Data & Sound

The use of sound to transport information from a computer or any other device to a user is called Auditory Display. The most famous and only widely used example for the sonification of data is the Geiger Counter invented in 1908. The international community for Auditory Display ICAD still researches how to perceptualize data in an acoustic way. Sound however, will probably always play a subordinate role when it comes to the presentation of data.

Since interesting large data sets are easily available lately, very interesting and artistic projects came up that used these data sets to create music or sound spheres to experience the data in different and new ways. 
Related projects are for instance projects on LiveScience, where data from blue-green algae is transposed into musical notes, or songs are created from data from the Hubble telescope or the Higgs Boson.

Sea Songs, by Biologist Peter Larsen

by composer, physicist and engineer Domenico Vicinanza

Though this type of project does not really create a new practical way of how to work with data, they sure provide interesting cause for thoughts of how to combine visuals and sound to create new audio visual interfaces and installations to work, experience and present massive data sets.

One project that already walks this path is the AlloSphere at the University of Colifornia, Santa Barbara. Standing on a bridge inside a massive cube, the users can interact and work with different sorts of data sets, being totally immersed into the data on the visual and the audio layer. 

This large-scale immersive laboratory has a scientific and an artistic component:

Scientifically, it is an instrument for gaining insight and developing bodily intuition about environments into which the body cannot venture: abstract, higher-dimensional information spaces, the worlds of the very small or very large, and the realms of the very fast or very slow, in fields ranging from nanotechnology to theoretical physics, from proteomics to cosmology, from neurophysiology to the spaces of consciousness, and from new materials to new media.

Artistically, the AlloSphere is an instrument for the creation and performance of avant-garde new works and the development of entirely new modes and genres of expression and forms of immersion-based entertainment, fusing future art, architecture, music, media, games, cinema, and more.

- AlloSphere Website

Through combination of art and sciences, new ways are discovered of how to present different data in the most practical but also the most comfortable way, to make it easy and fun to work with. Different approaches are made of how to include sounds, so that sound would not be there as some sort of additional 'ear-candy', but actually increase and improve the workflow with the data. Dr. Joann Kuchera-Morin, working on the AlloSphere explains the sound design the following:

I take visual data, drop it 27 octaves and do the proper transformations so I can hear it. Think of a mathematical equation that can be seen and heard. If you take any math data and sonify and visualize it, you’ll be able to see and hear patterns — you’ll see balance, continuity, contrast, surprise, all the things that catch people’s attention.

- Dr. Joann Kuchera Morin on TED Talk 2009 

Just as the AlloSphere already did in some ways, the research being conducted this term will search for new ways to use immersive sound to support the work with data in a not too artistic, but scientific way.

References

Allosphere.ucsb.edu (2001) The AlloSphere at the California NanoSystems Institute, UC Santa Barbara. [online] Available at: http://www.allosphere.ucsb.edu/index.php [Accessed: 20 Nov 2012].

Blog.ted.com (2009) 

TED Blog | Mapping terrain in space and time: Exclusive interview with JoAnn Kuchera-Morin of the AlloSphere. [online] Available at: http://blog.ted.com/2009/04/15/allosphere_interview/#more [Accessed: 20 Nov 2012].

Icad.org (2012) International Community for Auditory Display. [online] Available at: http://icad.org/ [Accessed: 20 Nov 2012].

Livescience.com (1997) Sea Songs – Microbe Data Sound Like Music | Video | LiveScience. [online] Available at: http://www.livescience.com/23622-sea-songs-microbe-data-sound-like-music-video.html [Accessed: 20 Nov 2012].

Livescience.com (1997) Here's What the Higgs Boson Sounds Like | 'God' Particle Music | LiveScience. [online] Available at: http://www.livescience.com/21521-higgs-boson-music.html [Accessed: 20 Nov 2012].

Sonification.de (2010) sonification.de. [online] Available at: http://sonification.de/ [Accessed: 20 Nov 2012].