San Diego

Balboa Park will sing tonight, and a microwave “sculpture” of its curving valleys and gentle slopes will be broadcast into deep space during an 8:30 p.m. concert at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center.

Called a “deep space site transmission,” the concert is part of the science center’s observation of National Spaceweek, July 14-22.

Michael Heivly, an art professor from Cal State Bakersfield, will explain how he uses a topographic map to convert the surface of Balboa Park into synthesized music and microwaves in a 7:30 p.m. lecture in the science center preceding the concert.

Scored for bass violas and chimes, Balboa Park “resonates at human bone level,” Heivly said in an interview Thursday. “It’ll make the hair on the back of your head stand up. It really sounds like the land speaking.”

Heivly has built a 7-watt microwave radio station that will send a narrow-beam electronic sculpture from the park millions of light-years into space, he said. It took him about a year to translate the topographic chart into a computer language. When processed through a standard musical synthesizer, the topographic charts coincidentally produce melodic themes that appear in Japanese and Balinese music, Heivly said.