What is sonification?
Sonification is a process that allows data to be mapped and represented with audio. This helps us analyze data in a different way, gives way to a more accessible form of analysis, and often times different features are observed by listening rather than solely viewing graphs or charts.
Creative expression can also exist with sonification and there are many sonification projects that take data and create musical compositions with it, like the Chandra X-ray Observatory and System Sounds. Listening to historical tornado data, geological monitoring, and more has also been analyzed with a creative sonification expression.
An early example of scientific sonification was the Geiger Counter, which is used to detect radiation. Radiation particles were detected by ionization, which then produced an audio click from the device. Electrocardiagrams (ECG) also utilize sonification by turning signals from the heart into audio.
The process for sonification involves using different apps or programming languages, like Python, to map different dataset to things like pitch, tempo, volume, and more.
Humans possesses a natural evolutionary trait for pattern-matching, which is very useful in audio data analysis, when graphs or charts might not be as easy to decipher.
Sonification has helped scientists study Earth’s magnetic field as it is bombarded by particles from the sun. Various types of waves can be heard by taking data from satellite magnetometers and turning it into audio. Scientists can even listen to different components of Earth’s magnetic field, which yields different audio signatures and characteristics, depending on the type of wave.
For example, in the following audio clip you can hear the differences in EMIC waves and Whistler mode waves:
[add example of EMIC wave audio vs. Whistler mode wave audio]
There are endless methods and ways to turn the data into audio and also allows crossover between science and art. Musicians have used sonification techniques to map MIDI instruments to data sets, which allows for a creative expression of data as well as a sometimes pleasant way to analyze data.
Other sonification projects to check out: