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Data Sonification: A Prehistory

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Sonification Design

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

The idea that sound can reliably convey information predates the modern era. The term data sonification has evolved along with its applications and usefulness in various disciplines. It can be broadly described as the creation and study of the aural representation of information, or the use of sound to convey non-linguistic information. As a field of contemporary enquiry and design practice, it is young, interdisciplinary and evolving; existing in parallel to the field of data visualization, which is concerned with the creation and study of the visual representation of information. Sonification and visualization techniques have many applications in “humanizing” information, particularly when applied to large and complex sets of data. Drawing on ancient practices such as auditing, and the use of information messaging in music, this chapter provides an historical understanding of how sound and its representational deployment in communicating information has changed. In doing so, it aims to encourage critical awareness of some of the socio-cultural as well as technical assumptions often adopted in sonifying data, especially those that have been developed in the context of Western music of the last half-century or so. Whilst acknowledging the Eurocentricity of the enquiry, there is no suggestion that the ideas discussed do not have wider applicability.

Yasyāmataṁ tasya mataṁ; mataṁ yasya na veda saḥ [“One who (thinks he) knows not, knows; one who (thinks he) knows, knows not.” (Muktananda 1972)].

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The first international conference was held in 1992 (Kramer 1994a).

  2. 2.

    As Jonathan Sterne indicates, while there is a vast array of literature on the history and philosophy of sound, it is without some kind of overarching, shared sensibility about what constitutes the history of sound, sound culture, or sound studies (Sterne 2003). It is not the purpose of this chapter to remedy that!

  3. 3.

    Truth, as in the Heideggerian meaning of the term alétheia: a non-propositional unconcealment. This concept of ‘truth ’ takes on the dynamic structure of uncovering that is disclosive rather than propositional or judgmental.

  4. 4.

    A comprehensive survey of increasingly nuanced arguments is outside the confines of this work. In its notes and bibliography, The Audible Past Stern (2003) lists a significant amount of literature in English on the topic since the Enlightenment . Over a longer historical timeframe, Veit Erlmann’s, Reason and Resonance traces historical changes in the understanding of the relationship between developing conceptions of sound and hearing physiology (Erlmann 2010).

  5. 5.

    Resulting, presumably, from the superiority of the omni-directionality of hearing in visually-obscured environments.

  6. 6.

    Literally, the hearing of accounts from the Latin auditus.

  7. 7.

    Known generally as the “music of the spheres”. As Gaius Plinius Secundus observed, “…occasionally Pythagoras draws on the theory of music, and designates the distance between the Earth and the Moon as a whole tone, that between the Moon and Mercury as a semitone, …” the seven tones thus producing the so-called diapason, i.e. a universal harmony (Pliny [77AD] 1938). Ptolemy  and Plato also wrote about this practice.

  8. 8.

    Xenakis (1971, 183–189) has a more detailed explanation of Aristoxenus’ modal thinking.

  9. 9.

    The following quote from Vitruvius ‘De architectura’ (Book V Chap. 4) contains a paraphrase of a then extant fragment of a treatise on meter in writings on music that i attributable to Aristoxenus.

  10. 10.

    This somewhat convenient simplification of the role of music and musical instruments in the Middle Ages is more evenly discussed in Grout (1960).

  11. 11.

    The pun is intended.

  12. 12.

    This figure was calculated by combining literacy rates derived from Roser and Ortiz-Ospina (2018) and population demographics estimated by Urlanis (1941).

  13. 13.

    Literally “cuttings” (from the Bible ), from the Greek perikopē meaning a “section” or “cutting”.

  14. 14.

    The isorhythmic motets of Guillaume de Machaut and John Dunstable , for example, in which each voice in a canon is in a different rhythm.

  15. 15.

    Of special interest, is the extravagantly manneristic and harmonically experimental music of Carlo Gesualdo (1566–1613) which was also encouraged by the visionary experimental composer and music theorist Nicola Vicentino (1511–1575/6). For a fuller discussion, see Brown (1976). Also of interest is the composition of Eye Music, in which the use of black and white musical notations was used to suggest darkness and light; sadness and joy (Einstein 1949). See Sect. 1.7.

  16. 16.

