ICaD 2013 6–10 july, 2013, Łódź, Poland international Conference on auditory Display The 19th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD-2013) July 6-10, 2013, Lodz, Poland UNDERSTANDINGUNDERSTANDING THE NEED FOR MICRO -THEGESTURAL NEED INFLECTIONS IN FOR MICRO-GESTURALPARAMETER-MAPPING SONIFICATION INFLECTIONS IN PARAMETER-MAPPINGDavid Worrall SONIFICATION School of Music, David Worrall SchoolAustralian of Music, Australian National National University, University, BuildingBuilding 100, 100, The The Australian Australian National University, University, CanberraCanberra ACT ACT 0200, Australia. Australia. [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT results. It is useful to distinguish data sonifications made for the purposes of facilitating communication or interpretation of Most of the software tools used for data sonification have been relational information in the data, and data-driven music adopted or adapted from those designed to compose computer composition, ambient soundscapes and the likeÑthe primary music, which in turn, adopted them from abstractly notated purpose of which is artistic expression and other broader scores. Such adoptions are not value-free; by using them, the cultural considerations, whatever they may be. The current use cultural paradigms underlying the music for which the tools of the term ÒsonificationÓ to include such cultural concerns is were made have influenced the conceptualization and, it is unfortunate because it blurs purposeful distinctions. argued, the effectiveness of data sonifications. Maintaining these distinctions is not to suggest that there are Recent research in cognition supports studies in empirical not commonalitiesÐthe two activities can provide insights that musicology that suggest that listening is not a passive ingestion are mutually beneficial. However, because the purposes of the of organised sounds but is an embodied activity that invisibly activities are different, so will be their epistemological enacts gestures of what is heard. This paper outlines an imperatives and consequences, such as, for example, in tool argument for why sonifiers using parametric-mapping design, usability and evaluation. sonification should consider incorporating micro-gestural Music and musical listening involves whole complexes of inflections if they are to mitigate The Mapping Problem in social dimensions that are simply not relevant to the enhancing the intelligibility of sonified data. perceptualisation of data relations. Though music may be composed of syntactic structures, there is no universal requirement that these structures be made explicit, even aurally 1. INTRODUCTION coherent. In fact, stylistic or even dramatic considerations may require the exact opposite, in the orchestration of spectral Western art music became increasingly conceived as mixtures by melding of instrumental timbres, for example. a complex-patterned time-ordered series of disembodied acoustic events that vary in pitch, loudness and timbre; that are There is no one-way to listen to music; different musics absorbed and elicit emotions when listened to. This paradigm is require different ways of listening. Data sonification in which embedded in scored compositions that are abstractly composed the user-driven real-time exploration of datasets using dynamic and realized by expert musicians in concert or rendered to a scaling in multiple dimensions, perhaps with auditory beacons recording medium for transmission to listeners. [1] may not result in musically coherent sound streams. Even if listened to as music, data sonifications may provoke critical Classical cognitive science follows a long philosophical commentary about issues such as the appropriateness or formal tradition in the West that posits consciousness as the means by incompleteness of the resulting sonic experience. Perhaps, as which knowledge is acquired. Computer music, which Polansky suggested, the closest point of contact between developed alongside and intertwined with classical cognitive pragmatic data sonification and musical sonification is in science in the second half of the twentieth century, has also compositions in which a composer intends to ÔmanifestÕ been heavily influenced by the Ôacoustic eventÕ paradigm, and mathematical or other formal processes [2]. This ÔclassicalÕ has embedded it in many of the software tools used to create it. motivation is explicitly enunciated by Xenakis, for example, These tools have been widely adopted by data sonification who exemplifies the process for several compositions in detail researchers who use them in an attempt to obtain a better [3][4]. understanding or appreciation of relations in datasets of varying While many composers use mapping and other algorithmic size, dimension and complexity. techniques of one kind or another in their compositions, they are rarely interested in ÔfeaturingÕ the mapping explicitly. Nor 2. MUSIC COMPOSITION AND DATA do they use mapping in order to simplify the working process or SONIFICATION to improve production efficiency, but in the emergence of musical forms. In order to gain a deeper insight into the way While data sonifiers and music composers share a common composers map conceptual gestures into musical gestures, need to render structures and relations into sound, their Doornbusch surveyed a select few composers who employ the purposes are different and so is the evaluation of the sonic practice in algorithmic composition [5]. 197 ICAD 2013 UNDERSTaNDING THE NEED FOR MICRO-GESTURaL INFLECTIONS IN PaRaMETER-MaPPING SONIFICaTION The 19th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD-2013) July 6-10, 2013, Lodz, Poland The 19th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD-2013) July 6-10, 2013, Lodz, Poland I am not interested in projecting the properties 3.2. Electronic and computer music Iof am some not mathematical interested in modelprojecting on to the some properties audible 3.2. 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