bend, Oregon to find rhythmic and harmonic patterns that could be synthesized into sound. From this we designed an atmospheric ‘background harmony’ that could be played subliminally in the exhibit room. When a note is pressed on the Claves Celestes, a corresponding star type lights up to play a characteristic star sound designed from the sequenced data. This interactive experience is designed to encourage the audience to engage their minds in the varied ways we can physically connect with astral phenomena. Our group consists of three first year students, Isaac Ward studying Bioengineering, Calvin Howarth dual majoring in Mathematics and Data Science, and Aidric Curtis majoring in Electrical Engineering. Because of our diverse backgrounds, we are better able to collaborate on studying the interconnectedness of art and science.

Academic Abstract

To create Claves Celestes, we captured photos of the night sky to use as references and to sonify the data. Using the star database AT-HYG, which contains hundreds of thousands of stars’ properties, we recreated the night sky in a virtual environment when viewed from the northern hemisphere. This allows us to present a representative and easily controllable night sky. Using the “strauss: Sonification Tools and Resources for Analysis Using Sound Synthesis” and the “AstroImageJ” software, we generated entirely new sound waves quantitatively based on the intensity, position, and colour of all of the stars in each of our images. However, the stars in our night sky are not the sole contributors to this auditory landscape. Claves Celestes couches the astral sonification in an aural background with components stemming from data taken on such phenomena such as gravitational waves, the Cosmic Microwave Background, solar weather, and emanent solar vibration. The final project is an opportunity to interact with the stars through visual, instrumental, and ambient experiences. Our group consists of three first year students, Isaac Ward studying Bioengineering, Calvin Howarth dual majoring in Mathematics and Data Science, and Aidric Curtis majoring in Electrical Engineering.

Project #3 

Title: Reflective Stargazing and the Human Experience

Bios:

Tadhgan Doll is a first-year physics major from Portland. His interest in cosmology and the arts allows him to ponder how our universe came to be from a multitude of vantage points and genres of thought. Sharing experiences like hiking, camping, star-gazing with others brings even more perspective about the universe into Tadhgan’s celestial pursuits.

Jackie Kuang is a first-year electrical and computer engineering student interested in astrophotography and programming/computer hardware. He pursued this program because of the opportunity to sharpen his astrophotography skills and learn more about sonification. Jackie likes to play badminton with friends in his free time, and plays video games and reads to relax from days spent learning physics.

Olena Aguilar is a third-year Environmental Sciences student. In this realm, she hopes to make an impact to keep the world lush and beautiful. She is interested in evolution and the origin of life, as well as music and visual art. Outside of school, she spends time watching tv and hanging out with her cat.

General Audience Abstract

Our group consists of Olena Aguilar, a third-year environmental science major, Jackie Kuang, a first-year electrical and computer engineering major, and Tadhgan Doll, a first-year physics major. For Reflective Stargazing and the Human Experience, we plan on combining not only our views on extraterrestrial happenings and phenomena, but also insights from those around us, from friends to strangers we find on the street. Our experience seeing the night sky in central Oregon was incredibly influential, so we wanted to interview others and see what their thoughts were on space, then we plan to take snippets of what people tell us about their personal connections to the heavens and stitch them together into a mosaic of words. We are going to put these words together in such a way as to produce a message that resonates not only with us and our experiences in the desert under a ceiling full of stars, but through the input of others’ voices we hope to have it resonate with as many people as we can. Then, we will use the images of space that we took in central Oregon and convert them into sounds to create a star-derived musical backtrack that combines the earthly perspectives of humans with the celestial perspectives that the bright objects of the night sky bring to us.

Academic Abstract

Our group consists of Olena Aguilar, a third-year environmental science major, Jackie Kuang, a first-year electrical and computer engineering major, and Tadhgan Doll, a first-year physics major. For Reflective Stargazing and the Human Experience, we are going to create a video of around 10-20 minutes combining photographs and videos of earth and space; music stemming from the sonification of our images of space; as well as snippets of interviews from people answering questions regarding their thoughts on space, earth, and related topics. Our photographs will be those that we took in Bend with the Seestar telescopes, as well as at-home-style videos of the sky and space in Corvallis and nearby natural areas. The sonification will be entirely done with the Python Strauss library, taking images as input and outputting sounds depending on the location, brightness, color, and size of stars, depending on our artistic intentions for each segment of the video. Our interviews will be conducted with the people around us, meaning that most of them will be from OSU students, but we are going to attempt to insert the opinions of people from outside the university as well. Overall, we hope to create a powerful video that encapsulates the terrifying beauty of space, and relate that to our small, insignificant-yet-important planet Earth.

++++++++

Project #4

Title: Communication of Historical and Cultural Space via Artistic Means

Bio: Madison is a second year Physics Major with Minors is Music Performance and History here at Oregon State University. They have spent the past eight years performing music and perfecting their craft as clarinetists. As well, they’ve spent months working for the Oregon Observatory at Sunriver, gazing at the night sky. They have special interests in science communication, science history, and science philosophy. All of those faucets have contributed heavily to the project they’ve dedicated themself to here.

Megan Ritenour is a first-year biology major at Oregon State University. They have spent many years dabbling in visual art, ranging from sculpture to abstract painting. They have spent a good portion of their life fascinated with the stars and the possibility that the fascinating life we find on our own planet could be elsewhere. This has greatly influenced the topic of their painting and subject matter.

Hazel Buotte is a first year theatre and English major at Oregon State University. They have been involved in theatre for ten years, and have been involved in visual arts for many years as well. They have spent a fair amount of their life looking up and wondering. 

Community Abstract: Our group consists of Second Year Physics Major: Madison Kirk, First Year Theatre and English Major, Hazel Buotte, First Year Biology Major, Megan Ritenour. Scientific communication has been a prevalent barrier preventing clean communication from the Scientific community to the larger community. With space and astronomy as the focus, we created various forms of art media to be viewed by the public. The art presented here attempts to engage multiple human senses: sight, sensory, and auditory. Media ranges from communication from a scientific standpoint to an artistic standpoint. The specific projects consisted of a painting,and a composed work.*

The Painting Titled Alien Eyes displays an artistic representation of what a Mantis Shrimp would be able to see based on its visual range. It explores how our world can look so different just from a change in what is possible to see. How would our blue orb look to an alien species that wouldn't just see the blue?

Scientific Abstract: Scientific communication has been a prevalent barrier preventing clean communication from academia to the common populace. With space and astronomy as the focus, we created various forms of art media to be viewed by the public. Three artistic works were presented: a textured painting replica of Messier 57 derived from the images taken by Hubble, a composed work based off of the human view of the night sky, and a visual art piece based on the visual spectroms that can be seen in the sky by a Mantis Shrimp. All pieces were combined into one cohesive display given to the public within a black box theatre. Our group consists of Second Year Physics Major: Madison Kirk, Hazel Buotte, and Biology Major Megan