An Illustrated Analysis of Sonification for Scientific Visualisation
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An Illustrated Analysis of Sonification for Scientific Visualisation R. Minghim and A.R. Forrest University of East Anglia School of Information Systems Norwich NR4 7TJ, England - UK e-mail: [email protected],[email protected] Abstract by combining both senses. In supplementary presentation, data which might be missed by visual This paper presents an analysis of progress in the use of overload or by lack of visual detail may be detected sound as a tool in support of visualisation and gives an aurally. insight into its development and future needs. Special 3. Sound can contribute at several levels of the emphasis is given to the use of sound in Scientific and interaction process: As a tool for navigation in a Engineering Applications. A system developed to support fured image, sound can help provide feedback on surface data presentation and interaction by using sound what is being hidden by the visible part of the is presented and discussed. image. Sound can help relieve visual workload, so as to speed up interpretation and therefore speed up 1. Introduction interaction. If the user can get at least an initial idea of the contents of portions of data by sound, Most graphics applications use only the visual this reduces the number of costly interactions like channel for information display. Use of sound is viewpoint change, which take long to execute. One restricted to signalling errors with no additional important aspect of interaction by sound is that with attributes. Apart from specific applications like games, time and practice, capabilities of sound sonar, music, or multimedia presentations, very little understanding and segregation increase and the user sound is used as support to imagery. This situation is is able to interpret information or even create set to change due to pioneering work in recent years, mental image associations using sound alone, in a followed by a rapid growth in use of sound to convey process similar to that observed with the blind. If information [24]: in general the results have proved well designed, sound is non-intrusive, and should that sound is a valuable tool for yielding meaning and not affect, but instead improve, visual even structured information, particularly in demanding interpretation. operations where the visual channel is overloaded with 4. The problem of adding time dimension to data information or in monitoring situations where the user presentation may well be supported by sound needs knowledge of hidden events and objects. mappings. The temporal nature of sound makes that Sound can be a useful tool to tackle some of the association plausible and desirable. challenges in visualisation. Possible areas that can 5. Another aspect that can clearly be helped by use of benefit from use of sound are: sound is the validation of the graphical processes. The tasks of proving a graphical mapping correct 1. Data representation: sound may add further and testing graphical processes are complex. Sound dimension to visual presentations (complementary) mappings of data and properties during presentation or provide redundancy of representation can facilitate the task. (supplementary). Much scientific information is not 6. Memory of data and properties can be improved by necessarily graphic in nature, and sound might be a meaningful auditory representation. better tool for representing some data. Moreover, the number of different dimensions that can be Tne word Sonification has generally been used to visually interpreted at one time is limited, indicate the mapping to sound of some sort of 2. Perceptual Issues: sound has properties different numerical data with the intention of conveying from vision which might shed light on patterns and information [39]. The term Sonic Design indicates the structures not observed visually. In complementary definition of the components of the sound stimuli that presentation, the image drives the sound will correspond to particular pieces of information. interpretation and more information can be gathered 110 1070-2385/95$4.00O1995IEEE Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Visualization Conference (VISUALIZATION '95) 1070-2385/95 $10.00 © 1995 IEEE 2. On the Use of Sound to Convey resolution in the perception of sound properties is Information relatively poor compared to the continuous nature of objects in everyday life. Prior Work Perception and Sonification Pioneering work using sound at the interface [46] [4] [33] and in multi-parameter sound presentation [36] To work with sound for information display it is as well as the potential of presenting of data on two very important to understand how human auditory channels simultaneously [27] has indicated a strong perception and processing occurs [10][20][29,30,31] case for the use of sound at the interface [9] [24]. [7]. It is essential to identify the basics of sound Particularly interesting results supporting the perception in advance of designing any mappings, to display of events were obtained by Gaver [13,14,15, avoid ambiguity in the result. All sonifications used to 16,17,18,19] and by Blattner et al. [2],[6,8],[22]. Two convey meaning should be perceptually based, types of auditory presentation were developed: Auditory perception is much less studied than visual earcons and auditory icons. Both represent an object perception, we are very far from a full understanding, by use of a sound burst or sequence of sounds that and many of the psychological results are meaningfully identify an event or object. Earcons use contradictory. Only in recent years are Gestalt musical listening as basis while auditory icons use principles that have proved effective in visual ‘everyday’ sounds, exploiting the familiar associations cognition being confirmed or adapted to hearing [44]. we use: when identifying the source of a particular Both musical and everyday listening can sound in everyday life. contribute to sonic designs. While everyday listening is Progress is now being made in mappings and based on our ability to recognise sound sources, there programming environments for use of sound in multi- are few techniques that can synthesise natural sounds. variate data presentation [38,393 [23,25] [5] especially They can, however, be simulated. Aspects of everyday where graphical display is used in parallel with audio listening are important both in the representation of signals [38] [41] [37] [ll] and in related work in the events and in recognition of different sources in area of Scientific Visualisation [l] [3][32] 128-l. 3D multiple-stream sound production. There is also a sound is expected to play an important role in the strong case for use of Music to represent information. presentation of multi-dimensional objects [42, 431. Music is actually a means of communication [21], The advantages and disadvantages of using sound although most of us are not aware of it. Numbers and can be summarised thus: mathematical relations are used to this day as tools for Advantages: Sound is an alternative representation for composition. All this can be used to communicate data certain types of information which are difficult to in a manner that can be learned by most. represent graphically; it provides relief for the overloaded visual channel; it promotes a sense of Perspectives on the Use of Sound as a engagement; it can be used in monitoring situations Supportive Tool in Computer Applications outwith the visual field; it is a very advanced human sense for detection; it allows a limited possibility of Whilst sonification research has advanced in passive perception; it improves memory support; we recent years, there is need for more research before naturally interact with sound in everyday situations, the field evolves into a well established area in and it improves access for visually impaired users. human/computer interaction. Some frameworks, Disadvantages: Insufficient research in auditory languages, and equipment are available, but these interpretation of complex sounds makes it difficult to resources can only be developed to full potentiality design proper sonifications; ambiguity may occur once the requirements of more applications have been when a mapping is generalised; masking is a serious established. Techniques have to be tested under a problem; there are difficulties in testing techniques by wider range of conditions. The best way of proving the properly controlled experiments; and training is utility of sound is by using it. More research is usually necessary. necessary to measure the extent to which sound Some of the difficulties in working with sound are improves performance. Hardware and software for also shared by graphical representations, but sound sound manipulation is still limited. [38, 391 describe perception has properties very different from visual hardware (Capybara) and software (Kyma) systems to perception. In particular, sounds usually represent support sound generation and sonification in real time. temporal structures while spatial structures are best The system has evolved over recent years and represented visually. The mapping of data to sound, represents a powerful tool to generate sound functions however, can encompass both aspects (temporal and from a programming environment, using an object spatial). Masking in hearing is also more likely to oriented graphical language. occur for simple structures than in vision. The Many workstations now come with good quality 111 Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Visualization Conference (VISUALIZATION '95) 1070-2385/95 $10.00 © 1995 IEEE sound built-in, offering a low-cost