Sonification of ocean data in art-science

Abstract

ArtScience is a burgeoning field that promotes bi-directional collaboration between scientists and artists. Artists learn from scientists to inform the creation of new works based on scientific ideas and data. Scientists learn from artists to explore data in new ways and learn new ways of communicating. In 2022, Colin Malloy was the artist in residence for Ocean Networks Canada and created many new musical works based on ocean data. He explored many ways of sonifying ocean data using novel mappings in multiple original solo electroacoustic percussion compositions. Some mappings were more direct—such as using data for wavetables—while others were less so—such as probabilistic trigger mappings based using datasets as probability distributions. This paper presents his methods for sonifying ocean data used for sound production in these musical compositions.