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Science by Ear. an Interdisciplinary Approach to Sonifying Scientific Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics - IEM, University for Music and Dramatic Arts Graz Science By Ear. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sonifying Scientific Data Alberto de Campo Dissertation Graz, February 23, 2009 Supervisor: Prof Dr Robert H¨oldrich (IEM/KUG), Prof Dr Curtis Roads (MAT/UCSB) ii Science By Ear. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sonifying Scientific Data Author: Alberto de Campo Contact: [email protected] Supervisor: Prof Dr Robert H¨oldrich (IEM/KUG), Prof Dr Curtis Roads (MAT/UCSB) Contact: [email protected], [email protected] Dissertation Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics - IEM, University for Music and Dramatic Arts Graz Inffeldgasse 10, A-8020 Graz, Austria February 23, 2009, 211 pages Abstract Sonification of Scientific Data is intrinsically interdisciplinary: It requires collaboration between experts in the respective scientific domains, in psychoacoustics, in artistic design of synthetic sound, and in working with appropriate programming environments. The SonEnvir project hosted at IEM Graz put this view into practice: in four domain sciences, sonification designs for current research questions were realised. This dissertation contributes to sonification research in three aspects: The body of sonification designs realised within the SonEnvir context is described, which may be reused in sonification research in different ways. The software framework built with and for these sonification designs is presented, which supports fluid experimentation with evolving sonification designs. A theoretical model for sonification design work, the Sonification Design Space Map, was synthesised based the analysis of this body of sonification designs (and a few selected others). This model allows systematic reasoning about the process of creating sonifica- tion designs, and provides concepts for analysing and categorising existing sonifications designs more systematically. Deutsche Zusammenfassung - German abstract Die Sonifikation von wissenschaftlichen Daten ist intrinsisch interdisziplin¨ar:Sie verlangt Zusammenarbeit zwischen ExpertInnen in den jeweiligen wissenschaftlichen Gebieten, in Psychoakustik, in der k¨unstlerischenGestaltung von synthetischem Klang, und in der Arbeit mit geeigneten Programmierumgebungen. Das Projekt SonEnvir, das am IEM Graz stattfand, hat diese Sichtweise in die Praxis umgesetzt: in vier wissenschaftlichen Gebieten (domain sciences) wurden Sonifikations-Designs zu aktuellen Forschungsfragen realisiert. iii Diese Dissertation tr¨agtdrei Aspekte zur Sonifikationforschung bei: Der Korpus der im Kontext von SonEnvir entwickelten Sonification Designs wird detail- liert beschrieben; diese Designs k¨onnen in der Forschungsgemeinschaft in verschiedener Weise Weiterverwendung finden. Das Software-Framework, das f¨urund mit diesen Designs gebaut wurde, wird beschrieben; es erlaubt fliessendes Experimentieren in der Entwicklung von Sonifikationsdesigns. Ein theoretisches Modell f¨urdie Gestaltung von Sonifikationen, die Sonification Design Space Map, wurde auf Basis der Analysen dieser (und ausgew¨ahlteranderer) Designs synthetisiert. Dieses Modell erlaubt systematisches Nachdenken (reasoning) ¨uber den Gestaltungsprozess von Sonifikationsdesigns, und bietet Konzepte f¨urdie Analyse und Kategorisierung existierender Sonifikationsdesigns an. Keywords: Sonification, Sonification Theory, Perceptualisation, Interdisciplinary Re- search, Interactive Software Development, Just In Time Programming iv Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank Marianne Egger de Campo for designing several versions of the XENAKIS proposal with me - a sonification project with European partners that eventually became SonEnvir. Then, I would like to thank my research partners in the SonEnvir project: Christian Day´e,Christopher Frauenberger, Kathi Vogt and Annette Wallisch, without whom this work would not have been possible. I would like to thank Robert H¨oldrichfor his collaboration on the grant proposals, and for his contribution to the EEG realtime sonification; and Gerhard Eckel for leading the SonEnvir project for most of its lifetime. I would like to thank the participants of the Science By Ear workshop, who have been very open to a very particular experimental setup in interdisciplinary collaboration, especially for the discussions which eventually led to formulating the concept of the Sonification Design Space Map. A very special thank you is in order for the brave people who were willing to try programming sonification designs just-in-time within this workshop: Till Bovermann, Christopher Frauenberger, Thomas Musil, Sandra Pauletto, and Julian Rohrhuber. For the Spin Models, the following Science By Ear participants also worked on a