As Australia's national science agency, we've been improving the lives of people everywhere with our inventions for over a century.
When creating the theme song for our new podcast, Everyday AI, we wanted to pay homage to some of our greatest innovations of the past 100 years.
The song was composed by Justin Shave from Sydney-based production studio, Uncanny Valley.
The theme song uses sounds from our archives. Justin made the song with help from – you guessed it – artificial intelligence (AI).
"There was a lot of archival material provided by CSIRO, which we could mine and find little tasty nuggets of audio to insert," Justin said. “That was pretty much a human process, I have to say!”
You might have picked some of the obvious ones, such as the Apollo 11 Moon landing, but what about the others? We snuck in some gold for the science and technology fans. Take a listen and let us know how many you picked!
Buzz off bugs!
Listen carefully to the first few seconds and you may hear the buzz of flying bugs. This is an homage to our insect repellent famously worn by Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Australia in 1963. This repellent became the Aussie staple Aerogard.
It’s crunch time
Did you hear the crunch? There is nothing more satisfying than crunching down on a crisp apple. That’s why we worked with a US company to create a new type of apple that doesn’t bruise, preserving that all-important crunch factor!
Giddy-up
When 14 horses and their horse trainer suddenly fell ill and died in 1994, the world turned to us to help solve the mystery. Soon after, the Hendra virus was officially identified, and our researchers got to work and developed the world’s first Hendra vaccine.
Dial up the volume
We couldn’t have a list of our innovations without mentioning the one you’re most likely using right now: fast WIFI.
The podcast theme song closes with a sound you may faintly remember. Thanks to us, dial up tones are only a distant memory for those who had to make the choice between making phone calls or surfing the net.
Keen to learn more about how our podcast theme song was created? Listen to episode 2 of Everyday AI (Creativity generators - AI in music).