Utility Versus Creativity in Biomedical Musification

Duncan Williams

doi:10.5920/jcms.2016.02

Abstract

Sonification techniques provide a well-documented methodology for auditory display of data, which can be particularly useful when combined with other display types for the presentation and analysis of complex data streams (including multidimensional data arrays). Creativity in sonification often becomes a function of the chosen mapping scheme, whereby deliberate specification of data mapping to auditory events provides opportunities to creative expression. Thus, such techniques can be used as part of the music creation process, if mapping strategies are carefully designed with specific musical outcomes in mind. Increasingly this particular type of sonification is therefore referred to as musification. However, the creative decision making process involved in designing these mapping strategies can by its nature compromise the presentation of the data in terms of accuracy, and perhaps in terms of overall utility. This article reviews an example of this work with both creative and utilitarian ends, and considers techniques for the evaluation of the success versus the utility that musification of complex biological or biomedical data might achieve, whilst maintaining the necessary integrity of the source data. Note: this work builds on, and concludes, work which has previously been documented at two international conferences.(1) It therefore includes a certain amount of duplication from the respective papers involved but attempts to bring the findings together and address comments from peers at both events. The total amount of duplication is less than 20%, and the relevant papers are cited in the present article in the interests of full disclosure. The intention is not to repeat existing work but rather to tie it together in a complete package.

Highlights

To listen to data... can be a surprising new experience with diverse applications ranging from novel interfaces... to data analysis problems.http://jcms.org.uk/issues/Vol1Issue1/4/4.html (Toharia et al, 2014)Practical sonification techniques, such as that found in the electrocardiogram, alarm bell, telephone ring, or intermittent pulse of a radar device, have all found their uses in the modern world (Hermann et al, 2011; Vickers, 2011)
Sonification techniques provide a welldocumented methodology for auditory display of data, which can be useful when combined with other display types for the presentation and analysis of complex data streams
The creative decision making process involved in designing these mapping strategies can by its nature compromise the presentation of the data in terms of accuracy, and perhaps in terms of overall utility

Summary

Introduction

To listen to data... can be a surprising new experience with diverse applications ranging from novel interfaces... to data analysis problems. The human auditory system is very good at detecting minute changes in audio signals and can monitor several parallel audio streams at one time This means hearing offers an exciting opportunity for parallel information interpretation tasks to complement existing visual representational techniques. In particular the use of auditory display in biomedical data analysis is proving to be a fertile avenue for research (Jovanov et al, 1999; Visi et al, 2014). These types of datasets are often highly complex, and may involve multiple dimensionalities. Multimodality is a complimentary human perceptual process which has been previously wellexploited by the biomedical world (Jovanov et al, 1999; Mihalas et al, 2012; Toharia et al, 2014)

Defining Musification

Previous Work

System Overview

Findings

Conclusions