This website is meant to be a online resource for all the participants to the experimental of the project “Sonifying cyber-attacks in water plants”.
The project is a collaboration between the Politecnico di Milano - Design Department and SUTD - Singapore University of Technology and Design.
Here we introduce the concept of Data Sonification, providing some context and examples you can review, and the project’s idea. You will also find here the sound key to understand the sonifications you will hear during the tests.
All the information will be available to you throughout the duration of the experiment. Please feel free to contact us if you feel something’s missing.
The project is a collaboration between the Politecnico di Milano - Design Department and SUTD - Singapore University of Technology and Design.
Here we introduce the concept of Data Sonification, providing some context and examples you can review, and the project’s idea. You will also find here the sound key to understand the sonifications you will hear during the tests.
All the information will be available to you throughout the duration of the experiment. Please feel free to contact us if you feel something’s missing.
What is Data Sonification?
Sonification is traditionally defined as the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data
Sonification practices range from Audification - the direct translation of waves of various nature (seismic waves, brain waves) into audible waves (i.e., waves oscillating in the audible range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz); to Parameter Mapping - the more complex association of data characteristics to sound parameters (i.e., pitch, amplitude, tempo, timbre).
[1]
. Data Sonification is a particular type of data representation in which data are mapped to sounds to communicate information to the listener. A field of studies since the early 1990s, sonification is still mainly confined to a specialized usage in scientific investigation and process monitoring (seismology, astronomy, real time monitoring in healthcare).
Sonification practices range from Audification - the direct translation of waves of various nature (seismic waves, brain waves) into audible waves (i.e., waves oscillating in the audible range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz); to Parameter Mapping - the more complex association of data characteristics to sound parameters (i.e., pitch, amplitude, tempo, timbre).
Why Sound?
Auditory perception has specific advantages in temporal, spatial, amplitude, and frequency resolution that open possibilities as an alternative or complement to visualization techniques. Despite the undeniable predominance of vision in human culture, sound is already successfully present in a variety of contexts of our experience: cinema, everyday objects, alarms, and in nature everywhere around us. Moreover, sound occupies a different communication and perception channel from the visual one, and can therefore be used to avoid the so called “alarm fatigue” when the visual channel is overloaded. Additionally, sound typically occupies the periphery of our attention (i.e., we can hear and process sounds from the environment while performing other attention-demanding tasks). A sound can be brought to the center of our attention only if needed
[2]
.
The challenges of Sonification
The Geiger counter is among the most successful cases of Data Sonification: the higher the rate, the higher the amount of radiation in the vicinity. When we move to more ambitious representations of data through sound, though, it is often difficult for the average user to grasp the connection between the data and the sounds, compared to what it is to read a diagram of the same data. A reason often quoted as cause of this difficulty is, that sonification lacks a wider context, a general training that visualization have benefitted of over the centuries. Moreover, sonification projects do not benefit of established, industry-level frameworks (Tableaux, etc) to build specific experiences. Many sonification attempts are coded from scratch for very specific needs and goals.
Parameter Mapping
- the technique we used in this project
Many different components can be altered to change the user's perception of the sound, and in turn, their perception of the underlying information being portrayed. Often, an increase or decrease in some level in this information is indicated by an increase or decrease in pitch, amplitude or tempo, but could also be indicated by varying other less commonly used components. For example, a stock market price could be portrayed by rising pitch as the stock price rose, and lowering pitch as it fell. To allow the user to determine that more than one stock was being portrayed, different timbres or brightnesses might be used for the different stocks, or they may be played to the user from different points in space, for example, through different sides of their headphones. Many studies have been undertaken to try to find the best techniques for various types of information to be presented, and as yet, no conclusive set of techniques to be used has been formulated
[3]
.
Examples