How can the relationship between media infrastructures and the economies of noise foster the development of a sonospheric art practice? Media infrastructures are the material backbone of the Internet. Such sites underpin the digitally hyperconnected world, but as material assemblages are also imbricated in complex and divisive ecological, environmental, economic and affective practices. This thesis identifies a lack of sonic discourse within the body of growing critical art practice researching the field of media infrastructures, and will contribute to the field of sound studies by arguing, and defining a methodology, for listening sonospherically (Oliveros, 2011). Through six original artistic projects researching the presence of media infrastructures, the thesis will argue for the ‘sonospheric investigation’ as a methodology to engage in the politics of such divisive spaces. Vibrant, multisensory, and multimodal, the sonospheric investigation will be demonstrated as a novel approach for field-based research of spatial and technologically mediated environments. Each original artistic project develops what I call the ‘sonopalette’, a toolkit of field research methods which reveal the being of sounds, vibrations, noises and affective vibratory impulses. These methods include – but are not exhaustive of – field recording, oral history interviews, documentary filmmaking, deep listening, vibration sensors, electromagnetic sensors, data scraping and machine learning. A sonospheric engagement with space and place can generate new connections between human, nonhuman and nonorganic bodies that further our understanding of the conditions of the Anthropocene. Working with the scholarly critique of theorists, research by artists, and my own original practice, the thesis will demonstrate that the mixed registers of a sonospheric investigation are a generative area of research for sound studies scholars, artists, and spatial practitioners concerned with the localised impact of global digital material culture.

Vibrating the Web: Sonospheric Studies of Media Infrastructure Ecologies

Sonification has the potential to communicate a variety of data types to listeners including not just cognitive information, but also emotions and aesthetics. The goal of our dancer sonification project is to “sonify emotions as well as motions” of a dance performance via musical sonification. To this end, we developed and evaluated sonification strategies for adding a layer of emotional mappings to data sonification. Experiment 1 developed and evaluated four musical sonifications (i.e., sin-ification, MIDI-fication, melody module, and melody and arrangement module) to see their emotional effects. Videos were recorded of a professional dancer interacting with each of the four musical sonification strategies. Forty-eight participants provided ratings of musicality, emotional expressivity, and sound-motion/emotion compatibility via an online survey. Results suggest that increasing musical mappings led to higher ratings for each dimension for dance-type gestures. Experiment 2 used the musical sonification framework to develop four sonification scenarios that aimed to communicate a target emotion (happy, sad, angry, and tender). Thirty participants compared four interactive sonification scenarios with four pre-composed dance choreographies featuring the same musical and gestural palettes. Both forced choice and multi-dimensional emotional evaluations were collected, as well as motion/emotion compatibility ratings. Results show that having both music and dance led to higher accuracy scores for most target emotions, compared to music or dance conditions alone. These findings can contribute to the fields of movement sonification, algorithmic music composition, as well as affective computing in general, by describing strategies for conveying emotion through sound.

/pdf/interactive-sonification-strategies-for-the-motion-and-423v46e3g0.pdf

Interactive sonification strategies for the motion and emotion of dance performances

This study aims to provide an insight into effective sonification design. There are currently no standardized design methods, allowing a creative development approach. Sonifcation has been implemented in many different applications from scientific data representation to novel styles of musical expression. This means that methods of practice can vary a greatly. The indistinct line between art and science might be the reason why sonification is still sometimes deemed by scientists with a degree of scepticism. Some wellestablished practitioners argue that it is poor design that renders sonifications meaningless, in-turn having an adverse effect on acceptance. To gain a deeper understanding about sonification research and development 11 practitioners were interviewed. They were asked about methods of sonification design and their insights. The findings present information about sonification research and development, and a variety of views regarding sonification design practice.

/pdf/investigating-effective-methods-of-designing-sonifications-1b721j2jk8.pdf

Investigating effective methods of designing sonifications

• Copyright is subject to the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, or as modified by any successor legislation • Copyright and moral rights for thesis content are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners • A copy of a thesis may be downloaded for personal non-commercial research/study without the need for permission or charge • Distribution or reproduction of thesis content in any format is not permitted without the permission of the copyright holder • When citing this work, full bibliographic details should be supplied, including the author, title, awarding institution and date of thesis

Human movement sonification for motor skill learning

The stimuli for consumption is present in everyday life, where major retail companies play a role in providing a large range of products every single day. Using soniﬁcation techniques, we present a listening experiment of Portuguese consumption habits in the course of ten days, gathered from a Portuguese retail company. We focused on how to represent this time-series data as a musical piece that would engage the listener’s attention and promote an active listening attitude, exploring the inﬂuence of aesthetics in the perception of auditory displays. Through a phenomenological approach, ten participants were interviewed to gather perceptions evoked by the piece, and how the consumption variations were un-derstood. The tested composition revealed relevant associations about the data, with the consumption context indirectly present throughout the emerging themes: from the idea of everyday life, routine and consumption peaks to aesthetic aspects as the passage of time, frenzy and consumerism. Documentary, movie imagery and soundtrack were also perceived. Several musical aspects were also mentioned, as the constant, steady rhythm and the repetitive nature of the composition, and sensations such as pleasantness, sat-isfaction, annoyance, boredom and anxiety. These collected topics convey the incessant feeling and consumption needs which portray our present society, offering new paths for comprehending musical sound perception and consequent exploration.

/pdf/a-sonification-experience-to-portray-the-sounds-of-3hj7e0vjzh.pdf

A Sonification Experience to Portray the Sounds of Portuguese Consumption Habits

Seismic events are physical vibrations induced in the earth’s crust which follow the general wave equation, making seismic data naturally conducive to audification. Simply increasing the playback rates of seismic recordings and rescaling the amplitude values to match those of digital audio samples (straight audification) can produce eerily realistic door slamming and explosion sounds. While others have produced a plethora of such audifications for international seismic events (i.e. earthquakes), the resulting sounds, while distinct to the trained auditory scientist, often lack enough variety to produce multiple instrumental timbres for the creation of engaging music for the public. This paper discusses approaches of sonification processing towards eventual musification of seismic data, beginning with straight audification and resulting in several musical compositions and new-media installations containing a variety of seismically derived timbres.

/pdf/musification-of-seismic-data-12w6ymye1j.pdf

David Rogers

Papers

Musification of Seismic Data