Florian Grond and Listening Mode Centered Sonification

March 9, 2015

Episode

Details

Here is an extended conversation regarding a broad range of topics relative to sonification including the types and definitions of listening relative to sonification practices as well as a discussion of the blurry space between sound art practice and functional scientific purpose with sonification. Notes on pointers to some of Dr. Grond’s work here:

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grond.at/html/projects/moving_equations/moving_equations.htm

This audio visual installation was commissioned for the exhibition The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking. This work reflects on the role of drawing in nonlinear science—connecting performativity, space, and creative thought processes. It investigates at the same time questions of the representation of dynamical systems as differential equations. In this video you canhear the sounds of drawing being made with a pencil. The varying speeds and pressures that characterize this kind of sound are manipulated via filters, playback speeds, and sound effects based on the lines produced by certain nonlinear equations. Synchronized to these sounds are visual representations of the equations, which change their shades according to the actual state of the selected dynamical system. Listening to the intimate sonic experience and watching the visually changing formula allows one to connect with the dynamical properties of the systems.

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grond.at/html/projects/sef_cert/s_c.htm

Safety Certificate is a musical performance based on axle box sensor data from high-speed trains. The original purpose of this data is to provide a basis for the assessments of the mechanical aspects of train safety durimng the homologation process. In this performance, the data, which represents dynamical processes in the sub frequent domain and below the audible range, are converted into sound through audification. The sound that is generated live during the performance is manipulated through the Manta control interface, which allows for the convenient layering of 48 different timbres. Safety Certificate was premiered at Seconde Nature in Aix-en-Provence in March 2010 during the Sonification symposium – What Where How Why, organized by Locus Sonus . On the left you will hear excerpts of a the recording from a performance for 8 channels in a stereo downmix.

Special thanks to Fabian Schmid from PJM for the data and Till Bovermann for Manta instructions. I used Alberto DeCampo’s SuperCollider class as software interface to the Manta.

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Delay together with Mary Sherman: