Data Sonification

Data sonification is the practice of translating information into sound: measurements from scientific, financial, astronomical or biological datasets are mapped onto pitch, rhythm, timbre and loudness so that patterns in the data become audible. As a musical method it treats datasets as compositional material — *Ryoji Ikeda*'s datamatics works convert raw digital information into precisely ordered microsound, while *William Basinski*'s "On Time Out of Time" renders gravitational-wave and deep-space data as elegiac ambience. Sonification stands between scientific display and composition: the same mapping that reveals structure to a researcher can be shaped, by an artist, into an aesthetic object.