Spectral Parameter Encoding: Towards a Framework for Functional-Aesthetic Sonification
Abstract
Auditory-display research has had a largely unsolved challenge of balancing functional and aesthetic considerations. While functional designs tend to reduce musical expressivity for the fidelity of data, aesthetic or musical sound organization arguably has a potential for representing multi-dimensional or hierarchical data structure with enhanced perceptibility.
Existing musical designs, however, generally employ
nonlinear or interpretive mappings that hinder the assessment of functionality. The authors propose a framework for
designing expressive and complex sonification using small
timescale musical hierarchies, such as the harmony and timbral
structures, while maintaining data integrity by ensuring a close-to-the-original recovery of the encoded data utilizing
descriptive analysis by a machine listener.