Dante's inferno

The Washington-based CityDance Ensemble has joined forces with DANTE, the research networking organisation, to perform concerts to raise awareness of climate change.

In Cambridge last week, the dance company performed to music generated from seismic data recorded from four volcanoes across three continents. Facilitated by DANTE and two of its computing projects, Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) and E-science grid facility for Europe and Latin America (EELA), the choreography is based on the melodies created from seismic waves - turned into sound waves - recorded from Mount Etna in Italy, Mount Tungurahua in Ecuador, and Mount Pinatubo and Mount Mayon in the Philippines.

The technique is currently being used in research to translate the patterns in a volcano's behaviour into sound waves to help predict volcanic eruptions.

The dance, called The Mountain, can be seen at http://www.dante.net/volcanodance.