Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
2- The Visualization of Sound
The human process of external cognition uses graphical representations to
describe and exchange mental concepts (Scaife and Rogers 1996). The
creation of visual metaphors for information depicting structures of the
real world aims to reveal patterns, amplify cognition, and generate insights
whereby insight enables discovery, decision-making, and explanation
(Card et al. 1999, Ware 2004). These principles specify the missing
components in connecting the diversified knowledge of the sonic
environment. The display of sound in varying contexts would enable the
visual utilization of acoustic information and provide a solid common level
of communication. Based on extensive research of multidisciplinary
perspectives on the sonic environment and their visual communication
techniques, the visualization of sound has to meet the following
challenges.
2.1 Envisioning Sound
Envisioning sound involves the fundamental problem of designing visual
presentations of information that has no clear relation or association to
familiar physical geometries (Bugajska 2003). Sound is an audible and
invisible entity, and human perception is not familiar with its visual
interpretation. Depictions of acoustic data range from musical notations
and synaesthetic images as subjective visual perceptions of music to
aesthetic visual installations of acoustic signals in the field of artistic
visualization (Woolman 2000, Baron-Cohen and Harrison 1997, Nicolai
et al. 2008). Although these concepts mainly relate to musical compositions,
they can be assigned to the visualization of sound in large-scale
environments. The universality and uniformity of music notations
underline the requirement to develop a general and consistent visual
encoding of acoustic information. Synaesthetic perception, even when it is
rare, suggests the capability to transfer an auditory stimulus to a visual
metaphor. Artistic transformations of sound highlight the possibility to
visualize abstract acoustic data in an appealing and aesthetic way.
