What NMSAT says about sonification

Abstract

This article presents a sample of references issuing directly from the existing NMSAT database. The method employed—that of systematically probing the database—reveals forms of sonification, but also hypothetical premises of sonification, covering the period from ancient times to the beginning of the twentieth century. The following are some of the categories of sonification that have emerged as a result of this search: Natural phenomenon & meteorology to sound (autophones); Image to sound; Text & communication to sound; Human & machine activities to sound (auditing); Localisation to sound (sonar); Architecture & geometry & abstract proportions to sound (scalization, transcription, & spatialization); Energy to sound; Human body to sound; Distance to sound (distance listening); Movement to sound (holophony, kynophony); and Interpreted observations to sound (naturalist music, transpositions & analogies, paraphrasing). The search also uncovered other principals and practices in the vicinity of sonification including: audification, auditing, auscultation, auralization, soniculation, transduction, mapping, earcons, auditory icons, sympathy, echometry, etc. It has been decided to summarise the results of « What NMSAT Says About Sonification » in this special issue of AI&Society, access to the unabridged version of article is available here: http://www.locusonus.org/sonification/.