Sonification Abstraite/Sonification Concrète: An 'Aesthetic Perspective Space' for Classifying Auditory Displays in the Ars Musica Domain
This work tackles the challenge of improving sonification design for researchers and artists in auditory display domains, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing aesthetic frameworks.
The paper addresses the problem of poor ecological validity in sonifications, which hinders data extraction and inference, by proposing an aesthetic perspective space that integrates lessons from electroacoustic music and musique concrète to classify auditory displays without distinguishing them from music or sound art.
This paper discusses æsthetic issues of sonifications and the relationships between sonification (ars informatica) and music & sound art (ars musica). It is posited that many sonifications have suffered from poor internal ecological validity which makes listening more difficult, thereby resulting in poorer data extraction and inference on the part of the listener. Lessons are drawn from the electroacoustic music and musique concrète communities as it is argued that it is not instructive to distinguish between sonifications and music/sound art.