I've been an electronics designer for about 40 years and always include artistic aspects. For the past 20 years I've been building AERCO microphone pre-amplifiers which are held in high regard by sound recordists. For the last 10 years I've been building purely art-related projects in my spare time.

There are three aspects of the Kosmophone that interest me:

1. It's a pretty good tool for visualizing the cosmic ray flux pattering in all around us all the time. These are the events captured by a volume of matter about the size of a fist so the constant flux through our bodies is some hundreds of times greater. Contemplating the
Kosmophone has somewhat altered my view of the physical environment . I used to think of the atmosphere as a tenuous affair but now realize the column of air sitting over this 3 pound detector weighs about 100 pounds. The fact that our atmosphere provides a protective blanket is demonstrated by the rapid rise of cosmic-ray flux with increasing altitude; about 25 times greater at 40,000 feet. It has also changed the way I visualize the sun. I've gone from thinking of it as a raging fusion-furnace to a gentle golden glowing candle in the sky.

2. Since the distribution of the data are entirely random, they make for an interesting musical experience. The story 'Contact' notwithstanding, there is presumably no pattern whatsoever in the sequence of notes that are played. As with the million monkeys at the million typewriters there are short fragments of recognizable tunes but every note comes in as a total surprise with presumably no relation whatever to what has come before and what will come next. So in some strange way, it is playing every possible rhythm structure in every genre of music. I find it quite fascinating to listen for long periods of time and then find I have a keener appreciation of conventional music.

3. The particles that initiate the chain of events coming out of the speakers are coming from unimaginably distant expanses of the space-time fabric. Presumably these emissions, energetic beyond human comprehension, have originated in furious cosmic events that make our sun look like a warm cup of tea. It encourages me to mentally travel as far away from our troubled world as I know how to get.