Sonification abstraite/sonification concrete: An 'aesthetic persepctive space' for classifying auditory displays in the ars musica domain

Presented at the 12th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), London, UK, June 20-23, 2006.This paper discusses æsthetic issues of sonifications and the relationships between sonification (ars informatica) and music & sound art (ars musica). It is posited that many sonifications have suffered from poor internal ecological validity which makes listening more difficult, thereby resulting in poorer data extraction and inference on the part of the listener. Lessons are drawn from the electroacoustic music and musique concrète communities as it is argued that it is not instructive to distinguish between sonifications and music/sound art. Edgard Varèse defined music as organised sound, and sonifications organise sound to reflect mimetically the thing being sonified. Therefore, an æsthetic perspective space onto which sonifications and musical compositions alike can be mapped is proposed. The resultant map allows sonifications to be compared with works in the ars musica domain with which they share characteristics. The æsthetics of those ars musica counterparts can then be interrogated revealing useful design and organisation constructs that can be used to improve the sonifications' communicative ability

Sonification, Musification, and Synthesis of Absolute Program Music

Presented at the 22nd International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD-2016)When understood as a communication system, a musical work can be interpreted as data existing within three domains. In this interpretation an absolute domain is interposed as a communication channel between two programatic domains that act respectively as source and receiver. As a source, a programatic domain creates, evolves, organizes, and represents a musical work. When acting as a receiver it re-constitutes acoustic signals into unique auditory experience. The absolute domain transmits physical vibrations ranging from the stochastic structures of noise to the periodic waveforms of organized sound. Analysis of acoustic signals suggest recognition as a musical work requires signal periodicity to exceed some minimum. A methodological framework that satisfies recent definitions of sonification is outlined. This framework is proposed to extend to musification through incorporation of data features that represent more traditional elements of a musical work such as melody, harmony, and rhythm

The Sound Manifesto

Computing practice today depends on visual output to drive almost all user interaction. Other senses, such as audition, may be totally neglected, or used tangentially, or used in highly restricted specialized ways. We have excellent audio rendering through D-A conversion, but we lack rich general facilities for modeling and manipulating sound comparable in quality and flexibility to graphics. We need co-ordinated research in several disciplines to improve the use of sound as an interactive information channel. Incremental and separate improvements in synthesis, analysis, speech processing, audiology, acoustics, music, etc. will not alone produce the radical progress that we seek in sonic practice. We also need to create a new central topic of study in digital audio research. The new topic will assimilate the contributions of different disciplines on a common foundation. The key central concept that we lack is sound as a general-purpose information channel. We must investigate the structure of this information channel, which is driven by the co-operative development of auditory perception and physical sound production. Particular audible encodings, such as speech and music, illuminate sonic information by example, but they are no more sufficient for a characterization than typography is sufficient for a characterization of visual information.Comment: To appear in the conference on Critical Technologies for the Future of Computing, part of SPIE's International Symposium on Optical Science and Technology, 30 July to 4 August 2000, San Diego, C

Broadening telematic electroacoustic music by affective rendering and embodied real-time data sonification

Often played in traditional music performance formats, much recent telematic electroacoustic music focuses on the relationships between people/machines and geographically distributed cultures/spaces/players, and/or it adopts electroacoustic music’s historical concerns with natural environmental sound art or space manipulation. But a more suitable environment for telematic art works is perhaps found in the inter-relationship between ‘players’ and broader contemporary networked life – one embedded in multiple real-time informational data streams. While these streams are often rendered visually, they are also partly interpreted through embodied cognition that can be similar to music and sonic art interpretation. A fruitful meeting point for telematic electroacoustic music and real-time data sonification is in using affective composition/performance and an affective/embodied means of data sonification. To illustrate this, one means of rendering affective telematic electroacoustic music is outlined, and a bridge to one form of real-time data stream representing collective embodiment put forward – forex data rendering – as an example. Amalgamating these approaches in telematic electroacoustic music allows dialectic between networked performers/composers and clusters of collective behaviors. Artistically, this facilitates the notion of how small groups of individuals might plot course(s) of action that are often altered by external pressures, therefore demonstrating a means of exploring participants’ placement in contemporary environments

Complexity as Process: Complexity Inspired Approaches to Composition

This article examines the use of Complexity Theory as an inspiration for the creation of new musical works, and highlights problems and possible solutions associated with its application as a compositional tool. In particular it explores how the philosophy behind Complexity Theory affects notions of process-based composition, indeterminacy in music and the performer/listener/environment relationship, culminating in providing a basis for the understanding of music creation as an active process within a context. The author presents one of his own sound installations, Cross-Pollination, as an example of a composition inspired and best understood from the philosophical position as described in Complexity Theory

Ritualistic approach to sonic interaction design: A poetic framework for participatory sonification

Presented at the 27th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2022) 24-27 June 2022, Virtual conference.While sonification is often adopted as an analytical tool to understand data, it can also be an efficient basis for the construction of an interaction model for an aesthetic sound piece. Mirroring the performative arts, a ritualistic approach in participatory sonification can take place whenever a work relies more on the outer form of the piece, than on the meaning attributed to the information communicated, to connect with an audience, losing some degrees of readability and intelligibility in the process while maintaining a reliable data-to-sound relationship. We will present a few examples that anticipate or expand the use of sonification as analytical tool to propose aesthetic approaches, accessing more complex layers of meaning in interactive design. By proposing topological, semantic, and technical perspectives, we demonstrate the functional aspects of the multimedia artwork “The Only Object They Could Retrieve From Earth’s Lost Civilisation” (“The Only Object” from now on). Outcomes will be considered under the multidisciplinary framework here proposed, to conclude with possibilities and implications of a ritualistic approach to interaction design

Data Sonification in Creative Practice

Sonification is the process of data transmission with non-speech audio. While finding increasing acceptance as a scientific method, particularly where a visual representation of data is inadequate, it is still often derided as a ‘gimmick’. Composers have also shown growing interest in sonification as a compositional method. Both in science and in music, the criticism towards this method relates to poor aesthetics and gratuitous applications. This thesis aims to address these issues through an accompanying portfolio of pieces which use sonification as a compositional tool. It establishes the principles of ‘musification’, which can be defined as a sonification which uses musical structures; a sonification organised by musical principles. The practice-as-research portfolio explores a number of data sources, musical genres and science-music collaborations. The main contributions to knowledge derived from the project are a portfolio of compositions, a compositional framework for sonification and an evaluation framework for musification. This thesis demonstrates the validity of practice-as-research as a methodology in sonification research

Soundscape Composition as Environmental Activism and Awareness: An Ecomusicological Approach

Soundscape composition is a musical field that has converged from a diverse array of philosophies and methods of listening. Informed by the common mission of raising awareness towards the current environmental crisis, soundscape composers aim to re-connect audiences to the natural soundscapes of their everyday lives. To achieve this mission, soundscape composers interact with soundscape ecology, a scientific field that also addresses environmental issues like global warming and declining biodiversity through the study of sound. In so doing, soundscape composers repurpose scientific technology, transforming it into a tool that challenges the traditional nature/culture dichotomy and integrates listeners with their environments through spiritual, emotional, and sense-based ways of knowing