| |
|
|
|
|
 |
NCSA NEWS |
|
|
|
|
|
Levels of Sound Change
One key to the process of sonifying research is that
there are multiple levels of sound changes to incorporate.
Unlike an image, sound is changing all the time.
One level is the change in sound that keeps the ear
interested without becoming fatigued. Another level
of change is direction (movement within three
dimensions), which corresponds to how the data is
changing. But, Bargar says, "it is difficult to
attend to these changes in sound unless you have
another level that changes roughly at the same rate at
which the visual information is changing. That is the
level at which we listen to speech or music. Insook Choi,
a member of our team, refers to this as 'timescaling' --
determining the rate of information presentation in
relation to images and other sounds, and
how these relationships change over time."
To allow people to hear a relationship, Bargar notes,
you have to provide sounds for them to listen to or,
as he calls it, "an acoustic fabric." That's a craft
he feels is related to musical composition. "Without
it," Bargar finds, "you'll never achieve the next
stage of using that fabric to reflect something -- an
auditory handle, a listening space -- where you can hear
the environment develop."
Bargar's team includes a wide array of people
associated with sound: signal processing engineers
who are weekend jazz musicians; math and computer
scientists with advanced education in music
performance; composers; a computer graphics artist
who's also a software engineer; and a systems
engineer interested in new control devices
for virtual environments. Bargar believes this is the
kind of diversification that's needed. "You can't
just do run-of-the-mill sound bytes. We're in a
transitional era of computation and we have to
imagine the world in which the sound exists and
develop environments where people are doing some
meaningful listening."
|
|
|
|
|
|
