Motiviation & Background

“Sonification” refers to the practice of conveying data abstractly through sound. This is analagous to the more common practice of “visualisation”, for example heat-maps of geographical data . Examples of sonification include Geiger counters, or the sonification of gravitational waves.

Why sonification?

So, given the dominance of visualisation techniques, why use sonification? Here are three motivating reasons:

1) Accessibility: For many people, visualisation is inherently inaccessible. Around 4% of the world population are visually impaired (VI) according to IAPB statistics [1]. Combining visualisation and sonification techniques ensures broader accessibility of science and data presentation.

2) Unique Applications: There are applications for which sonification is uniquely suited. Sound is a time varying signal so can represent time-series data intuitively, or data with rapidly or subtly varying rates of change. The human ear can cover about 10 octaves in frequency, while the visible range of light only covers around 1 octave. Used well, sonification can provide a new perspective on your data, and potentially new insights into your data that are missed with standard, visual approaches.

3) Enhancing Visuals: for scientific images or video data without narration, typically nothing is being conveyed through sound. Combining sonification with your visualisation provides a new channel for conveying data, either enhancing what is already shown, or expressing new variables that are absent from the visual. For communicating to a broader audience, sonification can reveal the beauty and complexity in data, and is active area of interest in academic music.

Strauss approach

Strauss is intended to be a flexible toolkit and engine for sonification, allowing detailed control over the sonification process if required. Casual users can run Strauss with preset parameters and setups, exemplified by the python notebook examples (see Examples), while more technical users can experiment with every aspect of the sonification (see Elements of a Strauss Sonification).

Strauss incorporates musical elements, with the idea that music theory provides a system for organising abstract sounds and conveying meaning through them. These systems have e been developed over centuries, and we are often encultured to them. Incorporating these systems allows us to exploit our understanding of music to convey information and create better sounding sonifications. No knowledge of music theory is required to use Strauss, and presets can again be used fror all musical aspects (see score).

Strauss is currently limited to a western view of music theory, though with ongoing development and expertise, the aim is to incorporate more culturally diverse musical and tonal systems.

References

  1. Magnitude, temporal trends, and projections of the global prevalence of blindness and distance and near vision impairment: a systematic review and meta-analysis Prof Rupert R A Bourne, MD, Seth R Flaxman, BA, Tasanee Braithwaite, MPH, Maria V Cicinelli, MD, Aditi Das, MD, Jost B Jonas, MD et al. thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(17)30293-0/fulltext