Ongoing History Daily: DNA as a recorded music format
Give it up to the guys in OK Go for continually finding new ways to be creative with their music. Their Hungry Ghosts album was once available on DNA. And yes, I’m talking about deoxyribonucleic acid.
The band worked with a UCLA biochemist who figured out a way to translate the band’s music in such a way that it can be stored in DNA. The album was first ripped to MP3 (which is a binary code) and then translated into genetic code using the A, G, T, and C bases that are DNA’s building blocks. (If you’re a biologist, you understand what I just said.)
Once the strain of DNA is created in an electrophoresis machine (I’m not sure what that is, but it sound expensive) a fan could buy a vial containing a few nanograms of DNA dissolved in water. That drop of water could comprise of over a hundred thousand copies of the album.
Cool. But how do you play it?
