“This song emulates a ride on the New York City Subway’s 2 Train through three boroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx. At any given time, the quantity and dynamics of the song’s instruments correspond to the median household income of that area. Read more about the composition and process of creating this song here: datadrivendj.com/tracks/subway…Continue Reading Two Trains – Sonification of Income Inequality on the NYC Subway
Fabricmachine – sound and textiles
Another instance of taking the physical or visual properties of a material and converting them to sound. FABRIC MACHINE Installation and performative Instrument: Two fabric loops, driven by a motor, create a division in space. Light sensors measure the opacity of the textile; The way all pieces are sewed together for a fabric sound track…Continue Reading Fabricmachine – sound and textiles
Soundweaving: Artist Converts Folk Embroidery Patterns into Paper Scores for Music Boxes
Soundweaving is a recent project by Hungarian design student Zsanett Szirmay that turns patterns used in traditional folk embroidery into music by translating them into laser-cut punch cards fed through a custom music box. The project was partially inspired by actual paper cards used in some weaving looms to easily reproduce patterns for various textiles….Continue Reading Soundweaving: Artist Converts Folk Embroidery Patterns into Paper Scores for Music Boxes
This Man Can Hear Wi-Fi
Writer Frank Swain has been able to hear Wi-Fi signals for the past week, and no, it’s not “the result of a sudden mutation or years of transcendental meditation,” he says. Swain wears a special hearing device that gives him the ability to translate wireless frequencies into sounds. Alongside sound artist Daniel Jones, Swain created…Continue Reading This Man Can Hear Wi-Fi
Extracting audio from visual information
Algorithm recovers speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag filmed through soundproof glass. Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of…Continue Reading Extracting audio from visual information
ALMA Music Box: melody of a Dying Star
http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/musicbox/ ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is a state-of-the-art radio telescope developed and operated by 20 countries and territories in East Asia, Europa and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. Connecting 66 parabola antennas deployed in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, ALMA works as a giant radio telescope with a diameter…Continue Reading ALMA Music Box: melody of a Dying Star
Patrick Feaster – Pictures of Sound
Another great resource related to sonification: This video is derived from a slideshow that was presented by Patrick Feaster at the 2011 ARSC Conference: “Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio: 980-1980” is a book/CD set produced by Patrick Feasterhttp://www.dust-digital.com/feaster/…Continue Reading Patrick Feaster – Pictures of Sound
The Singing Comet
Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. RPC principal investigator Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, head of Space Physics and Space Sensorics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, tells us more. RPC consists of five instruments on the Rosetta orbiter that provide a wide variety of complementary information about…Continue Reading The Singing Comet
Earthquake Sound of the Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan earthquake (Zhigang Peng)
This webpage contains earthquake “sounds” created from seismic recordings around the world generated by the 2011/03/11 Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan earthquake. They provide a unique way for us to listen to the vibration of the Earth that is otherwise inaudible to us, and to decipher the complicated earthquake physics and triggering processes….Continue Reading Earthquake Sound of the Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan earthquake (Zhigang Peng)
Listen to the stars – Wanda L. Diaz Merce
“In the spring of 2011, Wanda L. Diaz Merced spent time at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, doing research for her doctoral dissertation at Glasgow University, Scotland. Wanda, who is blind, has been interested in sonification as a data analysis tool: how sonification might help scientists, even those who can see, detect patterns in large…Continue Reading Listen to the stars – Wanda L. Diaz Merce
Listen to Wikipedia
Listen to the sound of Wikipedia’s recent changes feed. Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for…Continue Reading Listen to Wikipedia
Ebru Kurbak – Tunable Touch
Tunaeble Touch provides an alternative configuration to what the majority of us experience as the material world. To that end, it employs the sense of touch, a sense that we use for verification especially when we doubt our vision. The sense of touch is often taken as affirmatory and undeceiving, as it grounds and comforts…Continue Reading Ebru Kurbak – Tunable Touch
Scientific approach to the soundscape with visual tools
The soundscape, in depth: http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/28/6071399/scientists-are-recording-the-sound-of-the-whole-planet…Continue Reading Scientific approach to the soundscape with visual tools
Living Symphonies
Living Symphonies is a musical composition that grows in the same way as a forest ecosystem. Portraying the thriving activity of the forest’s wildlife, plants and atmospheric conditions, it creates an ever-changing symphony heard amongst the forest itself. Composed and realised by James Bulley and Daniel Jones, Living Symphonies will be taking place across four…Continue Reading Living Symphonies
#tweetscapes
It’s unclear if this project still exists, but the idea is interesting, to make audible the twitter traffic in a specific geographic location. The country in question is Germany. from Heavylistening http://heavylistening.com: #tweetscapes converts all German tweets into sounds and images – live and in real-time. — #tweetscapes aims to add a sensual element…Continue Reading #tweetscapes
Sound and the Weather – Sonification
Our culture is cluttered with examples of quantitative and qualitative made visual. Flip through any New York Times or Wall Street Journal and you will find graphs, charts, and maps that visually explain anything from weather patterns to death tolls. We are in an age of mapping. While the history of mapping and visualization extends…Continue Reading Sound and the Weather – Sonification
This American Life – episode110 – Mapping (mapping hearing)
12min Jack Hitt visits Toby Lester, who has mapped all the ambient sounds in his world: the hum of the heater, the fan on the computer. (12 minutes) https://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/110/mapping?act=2#act-2…Continue Reading This American Life – episode110 – Mapping (mapping hearing)