Data sonification is the auditory sister to visualisation and is a fascinating example of using a non-visual human sensory experience to process data. It can allow people, including blind and visually impaired communities, to listen to datasets, in the way you might look at a graph. This allows for aural pattern recognition and exploration. NASA is a big fan – check out their audio library.
In its simplest form, data sonification can even be seen in your own house – think about the ping of a microwave – you are being conveyed data (in this case ‘lunch is ready’) in an audio format. Slightly more complex than that, you have the example of Geiger counters. Radiation data is conveyed through that ominous clicking sound which has become iconic in film, TV and gaming.
This piece has an excellent discussion and history, this one has more info and examples as it gets more and more complex. And you can lose a chunk of your day by browsing the Data Sonification Archive.
There’s also a great article from the US National Center for Biotechnology Information about how musicians and scientists are working together to explore data through sound.
I also have a headcanon that Uhura, one of my favourite Star Trek characters, understands how sonification works.
In her song in the Strange New Worlds musical episode, she sings:
“The patterns repeating
Guiding and teaching me
I know I know
Listen for signals”
(As an aside, my day job title is Communications Officer which I love because that is what Uhura’s job title is and she’s a spacefaring badass.)
Now, I have always been fascinated by the representation and communication of data and I also love music. So when a colleague recently told me about data sonification, I became immediately obsessed and added it to my ever-growing list of projects.
I have composed this experimental piece to try out some very basic data sonification of my own, using a simplified dataset representing the lengthening of the days and the changing times of the sunrise and sunset in Glasgow, from the winter solstice to the spring equinox.
It’s called ‘Coming out of the dark’ and I think it’s interesting to listen to, with parts that are genuinely beautiful 
Listen to the audio on Biteable.
For the nerds in the room, here’s my process:
I downloaded the dataset, simplified it slightly to make sure I had a manageable number of data points, and set about converting the numbers into musical notes, using a simple translation system.
The 36 white keys on the piano make up 5 octaves of the major C scale, which I designated C1, D1, E1…C2, D2… with middle C being C3. In the piece, the sun rise starts at the winter solstice on C3 and sun set at G3 so the day is as long as 3 notes apart in the same octave initially. As the days lengthen, the sunrise and sunset pull away from each other (ie the sunrise gets closer to the previous midnight as the sunset gets closer to the upcoming midnight).
So by the spring equinox the sunrise is much deeper into the previous night and sounds like C1 and the sunset is higher into the future night so sounds like C6!
Then I taught myself how to use a lovely (and free!) piece of composition and notation software called MuseScore and mapped it all across (I also had to relearn how to read bass clef lol it’s been a while).
I then added in some cello sounds to represent the data of the lengthening days to round out the sound, with a gentle, slow rise across the piece.
Note: there is software you can use to do data sonification automatically, but I learn by doing things manually and wanted to add my own spin onto it!