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Famous composers including Debussy and Franz Liszt have written music about clouds.

But now clouds can create their own piece of music, with help from an American artist who has engineered a smart piano.

Musical compositions based on the density, speed and shape of the clouds are played on the hi-tech instrument, which relies on a robot to press down the keys.

A piece of music is composed based on the density, speed and shape of the clouds and is then played on a grand piano which has been modified with mechanical parts (pictured) hooked up to a computer

An art installation called Cloud Piano records the movement of clouds in the sky, which are then cut into 88 segments by a computer programme called Max/MSP, Quartz reported.

The segments correspond to keys on the grand piano.

The computer programme analyses the appearance of the clouds pictured in each of the pieces of the sky, artist David Bowen explained.

This information is sent to a robot that plays the keys of a grand piano 'based on the movements and shapes of the clouds,' according to the artist's blog.

 

Piano set up to play notes depending on passing clouds

An art installation called Cloud Piano uses a camera (pictured) to take pictures of the sky. From this information, a discordant melody is created

It does this by pressing the keys at different speeds and pressures.

'If a dense cloud is detected, the key is pressed hard,' he told Quartz.

'If it is a light cloud, the key is barely pressed at all. In this way, the intensity and speed at which the piano is played is determined by the intensity, speed, and shape of the clouds.'

According to the blog, 'the system is set in motion to function as if the clouds are pressing the keys on the piano as they move across the sky and change shape.

'The resulting sound is generated from the unique key patterns created by ethereal forms that build, sweep, fluctuate and dissipate in the sky.'

The melodies created are largely discordant but are strangely calming, although a slight squeaking can be heard when the robotic 'fingers' press piano keys.

The images are cut into 88 segments (pictured) by a computer programme called Max/MSP, which analyses the appearance of the clouds pictured in each of the pieces of the sky. They correspond to keys on the piano

Information about the cloud's appearance is sent to a robotic device (pictured) that presses keys on the grand piano 'based on the movements and shapes of the clouds'. This means that dense clouds are played loudly and light clouds are quiet

Cloud Piano will go on show at a gallery in Saint Etienne, France, next month. It is not his first kinetic, robotic work to be exhibited in a gallery, as Mr Bowen is well known for engineering works of art such as 'Underwater'.

For that installation, he used a Microsoft Kinect sensor to collect data about the movements of a river, which was simulated on a grid of ropes including 486 servo motors, hung from the ceiling.

The motors recreated the rippling motion of the river on the ropes, which when viewed from underneath, looked like the motion of the ocean.