Sonification of geometry – representing virtual space with musical sound generation

Abstract

Sound plays a crucial role in human perception and can be employed as a powerful tool to convey information. However, a challenge arises in utilizing simple sound waves and patterns to represent data due to their potentially unpleasant nature. This paper addresses this issue by exploring methods to generate more aesthetically pleasing sounds for data sonification. The focus is on the musical synthesis of four instruments—violin, clarinet, piano, and guitar. The study investigates two approaches to represent distance data, aiming to identify the most pleasant data sonification method. The first method involves mapping distance to sound frequency, while the second method explores mapping distance to the rate of sound repetition.