Visualization by Ear: Auditory Imagery for Scientific Visualization and Virtual Reality

Abstract

The title of our conference, Dream Machines, is intentionally ambiguous and suggests at least two rather disparate, literal interpretations-one, machines we of, and other, machines that produce our These two conflicting interpretations would seem easily resolved in a meeting of music practitioners who have struggled to create art with distinctly inartistic hardware and who have coveted machines more responsive to their artistic goals. Then again, this is a meeting of people who are focused and centered in experience: is dictionary's term. I think that all of us have been motivated to be here and devote our lives to art and science of sound because we have experienced a of sound, a that could be made real only by a dream The obvious gap between two conflicting interpretations of our conference title can be bridged by a marriage of two which suggests the dreams that audiles have of machines that realize their dreams. I will focus my discussion on a particular auditory dream, rather than machine. I wish to focus on two interrelated application areas that lie somewhat outside obvious scope of music: scientific visualization and virtual reality. I believe that design of computer music systems can be conceived broadly enough to serve goals other than creating musical compositions, and that music composition can be conceived of broadly enough to include creation of images for new forms of technology. Composers have special insights and perspectives on construction of sound that should inform this work