Darin BrownMusical HIV
Posted by Henry Bauer on 2011/05/26
I’ve often been asked, and been unable to answer, how and when the “HIV genome” was deciphered; what “the” genome is, given that we’re told that the pest mutates so rapidly that there are innumerable strains, varieties, and hybrids; what portion of “the genome” is used for measuring viral load. Now, it seems, all those questions can be answered by listening to music whose notes represent the individual nucleotides of “the” complete “HIV” genome as decoded in 2009: What does HIV sound like?
“. . . HIV is an ugly virus in terms of human health. . . . But a new album manages to locate some sonic beauty deep in its genome. Sounds of HIV (Azica Records) by composer Alexandra Pajak explores the patterns of the virus’s nucleotides as well as the amino acids transcribed by HIV, playing through these biologic signatures in 17 tracks. . . . Pajak took as her basic formula the National Institutes of Health’s record of the retrovirus’ genome and the thousands of coded letters which get transcribed by an enzyme into DNA in a cell once it’s infected. . . . She became curious about the HIV genome, especially when its complete structure was sequenced to single-nucleotide resolution in 2009“.
Marco Ruggiero said
How can you possibly obtain beautiful music from an ugly virus? Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I prefer rock and roll, and, talking about HIV and music, I prefer a good German rock und roll HIV by Nina Hagen, “hand grenade”.
Gorky said
Henry I had to read this post twice — I wasn’t sure if this item was serious or if you had made it up for a satirical or parodic purpose. The HIV/AIDS folly is such a surreal, bizarre house of horrors, that it’s beyond satire and parody. It parodies itself.
I”m trying to think of the precedent for this in medieval demonology.. the cries and frightening howls of demons? Or the tortured screams and agonised howls of the ‘possessed’ in exorcism rites?
mo79uk said
Surely HIV just sounds like coins chinking and notes being thumbed through.
aiden said
“ARV drugs do not cure people of the HIV virus or AIDS, they only make people sick. Most people do not realize that ARV drugs actually feed the HIV virus so that the virus doesn’t go into full blown AIDS and consume the entire body. Thus, ARV drugs keep one alive but at the expense of immense pain and suffering, feeding the virus their happiness and energy “.
I saw this report of someone getting cured of AIDS naturally without using ARVs. You may like to check out the information on this page for details:
http://merkaba.org/audio/aids.html
Henry Bauer said
aiden:
HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Indeed, HIV has never been shown to exist — as you would know from reading my book and following this blog
David Crowe said
If you don’t take your AZT I will play this on the accordion.