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Apropos sonification: a broad view of data as music and sound

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Abstract

Numbers have been identified with symbolic data forever. The profound association of both with acoustics, music, and sonic art from Pythagoras to current work is beyond reproach. Recently, sonification looks for ways to realize symbolic data (representing results or measurements) as well as “raw” data (signals, impulses, images, etc.) into compositions. In the strictest sense, everything in a computer is symbolic, that is, represented by 0s and 1s. In the arts, the digital age has broadened and enhanced the conceptual landscape not simply through its servitude to the creative process, but as its partner. However, there is a rich history of the use of data that no doubt has paved the way for many of today’s experiments including my own.

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Notes

  1. This and the two preceding paragraphs are expansions from my didactic for Built On Sound, an exhibit in Chicago of experimental instruments (1992).

  2. Cage particularly disliked the dominant 7th chord for the implicit hierarchy in its name and function.

  3. George Perle (1915–2009), noted Second Viennese School scholar, loved to repeat this number of possible permutations of rows in a serial music class that I was fortunate enough to have taken during his residency at SUNY, Buffalo.

  4. Consistently, when I would visit Feldman for a composition lesson, he would be working on his latest piece. Conversation would always start by talking about what he was doing. Several times from 1 week to the next, he would announce that he added a page in between two somewhere in the middle. Each page appeared to be an entity in itself, rendering the entire work free of a teleological plan.

  5. Cage characterized it this way to me as we listened to Sultan rehearse for a performance at CSU Fresno in 1975.

  6. Remark made in 1923; recalled by Archibald Henderson, Durham Morning Herald, August 21, 1955; Einstein Archive 33-257.

  7. The first 6 min of EGERYA can be found here: http://www.petergena.com/egerya.html.

  8. A link to the m4a file of LOGOS I is here: http://www.petergena.com/mp3s/LOGOSI.m4a.

  9. From an abstract to a paper given at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Biofeedback Research Society in Monterey, CA, February 1975.

  10. Coincidently, the total number of codons (permutations of four bases taken three at a time, 43 or 64) equals the number of hexagrams in the I Ching, Book of Changes (two choices taken six at a time, 26 or 64).

  11. For excerpts (“score” and sound): Red Blood Cells (1995): http://www.petergena.com/rbdna.html; Elastin (1999): http://www.petergena.com/elastin.html; Testosterone/Progesterone (2000): http://www.petergena.com/dihydtest.html.

  12. Excerpts of Genesis can be found here: http://www.petergena.com/genexs.html.

  13. For a sample of Immunoglobulin go here: http://www.petergena.com/immuno.html.

  14. Prolation Collagen excerpt: http://www.petergena.com/prolcoll_exc.html.

  15. http://www.waldeckstudios.com.

  16. http://www.petergena.com/DNAmus.html#anchor-1175.

References

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  1. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 37 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60603, USA

    Peter Gena

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  1. Peter Gena
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Correspondence to Peter Gena.

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Gena, P. Apropos sonification: a broad view of data as music and sound. AI & Soc 27, 197–205 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-011-0339-1

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