Hello friends,

We're Miriam and Duncan, the duo behind Loud Numbers - the studio that turns data into sound. 

A big hello to everyone who signed up for the newsletter after hearing Miriam appear on Nick Grimshaw's show on BBC 6Music earlier this week. If you missed it, we grabbed a recording - which is well worth a listen if only to hear Nick saying that our Hold the Line sonification of Canadian wildfire data "goes off". You also get to hear Miriam talk about her OddityViz project, and the importance of taking a human approach to gathering data.

Two quick reminders before we get started with the newsletter today. First, you can hire Loud Numbers to work for you - we've done all kinds of projects, for all kinds of budgets, in the last few years - ranging from commercial to scientific to artistic to educational. Stuff we love to work on includes commissions, mentoring, sound design, collaborations, consultancy, workshops, and more. We've got some availability in 2026, so if you've got an idea you'd like to talk about then drop us a line at hello@loudnumbers.net.

Second, you're getting this email because you subscribed to our newsletter, likely via loudnumbers.net. If you ever want out, there's an unsubscribe link lurking in the email footer, ever-ready for your click.

The Sonification Machine

Last year, we created a wooden box that sits on your shelf and pulls invisible data from the world around us to compose a strange, lo-fi, ambient soundscape. We called it "The Sonification Machine".

We exhibited The Sonification Machine at Malmö's Gallery Weekend in September 2025, where it got a great reception. But we wanted to share it with a wider audience, so we created a short video that showcases what it looks and sounds like. You can watch that here:

We loved working on this, and we're quite interested in creating more physical objects that produce data-driven sound. Maybe a guitar pedal where you run your signal through some kind of live data source? Look out for more on this in the future...

Create Your First Sonification - a Workshop

Big news. We've done a handful of workshops in collaboration with others in the past, but we keep getting asked about when the next one is, so we're going to start organising our own - and the first one will be on 20 March 2026, from 1300 to 1730 UTC (check what that is in your timezone here).

In our first workshop, which will be held over Zoom, we'll take you through the process of creating your first sonification - from gathering the data, to mapping it to sonic parameters, to creating a short piece of music from it. It's a beginners course - you won't need any specific musical or technical skills, just a desire to create something and share it.

The cost is £140 (full-rate), or £90 (low-income). For that price, you get a four-hour workshop where you'll make your first sonification, a recording of the workshop, and a lil "Loud Numbers guide to sonification" digital zine. You can ask whatever questions you like. Use this link to sign up.

We're mostly doing this because we love sonification and want to see more people doing it, so this is just the first of several workshops we have planned - future topics we're considering for more advanced workshops include "music theory for sonification", "storytelling for sonification", "sound design for sonification", and maybe even "sonification with live data". If you'd like to help us shape those workshops, or have something else you'd like us to give a workshop on, then fill out this survey. Otherwise, here's the link again to sign up for our 20 March workshop.

The Sound of Detention's Economies

Over the last year or so, we've been advising sound artist Anna de Mutiis, as she and her collaborator Pilo Moreno created a sonification work that traces the economies of profit and exploitation inside Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre across a single 24-hour cycle in 2016. That work is now published, and it's called 39 Alpha, 39 Bravo: The Sound of Detention's Economies. Here's how Anna explains it:

Built from financial data, first-person narration, and sound design, the work renders audible the daily income of three actors within the detention system: a company director, a custody officer, and a detained worker. By compressing one day into a four-minute loop, the track exposes extreme income disparities while reflecting the monotony, disorientation, and loss of agency that define life in indefinite immigration detention. Sound choices are led by lived experience, transforming statistics into rhythm, texture, and repetition.

It's a really powerful piece, which you should definitely listen to. You can also check out this interview with Anna and Pilo, where they discuss the artistic choices they made in the track and what they want listeners to take away from it.

Elsewhere in Sonification

This is an originally short but increasingly lengthy round-up of sonification news, links, and other stuff that's caught our eye in the last few months.

• Top of our list today is the Data Sonification Toolkit - a fantastic resource for exploring sonification, created by Aura Walmer

• Speaking of Aura, she also performed alongside several of our other US-based sonification friends at Living Data - a live sonification concert at Whitman College in Washington, USA. We wish we could have been there 😭

• Max Graze has published Kimchi Choir - a combination of sonification and data physicalization, where microbial fermentation is turned into a miniature vocal ensemble. Max has an upcoming course called Fermenting Data which looks fantastic.

• Ben Dexter-Cooley has published Asteroid Tones - a live sonification of asteroids passing the Earth. Strong Eno vibes - you could listen to it for hours.

• Helios, by Haidar Zasralla, is a "solar windchime", played by the solar wind.

• Alan Partridge (yes, that Alan Partridge) has designed a biosonification garden in Norwich (!!!???)

• On the Memory of Trees, by Scott Wilson, sonifies epigenetic data from a research project at the University of Birmingham. More info in this article.

• Anna Dowell, Muhammad Imran, Lauren Scott and Finn Heathfield created a lovely sonification of live rainfall data across Britain, in a piece called Soundbath.

• Pixasonics is an image sonification toolbox for Python, created by Bálint Laczkó.

• Tiziana Alocci created Datasonica - a sonification of the environment in and around Building 59 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in San Francisco.

• Ke Er Amy Zhang, David Grellscheid and Laura Garrison have written a paper on "data melodification", where data is mapped onto musical parameters like melody, harmony and rhythm.

• Marshall Shepherd at Forbes wrote an article on "how climate change sounds", referencing the work of a sonification artist named Harlan Brothers.

• SynthEO, created by JP Carrascal, is a data sonification tool that turns satellite imagery into "sonic landscapes".

• Morgan V created this visualization and sonification of global biomass distribution - the first sonification we've seen featuring a log scale.

Spotted or created something we should feature here? Hit reply and tell us about it. 

Decibels

Dipping your toes into sonification? We help run a friendly and welcoming sonification community over at decibels.community. There are spaces to ask questions, share your work, find an audience, and exchange tips. You can also just join and hang out. Go sign up here.

We'll be back in your inboxes again when we've got new work to share (we have a couple of projects allllmost over the line, so hopefully it won'. In the meantime, don't hesitate to hit reply if you have any questions, or want to share something sonification-adjacent that you made.

• Miriam and Duncan