Two Trains: Sonification of Income Inequality on the NYC Subway

Two trains by American composer Brian Foo is a sonification of a subway ride to 3 of New York’s boroughs (Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx), where the median household income functions as the control data for the composition.

Rock Music: Granular and Stochastic Synthesis based on the Matanuska Glacier

Moving from social media to environmental data, today I discuss Mara Helmuth’s Rock Music, a sonification of the melting of an Alaskan glacier.

Mara Helmuth uses data from sediment granulation in a lake formed by the melting of the Matanuska glacier in Alaska during a 24-hour period. Time, grain size and grain frequency were measured and mapped onto parameters for waveform, additive, granular and physical modelling synthesis.

You’ll have to take my word for it: car crash composition

Brian House created You’ll have to take my word for it, in which he sonified a car crash. In 2011, Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray had a car accident but survived unharmed. The dubious circumstances in which the accident happened led to an investigation and the car’s black box data were made public.