Hello friends,

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

This is our highly irregular newsletter, which you're getting because you signed up for it -- likely via loudnumbers.net. It's free to receive, but if you need more calm in your inbox then there's a quick and easy unsubscribe link lurking in the email footer.

Did you know you can hire us at Loud Numbers? We've done all kinds of projects, for all kinds of budgets, in the last few years -- ranging from art to business to science to education. Stuff we love to work on includes commissions, mentoring, sound design, collaborations, consultancy, workshops, and more. We're getting booked up in the second half of 2026, so if you've got an idea you'd like to talk about then drop us a line sooner rather than later at hello@loudnumbers.net.

The Seinfeld Chronicles

Back in 2024, dataviz guru Andy Kirk approached us with an exciting idea. He was creating a new digital edition of his classic project The Seinfeld Chronicles -- an enormous deep dive into the TV show Seinfeld, and a genuine labour of love. Would it be possible to add some kind of sound to it, too? We had free rein to explore. What a dream.

Two years (and lots of work) later, the site is finally finished. It's a thing of beauty -- with a fresh design by Andy and developer Anne-Marie Dufour. It's newly interactive, enhanced with sound and video, and somehow even more epically massive than before.

Andy wanted to capture the musical qualities of Seinfeld -- the exquisite plot pacing and comic timing, the rhythm of the laughs, yada yada yada. So he asked us to sound-design the whole site, adding playful audio effects like the slap bass theme that plays in sync with the title bars as they animate in -- one for each of the show's nine seasons. But the biggest and most fun part of the project was this: we used Andy's painstakingly hand-collected data to build a data-to-music engine for every one of the 176 original episodes.

The music takes its cue from the Seinfeld theme tune. Each character gets their own instrumental part: the iconic slap bass for Jerry, jazzy keyboard harmonies for Elaine, wonky saxophone for George, and suitably chaotic horn stabs for Kramer. Other character types (friends, romantic partners, and so on) get percussion of various flavours. There are three versions of each character clip, from mild to wild, depending on how many laughs the character was pulling from the audience in that scene. Every type of location has its own sound too: the diner is represented by a dropped coffee cup, the home of a character is Jerry's door buzzer, and so on.

We then layered everything scene by scene to create 176 unique music tracks, one for each episode. Pick one, scroll through, and listen to the rhythm and interplay between different characters and locations.

You can find the Seinfeld Chronicles here, the episode explorer here, and we've also written up some behind-the-scenes details on the Loud Numbers website here.

Workshop plans

This spring we ran two "Create Your First Sonification" workshops and they were a big success! A grand total of 20 people created their first sonification with us, and we were so impressed by their collective creativity and inspiration. If you were one of the attendees, congratulations.

If you weren't, but you'd like to be, then good news: we're planning to run more workshops in the autumn. We'll probably run Create Your First Sonification at least once, and we're also working on a more advanced course called Storytelling for Sonification which will dive deeper into crafting stories that resonate with audiences using data and sound.

We don't have dates for these workshops nailed down quite yet, but we'll announce it in this newsletter when we do, so you don't need to do anything. If you do want to do something, then you could fill out this quick form which we're using to collect info about which courses we should prioritise developing.

If you have any questions, hit reply -- otherwise sit tight and we'll be back in touch in a month or two with dates that you can sign up for.

Sonic Flows

Duncan was part of a team from the Decibels sonification community (see below) which won third prize in a creative datajam run by the Hubbard Brook experimental forest in the United States. The work, called Sonic Flows, visualises and sonifies a year of precipitation, soil moisture, and streamflow data from the forest. 

The team was made up of Ben Dexter Cooley (sonification, sound design, field recordings), Duncan Geere (design, visualization, development), Max Graze (sonification concept), Micah Lewis (data analysis), and Simon Rydén (generative visuals).

We won a Sonification Award and we're going to ICAD

Big thanks to the judges at the Data Sonification Awards for awarding our Sonification Machine project among the winners this year! The Sonification Machine is a small physical appliance that connects to eight different data feeds and sonifies what it gets back, allowing you to create a custom blend of music generated by everything from temperature and cloud cover to solar wind and the current orbital position of the International Space Station.

If you'd like to see the Sonification Machine in person, then you're in luck - Duncan will be taking it to the Bielefeld hub at the ICAD sonification conference this year, where he'll also be performing a 15-minute taster version of our On Standby project. If you're attending, then be sure to come and say hi!

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.

• Edil Baiyzbekov has built a project called the Sound of War which visualises and sonifies the ongoing conflict that Russia is pursuing in Ukraine. It's a powerful work.

• Guardian journalist Nick Evershed has come up with a collection of design guidelines for sonifications aimed at people who are vision impaired.

• Rubin Observatory has put together a "skysynth" that sonifies what you can see through its telescopes.

• Trainjazz is a jazz combo played in real time by every active NYC subway train.

• Sonde is an intriguing-looking sonification script for the Monome Norns music computer, which sonifies satellite imagery of the world.

• Aeolian is a fun web-based sonification of a high-altitude weather balloon.

• A team at the University of Colorado is running an experiment looking at whether people can identify plasma waves through sonification. Learn more and sign up.

• Taylor Nuttall built an immersive installation that sonifies constellations. Get a taste in this YouTube video.

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 or courses to share. In the meantime, don't hesitate to hit reply if you have any questions, want to work with us, or if you want to share something sonification-adjacent that you've made.

See you soon.

- Miriam and Duncan