Dinosaur Choir: Adult Corythosaurus

Courtney Brown; Cezary Gajewski

Dinosaur Choir: Adult Corythosaurus
Image credit: Courtney Brown; Cezary Gajewski

Abstract:

Dinosaur vocal calls have been silent since they became extinct following the large asteroid impact event 66 million years ago. Our project, Dinosaur Choir, realizes musical instruments that bring these vocalizations back to life using CT (Computational Tomography) scans, 3D fabrication, and physically-based modeling synthesis. Musicians and gallery visitors give voice to these dinosaur instruments by blowing into a mouthpiece, exciting a computational voice box, and resonating the sound through the recreated dinosaur’s fossilized nasal cavities and skull. When the participant blows into the microphone, their breath becomes the dinosaur’s breath. However, the dinosaur does not have flesh, only bone. They are interacting with and seeing the process of millions of years of decay and change in the instrument. While science is one way of knowing dinosaurs, this work explores how a musical instrument can also generate knowledge. Dinosaur Choir also delves deeper into science, filling the unknowns with informed speculation and imagination.

Our work explores the Corythosaurus, a duck-billed dinosaur with a large, hollow crest housing complicated nasal passages that scientists hypothesize were used for vocal call resonation. Dinosaur Choir begins with this hypothesis but expands its exploration into the unknown vocal boxes, sensorimotor systems, and behaviors that allow vocalization to occur. The project represents a deep collaboration between music, computation, paleontology, and the imagination to explore the intersection of what we know and we may never discover. We have collaborated and consulted with paleontologists to produce this work as well as researching specimens ourselves in university and museum collections. We also explore the dinosaur skull as a wind instrument, iterating on the musical interaction to improve the intimacy and responsiveness of the experience. We focus on breath to drive air pressure into the computational model and we capture the mouth shape of the musician via optical motion capture to determine the stretch and muscle pressure of the vocal folds. This musical interface allows the dinosaur to come alive in the interaction between the musician/gallery visitor and the skull.