SONIC INTANGIBLES
Exploring young people’s understanding of transforming data into sounds
About Sonic Intangibles
Sonification is a process that transforms data into sounds. There many different ways of doing sonifications and this process bring together different subjects from computer science to music.
NUSTEM has been supporting the Sonics Intangibles project led by Northumbria and Newcastle Universities. One of the aim of this project is to explore how sonification is an interdisciplinary way of working, in other words how people with different areas of expertise can come together to create sonifications.
Sounds like ice-cream time – sonification grid
For Newcastle University Discovery Fest we have we have created a sonification grid to explore you ice-cream preferences.
A sonification grid tool maps data points (your ice-cream preferences) to musical notes.
This is a simple activity which will allow you to listen to your own and other people’s ice-cream preferences. Feel free to download the audio and visual files of your sonifications.
Examples of sonifications
Data used in sonifications can come from very intangible sources: solar system and beyond, the depths of the oceans or the heights of the atmosphere or even from within our own bodies.
Here are some examples of sonifications.
The first, create by NASA, sonifies the discovery of 5000 exoplanets. Play the video and listen to the data as it is revealed on the map of the galaxy.
The next example sonifies the changes to the expected average temperature of our planet.
Sounds club
Sonifications do not need to be complicated nor they need to sound like music.
In fact, this was the starting point of NUSTEM’s contribution to this project: sounds club.
Sounds club was a five-week after-school club where primary school pupils gathered very simple data, created data-inspired pixel art, and used xylophones to play the data and art, recording it in a record-a-card.
Below you can see an example of a pixel art otter (right) inspired by the data theme by the riverside (left) created by a pupil.
Want to know what the otter sounds like? Use the sonification grid below to find out.
Sounds club sonification grid
For sounds club we have reworked the sonification grid . This sonification grid allows for data/art to be sonified according to different recipes.
Feel free to explore the grid and download any audio/visual files of your sonifications.
Project Partners
Funding
Sonic Intangibles is funded by UK Research & Innovation, through their cross research council responsive mode.
