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Research

Sonification

Sonification is the use of sound – mainly non-speech audio signals – for representing or displaying data. Similar to scientific visualization, sonification aims at enabling human listeners to make use of their highly-developed perceptual skills for making sense of the data. In our visually dominated cultures, particularly in the area of computer science, we find that sound is neglected modality, despite the high potential: sound directs our attention, sound accompanies every interaction and enriches it with qualitative information, sound is partly complementary to visual information, sound is processed 24/7, even if we do not look, sound is processed without effort, we constantly apply auditory learning, enabling us to use sound for tasks from exploratory analysis, detection, monitoring, diagnosis and communication.

Research on sonification in the Ambient intelligence group ranges from the development of novel techniques to sonify complex data, e.g. for auditory data mining, through applications of sonification in diverse application areas, such as sports, medical diagnosis or manual interaction.

• EEG Sonification for enhanced analysis and diagnosis of epilepsy
• Model-based Sonification: a technique to enable exploratory interactive sonification using physics-inspired dynamic models in high-dimensional data spaces
• Blended Sonification: a design framework to couple informative sonifications to everyday physical interactions with objects.
• Sonification for Process Monitoring: supporting users in monitoring processes as a secondary task
• Sonic Drilling Machine: using non-speech sound alike a car's parking aid to support users 
in adjusting the machine
• Sonified Aerobics turns sports movements into sound patterns allowing blind users to participate to aerobics classes
• Swimming Sonification: an underwater sensing and sonification system to enable 
swimmers to perceive hydrodynamic pressure while swimming - as interface between 
coach and swimmer.
• Tweetscapes: ‘Ars Electronica Award of Distinction’ winning sonification system that sonifies the German Twitter traffic.
• Wettervorhörsage: Weather Forecast Sonification for broadcast stations