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Sound Design and Sonification
Assignment 2 – David Wallis
Audio Signal Processing for Data Sonification – Coalition Casualties in Afghanistan
The data sonification system I have
constructed for this assessment is
designed to sonify data relating to
coalition casualties by month, and
cumulatively in Afghanistan from 2001 to
2010.
What I set out to do was find data that
people may be oblivious to, or that
people find too easy to ignore. In
sonifying the data, I hoped to make it more engaging, and easier to comprehend that
pure statistics.
Generally I have found that as time has passed since 2001, less attention has been
given to casualties sustained from the ‘war on terrorism’. While people are aware of
the war in Afghanistan and the troop presence over there, they do not appreciate
that troops are still dying in high and ever increasing numbers. This could be due to
the fact that most countries only receive news of their own soldiers killed in battle,
and as such are oblivious to the bigger picture.
My data sonification aims to be a useful tool that can quickly convey the data it
represents in an objective way, separate from the argument as to whether anyone
should be at war, but with the intention of making either side of that argument more
informed.
This part of the patch simply determines the current year.
By subtracting 2000 from the value and bringing the values to the
range of 1 – 10, I am able to give the output sound a low
frequency ‘wobble’ to start with, then as the year reaches 2010
the ‘wobble’ becomes very quick. The intention of this was to give
an audible representation of how much time has passed during
the war.
This part of the patch interprets the casualties for a given month
in the war. The amount of casualties is directly proportional to
the pitch of the output sound. The apparent randomness of the
sounds is supposed to convey the uncertainty in the war,
regarding amounts of casualties that may be inflicted. The live
dial provides a visual indication of the link between the data and
the sound.
This part of the patch interprets the cumulative casualties
over the 10 year period. It helps to convey that the amount
of casualties is constantly increasing, by the pitch of its
output sound increasing gradually between 2001 and 2010.
This graphical output display is included to help show the
exponential nature of the casualties sustained during the war. As
the year progresses from 2001 to 2010, the knob moves along the
y axis at an increasing rate, proportional to the cumulative
casualties data output.
Overall I believe that this data sonification achieves its purpose, in that it audibly
conveys a variety of general trends from the data input to the user, in a way that is
more engaging than reading stats from a table.
In terms of usability on Google, I think that something similar to this may have a
useful implementation similar to the way Google Maps works; ie. In that when a user
searches for certain types of information, basic audio/visual display might appear as
the very first link. The user could click to hear/view the data, and if they choose,
follow the link to a dedicated page particular to the data displayed on the search
page.
While I had a general idea of what my data output would be like, I did not initially
know that the amount of casualties from the war in Afghanistan had been increasing
at such a rate. In this respect the sonification of the data I found has given me
greater insight the subject matter.