    The word has been in British English since the sixteenth-century, meaning “to lightly strike” and is now used to describe quick speech or repartee (ACOD 1992). Since the late 20th century the term shuochang is used in China to refer to rap music (Wikipedia 2019).

  17. 17.

    Literally “in the manner of the chapel” that is without instruments, thus emphasizing the point made in Sect. 1.4 concerning the Church’s banning of musical instruments in worship.

  18. 18.

    Some such motifs have become well known. Two such are J.S. Bach’s “B-A-C-Bb” (The note Bb is represented by the letter ‘H’ in German), and Beethoven’s “Fate” motif from the opening of his Fifth Symphony.

  19. 19.

    The evolution of the late Middle English term motive from the Old French motif (adjective used as a noun) has its origin in the Latin motivus, from movere ‘to move’ (ACOD 1992).

  20. 20.

    The connection between Freud and Schoenberg and their attempts to “organize the delirium” (as composer Pierre Boulez was known to have described it) relies on an affinity between Freud’s structural model of the mind and Schoenberg’s method, whose rules are based in the principles of symbolic logic, even if applied unconsciously. See Carpenter (2018).

  21. 21.

    Principally Arnold Schoenberg , Anton Webern and Alban Berg .

  22. 22.

    There are far too many composers to mention in this context as the techniques were employed and taught by numerous composers across the Western world . Two publications were influential: Die Reihe (Eimert and Stockhausen [1957] 1968, 1968) in English and German, and Serial Composition and Atonality (Perle 1962).

  23. 23.

    As described in the 1913 manifesto The Art of Noises (Russolo 1916).

  24. 24.

    Schaeffer’s work is discussed in more detail in Chaps. 3 and 4.

  25. 25.

    Studio für elektronische Musik des Westdeutschen Rundfunk (Studio for Electronic Music of the West German Radio). Following a brief period in Schaeffer’s studio in 1952, Karlheinz Stockhausen joined Gottfried Michal Koenig and Herbert Eimert at the WDR. While the early electronic music he produced there employed purely electronically produced sounds (e.g. Studie I and Studie II), Stockhausen soon felt the need to work with a continuum between electronic and human vocal sounds (e.g. Gesang der Jünglinge in 1956) and by extension, the inclusion of materials other than sounds produced purely by electronic means (Stockhausen 1964). Electronic music from the Cologne studio thereby moved closer conceptually to the musique concrète from Paris.

  26. 26.

    Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète, Club d ‘Essai de la Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française at RTF.

  27. 27.

    Groupe de Recherches Musicales.

  28. 28.

    This musical style in also known as or generative- or procedural- or automated-composition. One assumes that today such compositions are composed, and perhaps realized, with the aid of computers, but this is not necessarily the case. Many of the calculations for Iannis Xenakis early works, such as Metastaseis (1953–54) and Pithoprakta (1955–56), were made using a hand-held calculator (personal communication). Using dice to randomly generate music from pre-composed options (Musikalisches Würfelspiel) was quite popular throughout Western Europe in the 18th century. (Wikipedia: Musikalisches Würfelspiel). Code can be written post mortem, however: Witness that for Wolfgang Mozart’s German dances (Saunter 2018).

  29. 29.

    Xenakis met Schaeffer in 1954 and composed five major pieces of musique concrète during the period (Gibson and Solomos 2013).

  30. 30.

    Centre d’Etudes de Mathématique et Automatique Musicales (Center for Mathematical and Automatic Musical Studies).

  31. 31.

    In gumbo cuisine, the ingredients are added—a little bit of this, a little of that—so that they do not meld together but remain sensorially distinct, yielding a ‘rainbow’ of flavors, aromas and textures rather than a uniform blend.

  32. 32.

    This idea is integral to many of the works of a number of contemporary composers, including Mauricio Kagel , Luciano Berio , Brian Ferneyhough and Iannis Xenakis .

  33. 33.

    Discussed in detail in Chaps. 3 and 4.

  34. 34.

    Homophones are similar sounds arising from different causes (for example, the sound of audience clapping and fir). Homonyms are a special case: different words with the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings, for example, “weather”, “whether” and “wether”.

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  1. Department of Audio Arts and Acoustics, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Prof. David Worrall

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Correspondence to David Worrall .

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Worrall, D. (2019). Data Sonification: A Prehistory. In: Sonification Design. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01497-1_1

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