Data Sonification
Data sonification
has been
viewed as a tool with great potential for studying complex sets of
scientific
data. Sonification can provide the researcher with the ability to
perceive variations and trends that are invisible to more established
data
analysis techniques. However, few have explored the
potential
artistic applications of sonification. In 1996, I worked
with Alec
Robinson to se Matlab and Csound to prototype software to transduce
data from
various sources such as images, temperature, and light intensity into
aesthetically pleasing audio. We used this work to develop the audio
effects
for StarChild. Using Csound and
a custom C
program, astronomical data from the Shoemaker Levy-9 comet collision
was used
as input to create audio for portions of StarChild.
Additionally, images of the collisions with Jupiter were transduced
into audio
effects using Hyperupic, an application running on a NeXT computer.
440k
MP3 file (low
sample rate) taken from the sample files created from the comet
collision.