Posted by Alumni from MIT
April 30, 2026
A new immersive sound installation at Oulu Cathedral, Finland, brings the research of MIT astrophysicist and associate professor of physics Kiyoshi Masui into a striking sensory form, transforming more than 4,000 cosmic signals into spatial audio. With its grand opening on April 4, 'The Logos' project invites visitors to experience deep-space phenomena not as distant abstractions, but as something immediate and resonant. The work is led by artist and creative technologist Andrew Melchior in collaboration with Masui, philosopher Timothy Morton, and cathedral dean Satu Saarinen. Together, they treat the cathedral, built in 1832, not just as a setting but as part of the instrument itself. Its stone surfaces and reverberant acoustics give physical presence to signals that have traveled from distant galaxies. At the heart of the installation are data gathered by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope, which detects fast radio bursts (FRBs). FRBs are... learn more