Chris Chafe: From Musifications to Intelligible Data Sonifications

When: Monday, May 25th, 2015 @ 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM

Where: Room 4.31/4.33, Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh

Seminar Title

From Musifications to Intelligible Data Sonifications

Seminar Speaker(s)

Prof Chris Chafe (Director, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University)

Seminar Abstract

A dozen years of composing sonifications in collaboration with scientists, MD’s and engineers have produced a range of art and insights bearing on measured phenomena. Data sources have included Internet traffic, greenhouse gas levels, ripening tomatoes, DNA sequences from synthesized biological parts, sea level rise, fracking signals and brain waves. The outcomes span concert music, gallery sound art and applications for practical monitoring devices. I will present examples of both real-time and non-realtime approaches and some of the first considerations in attempting to translate extra-musical data into music and sound.

There’ll be some “bonus talk” which ties in work with the NESS GPU cluster at University of Edinburgh. The richness and complexity of sounds from 3D finite difference simulations of instruments have inspired experimentation with ways of playing the models with oddball performers. Results using them for sonification of economic data and use of the models in other studies will be presented.

Speaker Bio

More details here.