sonifica- tion design for the Ising model (besides the SonEnvir team): Thomas Hermann, Harald Markum, Julian Rohrhuber and Tony Stockman. Concerning the background in theo- retical physics, we would also like to thank Christof Gattringer, Christian Bernd Lang, Leopold Mathelitsch and Ulrich Hohenester. For the piece Navegar, I would to thank Peter Jakober for researching the detailed timeline, and Marianne Egger de Campo for suggesting the Gini index as an interesting variable. Alberto de Campo Graz, February 23, 2009 Contents 1 Introduction1 1.1 Motivation.................................2 1.2 Scope....................................3 1.3 Methodology................................4 1.4 Overview of this thesis...........................5 2 Psychoacoustics, Perception, Cognition, and Interaction6 2.1 Psychoacoustics..............................6 2.2 Auditory perception and memory.....................8 2.3 Cognition, action, and embodiment.................... 10 2.4 Perception, perceptualisation and interaction............... 11 2.5 Mapping, mixing and matching metaphors................ 12 3 Sonification Systems 13 3.1 Background................................ 14 3.1.1 A short history of sonification................... 14 3.1.2 A taxonomy of intended sonification uses............. 17 3.2 Sonification toolkits, frameworks, applications.............. 18 3.2.1 Historic systems.......................... 18 3.2.2 Current systems.......................... 19 3.3 Music and sound programming environments............... 20 3.4 Design of a new system.......................... 23 3.4.1 Requirements of an ideal sonification environment........ 23 3.4.2 Platform choice.......................... 24 3.5 SonEnvir software - Overall scope..................... 24 3.5.1 Software framework........................ 25 v vi 3.5.2 Framework structure........................ 25 3.5.3 The Data model.......................... 26 4 Project Background 29 4.1 The SonEnvir project........................... 29 4.1.1 Partner institutions and people.................. 29 4.1.2 Project flow............................ 30 4.1.3 Publications............................ 31 4.2 Science By Ear - An interdisciplinary workshop.............. 32 4.2.1 Workshop design.......................... 32 4.2.2 Working methods......................... 32 4.2.3 Evaluation............................. 33 4.3 ICAD 2006 concert............................. 34 4.3.1 Listening to the Mind Listening.................. 34 4.3.2 Global Music - The World by Ear................. 34 5 General Sonification Models 37 5.1 The Sonification Design Space Map (SDSM)............... 38 5.1.1 Introduction............................ 38 5.1.2 Background............................ 38 5.1.3 The Sonification Design Space Map................ 41 5.1.4 Refinement by moving on the map................ 43 5.1.5 Examples from the 'Science by Ear' workshop........... 47 5.1.6 Conclusions............................ 50 5.1.7 Extensions of the SDS map.................... 51 5.2 Data dimensions.............................. 52 5.2.1 Data categorisation........................ 52 5.2.2 Data organisation......................... 52 5.2.3 Task Data analysis - LoadFlow data................ 53 5.3 Synthesis models.............................. 56 5.3.1 Sonification strategies....................... 57 5.3.2 Continuous Data Representation................. 57 5.3.3 Discrete Data Representation................... 61 5.3.4 Parallel streams.......................... 62 vii 5.3.5 Model Based Sonification..................... 63 5.4 User, task, interaction models....................... 64 5.4.1 Background - related disciplines.................. 64 5.4.2 Music interfaces and musical instruments............. 65 5.4.3 Interactive sonification....................... 66 5.4.4 "The Humane Interface" and sonification............. 67 5.4.5 Goals, tasks, skills, context.................... 69 5.4.6 Two examples........................... 71 5.5 Spatialisation Model............................ 74 5.5.1 Speaker-based sound rendering................. 75 5.5.2 Headphones........................... 77 5.5.3 Handling speaker imperfections................. 80 6 Examples from Sociology 81 6.1 FRR Log Player.............................. 82 6.1.1 Technical background....................... 82 6.1.2 Analysis steps........................... 84 6.1.3 Sonification design......................... 86 6.1.4 Interface design.......................... 87 6.1.5 Evaluation for the research context................ 88 6.1.6 Evaluation in SDSM terms.................... 88 6.2 'Wahlges¨ange' - 'Election Songs'..................... 90 6.2.1 Interface and sonification design.................. 91 6.2.2 Evaluation............................. 93 6.3 Social Data Explorer............................ 94 6.3.1 Background..........................
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