What Does HIV Sound Like?

HIV is a devastating disease, and is one of the many large obstacles facing modern science.  It has no direct treatment, and is posing a great challenge to the nations in Africa, with limited supplies and access to medical treatment.  Much advancement has been made to slow the assault of HIV, but none have solved this tortuous puzzle yet.

Alexandra Pajak has taken a different approach.  Rather than treat HIV, she has instead represented this virus’s genomic sequence in an artistic way.  Many artists have chosen their own paths to doing this, but Pajak has taken each of the nucleotides as well as the amino acids and assigned each one a pitch.  She strings together these notes, starting off of this set of information and choosing instruments and tempo to fit with it. Care to listen? Go to http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/10/27/what-does-hiv-sound-like-audio/

In my opinion, this melody has great potential to be very powerful.  I was unsure, as the music began; the notes seem disjointed and sharp.  However, as the song progresses further, there are harmonies introduced, and different instruments adding variety, and I think that the final result here is indeed an interesting and beautiful representation of a deadly and destructive force in our world.  The music even seems to have a mournful, plaintive aspect to it.  This seems appropriate, that this disease could be represented thus.  I believe this to be a powerful piece.