Skip to content
Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00334
- Thesis Title
- Potentials of data sonification in visual art: Sonifying the compArt database
- Author
- Tobias Hildebrandt
- E-mail
- Tobias_Hildebrandt AT gmx.de
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- M.Sc.
- Year
- 2011
- Number of Pages
- 70
- University
- University of Bremen
- Thesis Supervisor
- Prof. Dr. Frieder Nake
- Supervisor e-mail
- nake AT informatik.uni-bremen.de
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Computer Science/Digital Media
- Copyright Ownership
- Tobias Hildebrandt
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English, German, Spanish
- URL where full thesis can be found
- Keywords
- Data sonification, sonification, auditory display, art history, computer art, parameterized earcon, auditory icon
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- Besides the usage of visual means to present large sets of data, there is a growing amount of research that proposes to use sonic means for this purpose. This research area is known under the terms “data sonification”, auditory display or just sonification. Most research in the area of sonification bases on data from the natural sciences or economics as application fields. There are however areas where little or no research has been conducted yet, one example is the field of humanities. Even less research has been done in the sub-field of art history. It seems very likely that data from this domain is structurally different from the scientific data used in the majority of sonification research. If this prior proposition proves true, the assumption would be justified that other techniques of sonification might be beneficial for art historical data than for other kind of data. Therefore this paper tries to find out which techniques and methods of sonification are especially suitable to tap the full potential of sonification in this application field. This is being done by using the compArt database for early computer art as a basis for a prototype of an interactive GUI-based data sonification. After theoretically finding out the data structures of art historical data, the different sonification techniques are being evaluated in terms of their ability to present these data structures. A literature review finds out if similar data has already been sonified and how. An interactive GUI-based prototype has been developed on the basis of this research to verify the suitability of the proposed methods and techniques. This prototype bases on the sonification technique “parameterized earcons” with the outcome that, however with restrictions, the proposed methods are suitable to sonify data from the domain of art history. However it is suggested to conduct further experimentation using “parameterized auditory icons” to find out if this technique yields even better results.