The ASTRA (Ancient instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application) project brings history to life!

Abstract

ASTRA (Ancient instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application) is a project coordinated at Conservatory of Music of Parma which aims to bring history to life. Ancient musical instruments can now be heard for the first time in hundreds of years, thanks to the successful synergy between art/humanities and science. The Epigonion, an instrument of the past, has been digitally recreated using gLite, an advanced middleware developed in the context of the EGEE project and research networks such as GÉANT2 in Europe and EUMEDCONNECT2 in the Mediterranean region. GÉANT2 and EUMEDCONNECT2, by connecting enormous and heterogeneous computing resources, provided the needed infrastructures to speed up the overall computation time and enable the computer-intensive modeling of musical sounds. This paper summarizes the most recent outcomes of the project underlining how the Grid aspect of the computation can support the Cultural Heritage community. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.