Sonification of Sculler Movements, Development of Preliminary Methods

Sonification is a widening field of research with many possibilities for practical applications in various scientific domains. The rapid development of mobile technology capable of efficiently handling numerical information offers new opportunities for interactive auditory display. In this scope, the SONEA project (SONification of Elite Athletes) aims at improving performances of Olympic-level athletes by enhancing their training techniques, taking advantage of both the strong coupling between auditory and sensorimotor systems, and the efficient learning and memorizing abilities pertaining the sense of hearing. An application to rowing is presented in this article. Rough estimates of the position and mean velocity of the craft are given by a GPS receiver embedded in a smartphone taken onboard. An external accelerometer provides boat acceleration data with higher temporal resolution. The development of preliminary methods for sonifying the collected data has been carried out under the specific constraints of a mobile device platform. The sonification is either performed by the phone as a real-time feedback or by a computer using data files as input for an a posteriori analysis of the training. In addition, environmental sounds recorded during training can be synchronized with the sonification to perceive the coherence of the sequence of sounds throughout the rowing cycle. First results show that sonification using a parameter-mapping method over few quantities can provide a meaningful sound feedback.