Sounding the Alarm, UFOs and Deutschlandfunk
Hello friends,
We’re Duncan and Miriam, and together we’re Loud Numbers - a data sonification studio. You’re getting this email because you signed up for our newsletter, probably at loudnumbers.net, and you can unsubscribe at any time with the link in the footer.
Sound the Alarm
The amazing folks at Ableton, which is basically the cooler, digital music equivalent of graphics software experts Adobe, have featured us prominently in an article about the connection between data sonification and environmental activism.
The piece, titled “Sound the Alarm”, goes in-depth on our work and the work of sound artist Marcus Maeder. It also contains a tonne of tips for getting started with sonification, and a bit about the Decibels community that we founded last year.
Here’s a little snippet:
Geere describes sonic variables, or parameters, as the different elements of sound that can be manipulated to represent data. These variables include pitch, loudness, tempo, duration, stereo position, instrument choice, harmony, and effects like delay, distortion, or reverb. The term “sonic variables” was inspired by the work of French cartographer Jacques Bertin, who developed a set of visual variables for data visualizations. “Those variables are what you control with the data,” Geere explains. “So a larger number could be a louder number, for example. Or a more important data point could have a ton of reverb on it. Or, an unusual data point could be distorted in some way.”
Read the whole article right here.
Deutschlandfunk
In the last month, we also appeared on German national radio, on the Breitband programme of Deutschlandfunk Kultur, alongside the fine folks at Sonifriday. If you’re a German speaker, tune in to hear what role we think sonification can play in data journalism (and to hear what we sound like when dubbed into German).
Spider Song
We’ve wrapped up our work on the Spider Song project that we’ve been consulting on for the Future Ecologies podcast. In collaboration with an amazing team of scientists and musicians, we’ve helped to turn genetic data on jumping spiders into a beautiful piece of generative music. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss the release of the episode later this year.
Jamie Perera Workshop
In our next Decibels community workshop, we’ll be hosting the amazing Jamie Perera who’ll be talking about his Anthropocene in C Major piece and how he uses sonification to explore objects, data, and subjects. The workshop will be held on Tuesday 9 May at 5pm UTC - find more details and sign up over on Discord.
Tools
Looking for some help getting started with sonification? Head on over to loudnumbers.net/tools - a new page on our website that features all of the tools we’ve built to make sonification easier. Right now it includes our VCV Rack module, our Norns script, and our Data Mapper notebook. Stay tuned for more.
UFO
Duncan has been working away at another script for the Norns music computer, which uses the position of the International Space Station above the Earth’s surface to modulate the tone and timbre of sound - like a giant, Ultra-low Frequency Oscillator (“ufo” for short). It’s not quite ready for release yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as the launch countdown is complete.
We’ll be at ICAD
Loud Numbers will have a small presence at the 28th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) this year. The theme is “sonification for the masses”, which is right up our street, so Duncan’s going up to Norrköping to serve on the Student ThinkTank panel. If you’re there, make sure you come and say hi!
Outlier Workshop
Our punk sonification workshop that we ran for the Data Visualization Society went down a treat, and not just because we stuffed the slides with pictures of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. Attendees created low-tech sonifications inspired by political wrongdoing, work pressure, and family photos. Check out this piece made by Victoria, sonifying the last 16 photos in her camera roll with the voice of her toddler.
Want us to run a workshop for you? Get in touch, just hit reply.
Elsewhere in Sonification
This is a short round-up of sonification news, links, and other stuff that’s caught our eye.
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A wonderful collection of graphic scores for Indian vocal music
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Chart2Music is a Javascript package that turns charts into sound
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Plants sonifying their own health
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Jordan Wirfs-Brock has been working on sonifying the dynamics of discipline disparities in education
If you’ve done something cool then let us know about it by hitting reply and we’ll include it in our next issue.
We’ll be back in touch again later this year with another update. In the meantime, drop us an email if you have anything you’d like to chat about!
- Duncan and Miriam