Re: [microsound] data -> sound examples

[Mitchell Whitelaw <mitchell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks all for the excellent examples... Maybe I can do some 
comparative analysis on the fly as a way to tease this out some more. 
Seems that a popular approach is the "data as found object" - the data 
readymade, as in, plugging in the found EPROM, reading back whatever is 
in the Amiga memory (I too was a child of the A1000), reading in the 
..exe as sound. Databending seems to be all in this category, using 
found data as starting points for subsequent processing. All this in 
turn is good old sound expansion, a technique which has brought joy to 
the avant garde since, I dunno, orchestral music with cannons in it.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the core of my interest 
is, where do you go from there, if you're going to actually engage with 
the properties of digital data, either 'in itself', or as a symbol or 
trace of something else. One answer is 'straight' data sonification, 
where you work hard at parsing, analysing and interpreting data in 
order to turn it into sound in some perceptually 'significant' or 
'useful' way (depends on what you mean by useful of course).

But I'm sure there are other answers too: Christopher Sorg's post 
suggests an interest in learning a whole new set of perceptual 
processes (internalising and unconsciously modelling the 
sound/image/data mapping). The parallel with a kind of hacked, 
synaesthetic nervous system is interesting; is data.aesethetics partly 
about altering perception? If so, then maybe by focusing on 'raw data' 
we are learning to hear and see like a (pre-existing) digital machine - 
for example I might be able, with training, to distinguish a TIFF 
format file from a JPEG format file just by listening to it... but so? 
Using analytical processes and different mappings seems to be a way to 
re-structure that machine, and correspondingly re-structure our 
perceptual experience.

Hearing 'the data itself' seems to be a common interest... but this is 
an impossible desire! We can only hear sound... and so the question 
comes back to mapping. A quote to finish this rave:  "This is the new 
politics of mapping of computer culture. Who has the power to decide 
what  kind of mapping to use? Which dimensions are selected? What kind 
of interface is provided  for the user? These new questions about data 
mapping are now as important as more  traditional questions about the 
politics of media representation.” Lev Manovich - The Anti-Sublime 
Ideal in New Media - 
http://www.chairetmetal.com/cm07/manovich-complet.htm

There's lots more interesting stuff in this paper if you're so 
inclined. Thanks again all, for the good stuff...

Mitchell
http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/staff/mitchellwhitelaw