Listen (Awakening)

For the ICAD conference 2004 in Sydney a sonification of ECG and other data was carried out to merge the boundaries between artistic sonification and scientific auditory display. Listen (Awakening) attempts to create in sound the activity of the brain becoming aware of a piece of music and gradually building in its subconscious reaction and appreciation. Certain constraints were put on the sonification exercise. It was to be data driven and time constrained to the original length of the piece of music by David Page [1]. With these limitations the challenge then was to make the result sonically and musically interesting as well as conveying to the listener the human physiological response to music in an auditory display. The resulting composition consists of 15 sound files which will be mapped during the performance directly to the 15 speakers in the Sydney Opera House Studio. A 16 sub-bass channel will convey the low frequency content of the music.