APS Physics Journal took an interest in Andrew’s latest commission for the Active and Smart Matter Conference at Syracuse University. Here’s a snippet:
The piece takes listeners on a journey from the “spooky” realm of “creepy-looking” viruses through to the ever-changing world of rod-like cholesterol liquid crystals. As the rods transition from lying randomly to all standing to attention in a well-ordered row, the musicians switch from playing long drawn-out notes with their bows to suddenly plucking the strings as the molecules jump up one by one. The voyage ends with the listener departing the nanosized world of soft matter and zooming out into the cosmos. The same rhythms and phrases can be heard, if you listen really carefully, but slowed down to galactic time scales, while the violin melodies get higher and higher before slowly fading out.
-APS Physics, full feature here.