Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Sonification Research

Theoretical research on sonification has been conducted during the last weeks. Papers from various ICAD conferences, as well as other scientific papers with related topics have been examined.

Examined papers for research where among others:

Taxonomy and Definitions for Sonification and Auditory Display by Thomas Hermann [PDF]

ABSTRACT
Sonification is still a relatively young research field and many terms such as sonification, auditory display, auralization, audification have been used without a precise definition. Recent developments such as the introduction of Model-Based Sonification, the establishment of interactive sonification and the increased interest in sonification from arts have raised the need to revisit the definitions in order to move towards a clearer terminology. This paper introduces a new definition for sonification and auditory display that emphasizes the necessary and sufficient conditions for organized sound to be called sonification. It furthermore suggests a taxonomy, and discusses the relation between visualization and sonification. A hierarchy of closed-loop interactions is furthermore introduced. This paper aims to initiate vivid discussion  towards the establishment of a deeper theory of sonification and auditory display.


An Interface and Framework Design for Interactive Aesthetic Sonification by Beilharz Kirsty and Ferguson Samuel [PDF]

ABSTRACT
This paper describes the interface design of our AeSon (Aesthetic Sonification) Toolkit motivated by user-centred customisation of the aesthetic representation and scope of the data. The interface design is developed from 3 premises that distinguish our approach from more ubiquitous sonification methodologies. Firstly, we prioritise  interaction both from the perspective of changing scale, scope and presentation of the data and the user's ability to reconfigure spatial panning, modality, pitch distribution, critical thresholds and granularity of data examined. The user, for the majority of parameters, determines their own listening experience for real-time data sonification, even to the extent that the interface can be used for live data-driven performance, as well as traditional information analysis and examination. Secondly, we have explored the theories of Tufte, Fry and other visualization and information design experts to find ways in which principles that are successful in the field of information visualization may be translated  to the domain of sonification. Thirdly, we prioritise aesthetic variables and controls in the interface, derived from musical practice, aesthetics in information design and responses to experimental user evaluations to inform the design of the sounds and display. In addition to using notions of meter, beat, key or modality and emphasis drawn from music, we draw on our experiments that evaluated the effects of spatial separation
in multivariate data presentations.


Towards an Auditory Representation of Complexity by Joachim Goßmann [PDF]

ABSTRACT 
In applications of sonification, the information inferred by the sonification strategy applied often supersedes the amount of information which can be retrieved by the ear about the object of sonification. This paper focuses on the representation of complex geometric formation through sound, drawing on the development of an interactive installation sonifying escape time fractals as an example. The terms “auditory emergence and formation” are introduced and an attempt is made to interpret them for music composition, data display and information theory. The example application,. “Audio Fraktal”, is a public installation in the permanent exhibition of the Museum for Media Art at ZKM, Karlsruhe. The design of the audiovisual display system that allows the shared experience of interactive spatial auditory formation is described. The work was produced by the author at the Institute for Music and Acoustics at ZKM, Karlsruhe.  



Methods for Visual Mining of Data in Virtual Reality by Henrik R. Nagel, Erik Granum, and Peter Musaeus [PDF]

ABSTRACT
Recent advances in technology have made it possible to use 3-D Virtual Reality for Visual Data Mining. This paper presents a modular system architecture with a series of tools for explorative analysis of large data sets in Virtual Reality. A 3-D Scatter Plot tool is extended to become an "Object Property Space", where data records are visualized as objects with as many statistical variables as possible represented as object properties like shape, color, etc. A working hypothesis is that the free and real-time navigation of the observer in the immersive virtual space will support the chances of nding interesting data structures and relationships. The system is now ready to be used for experiments to validate the hypothesis.



Listen to your Data: Model-Based Sonification for Data Analysis by T. Hermann and H. Ritter [PDF]

ABSTRACT
Sonification is the use of non-speech audio to convey information. We are developing tools for interactive data exploration, which make use of sonification for data presentation. In this paper, model-based sonification is presented as a concept to design auditory displays. Two designs are described: (1) particle trajectories in a “data potential” is a sonification model to reveal information about the clustering of vectorial data and (2) “data-sonograms” is a sonification for data from a classification problem to reveal information about the mixing of distinct classes.

Resulting insights and ideas will be summarized during the following days.




References


Beilharz, K. and Ferguson, S. (2009) An Interface and Framework Design for Interactive Aesthetic Sonification. Copenhagen: International Conference for Auditory Display.
Goßmann, J. (2005) Towards an Auditory Representation of Complexity. Limerick, Ireland: International Conference for Auditory Display.
Hermann, T. (2008) Taxonomy and Definitions for Sonification and Auditory Display. Paris: International Conference for Auditory Display.
Hermann, T. and Ritter, H. (n.d.) Listen to your Data: Model-Based Sonification for Data Analysis. Bielefeld: Department of Computer Science University of Bielefeld.
Nagel, H. et al. (n.d.) Methods for Visual Mining of Data in Virtual Reality. Aalborg, Denmark: Lab. of Computer Vision and Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark.