A Social Platform for Information Sonification: Many-Ears.com

Abstract

In this paper we describe the Many Ears project that will develop the first example of a social site for a community of practice in data sonification. This site will be modeled on the Many Eyes site for “shared visualization and discovery” that combines facilities of a social site with online tools for graphing data. Anyone can upload a dataset, describe it and make it available for others to visualize or download. The ease of use of the tools and the social features on Many Eyes have attracted a broad general audience who have produced unexpected political, recreational, cultural and spiritual applications that differ markedly from conventional data analysis. The Many Ears project seeks to find out what will happen when data sonification is made more available as a mass medium? What new audiences will listen to sonifications? Who will create sonifications and for whom? What unexpected purposes will sonification be put to?