Convenors: Thilo Gross (Oldenburg), Maximilian Schich (Tallinn), Cristián Huepe (Evanston, IL)

Although hearing is in many ways superior to vision, data representation still relies largely on images. Today, the technical difficulties that limited the use of sonification for examining and communicating data have been largely removed by technological advances. However, despite its great success in some specialized applications, sonification is still largely absent from mainstream data analysis.

We argue that, to reach its full potential, a universal „language“ of sonification that can intuitively and appealingly represent complex multidimensional datasets must be established. Visual representations already count with such language (in archetypal plots like bar charts, scatter plots, venn diagrams, network diagrams, or reorder able matrices), supported by cultural underpinnings that lead to a broad consensus on how to interpret them. For example, we use larger symbols or saturated colors to highlight foreground information, and smaller or desaturated elements for background information.

This workshop will leverage recent advances in network science, complex systems, quantitative aesthetics, and AI to explore the development of archetypical sonograms (equivalent to auditory plots) that offer a consistent sonic language for examining and communicating complex multidimensional datasets in a wide range of applications, bringing together an interdisciplinary group of complexity scientists, experts in sonification, critical aesthetics, and artists that create complex sonic spaces.

Contact:
Sabine Mende, Group and Conference Support
zif-conferencesupport@uni-bielefeld.de