We are happy to report this interview with Markus Buehler, programmer engineer and physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston.
Using sonification, an artificial intelligence technique, Buehler has translated the amino acid sequences in the virus’ protein chain into music: it’s a strategy for understanding how the virus “tricks” our cells.
Listening to the vibrations of SARS-CoV-2, we realise that the virus uses gentle frequencies to be hosted by cells, which will then be reprogrammed by him for his use and consumption. It’s a suavissant charmer: Baby let me in, I’m a tired old woman, says Snow White’s witch, or the wolf who fakes her grandmother’s voice in bed to eat Little Red Riding Hood.
But there’s no good or bad in nature. There’s reality. This is why fairy tales should not be sweetened when you tell children: the bad does not turn into good (there are few conversions of the unnamed), the predator is predator. Pedagogically, it is up to us not to be surprised, but without living every day in a state of alert or panic: even if we are physically more alone than before, it is the dimension of being together with others that loosens the state of defensive stress. But let’s not deny reality: nature is out there, stepmother and benign at the same time, in a magical plurality of forms.
