Little
sonifications

This is a collection of little data sonification that adopt a vanilla JavaScript setup with support of the brilliant Strudel and D3 libraries. These are small experiments — mostly built upon small, static datasets and APIs — that take a streamlined development approach for making interactive audio-visual data experiences, entirely within the web browser.

𝄢 Projects

Some silly sporting sonifications

  • The Bomber Ballads: a sonification of the Essendon Football Club's game performance history and the eras of glory and despair.
  • Premier League Lullabies: a sonification of history of club performances in the English Premier League (to the of end of 2024/25 season).
  • NFL Topologies: a sonification of history of NFL franchise performances in the era of the Superb Owl.

Some slightly serious stuff

  • The Denial Twist II: a sonification of Australian emissions data vs emissions intensity. Revisiting an old data story project featuring of pollution, politics and the economy in Australia since 1990 (minus the politics this time). This one uses samples over synths to explore a more organic rhythmic feel that admittedly results in some cultural appropriation, but is treated as a useful demonstration of sound design possibilities. Moderate interactivity is introduced with the option to mute instruments that are mapped to (emissions) sectors of the economy. The composition includes dynamically switchable data patterns for all Australian states and territories, and for the type of 'intensity' measure (economic growth or population)
  • The Bowser Bends: a sonification of Australian fuel prices vs passenger vehicle travel. Intended to be riff on and re-imagination of Hannah Fairfield's brilliant NYT piece Driving Shifts Into Reverse, but it turns out that since reaching 'peak car' in 2004, the Australian story has become a bit of a mess! Connected scatterplots like these are brilliant for contextual annotation (which has been included), and the chaotic data is matched by a sonification designed around a basic emulation of the Moog DFAM.
  • IDMx: a sonification exploration of glitchy IDM-style rhythms, using data on global internal displacement from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). This sonification encompasses: an over-the-top rhythm section that represents displacement 'event' data from conflict and violence, and a variety of natural disaster types (grouped by monthly activity); set against a couplet of drones that represent displacement stock data measured at the conclusion of each year. The composition can be filtered by geographic region, and evolves in loops that gradually increase threshold for events being sonified, resulting in growing from a sparse soundscape to a cacophony of noise.
  • Silent Shout: remix: a sonification of microsensor data in the City of Melbourne. This one revisits an early 'data instrument' prototype that got a bit too complicated: it strips away the playable instruments features and focuses on some sonification design ideas for multiple instruments. Randomness in data selection (date and sensor) is introduced to provide a useful way to draw the design effort away from 'the details' of sound design, and towards the creation of data sonification systems.
  • The Democratic Circus: a sonification of the Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) indices measuring the history democracy across the globe. This one started out with a few different visual and sonificaiton ideas, but ended (for now) being quite a simple sonification that built on the Silent Shout engine. (Much) more parameter mapping work is imagined for this (but strangely, it 'works ok' even without a bespoke parameter mapping system).

𝄞 Designing data instruments

The little sonifications are sister projects to a series of more ambitious interactive, data-driven sonfication experiments. These are individual web apps that are scaffolded with Sveltekit and are designed to scale.

  • Data Operator The Data Operators are a quirky breed of data tools that invites exploration and encourages expression and creativity. These are data instruments designed in the spirit of instant fun. Includes sonifications of data from: the electricity grid, national greenhouse gas emissions, displacement of people from conflict and disaster
  • The Desolation Loops: is interactive experience where the behaviour of a Systems Dynamics model is represented through a synchronised data sonification with visual feedback.
  • Rhythm Races: [in progress] a childlike take a Formula One telemetry data. Inspired by Tron and synthwave, and a proof-of-concept blueprint for balancing performance of (CPU-based) dynamic data simulation models and WebAudio output, alongside synchronised and animated (GPU-based) WebGL/WebGPU graphics.