Pollution data has been sonified numerous times before. The 1000 year of pollution data sonified is just one example. Kasia and aren't looking to just sonify some data, but do something further with it. Our initial idea was incorporating conductive inks on a poster. When the user runs their finger over a line which spans from one location to the next, the sound of pollution across that jounry plays. The user is than able to move their finger in any direction and hear the pollution sound of that specific journey. From the very beginning Kasia and I envisioned creating an interactive poster that uses these conductive ink. This is because we wanted to embrace the different ways, not just digital, of reposing to briefs. Using the Bare Conductive boards from the Creative Technology Lab, we started testing this idea. It didn’t take long for us to realise that this would be very difficult, even with help from those in CTL. As the deadline was drawing closer, we had decided to design and code an interactive webpage which was more within our scope as a result to the time we had left. Our interactive site uses the users mouse movements to play the sonified data.
We started choosing the areas in London we wanted to expose the air quality data for. We picked Elephant and Castle, Marylebone, City of London, Vauxhall and Greenwich. The image below shows how we organised the collected data in an Excel file, ready for it to be used in Max.
We documented the air quality for these areas on the 24 February 2019, for a 24 hour time span. This data was taken from an online source: the London Air Quality Network. It was quite tedious and difficult to scrap the data from the graph (image below) as we had to hover our house over it. There was no was it just view the raw data. Nevertheless, we collected the Nitrogen Dioxide figures for each area.
Now it was time to create the sound based on the location. First we did experiment using Max with the patches Oliver provided to us. Taking the Elephant and Castle data above, we tested the sound outcome:
We weren't happy with the result. As we are representing air quality, the sound needs to be dramatic so that it evokes certain feelings in the listener, fear, devastation. This is when I started researching other ways we could sonify the data and came across a very old website designed for exploring algorithms. I was able to upload my data, set the pitch, scale any values and listed to the MIDI created. I particular really liked this site because it offered a variety of instrument options to play the sound.
This started to sound acceptable so we went ahead and done the same thing for all the locations however, they did sound quite similar. To combat this issue, we done some fine editing on the mp3 file using Audacity, just so there is a clear different between the sounds.
Kasia and I did discuss collected a different type of data and overlaying it with the air quality sound. For example the noise pollution in that area. This would allow someone to distinguish any trends through the sound. We have not done this yet however, if we were to continue developing this project, that would be a good next step.
Bare Conductive - Arduino
We then started working with the Bare Conductive board and Arduino IDE where we attempted to edit the code so that when someone moved their figure along the line of conductive ink, the volume would reduce one speaker and increase the other. This is how we were going to emulate that movement, moving away from one area and getting closer to the other. We couldn't get the Arduino board to do what we wanted it to, and after speaking to Jonathan in CTL, we were advised that this would be possible to code. So we decided to take the digital interaction approach rather an physical due to the technological restrictions and limitations in our knowledge.
Reference list:
London Air. (2019). Seven day graph for Southwark Elephant and Castle. Available at: https://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/basicgraphs.asp?region=0&site=SK6&sitename=Southwark_-_Elephant_and_Castle&period=Seven_day&graphdate=25/02/2019# (Accessed: 3 March 2019).
London Air. (2019). Seven day graph for Westminster Marylebone Road. Available at: https://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/basicgraphs.asp?region=0&site=MY1&sitename=Westminster_-_Marylebone_Road&period=Seven_day&graphdate=03/03/2019# (Accessed: 3 March 2019).
London Air. (2019). 30 day graph for Westminster Covent Garden. Available at: https://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/basicgraphs.asp?region=0&site=WM5&sitename=Westminster__Covent_Garden&period=30_day&graphdate=03/03/2019&species=&graphtype=Java# (Accessed: 3 March 2019).
London Air. (2019). 30 day graph for Lambeth Bondway Interchange. Available at: https://www.londonair.org.uk/london/asp/basicgraphs.asp?region=0&site=LB5&sitename=Lambeth__Bondway_Interchange&period=30_day&graphdate=03/03/2019&species=&graphtype=Java# (Accessed: 3 March 2019).
Musicalgorithms.ewu.edu. (2019). Compose. Available at: http://musicalgorithms.ewu.edu/algorithms/import.html (Accessed: 3 March 2019).
Bibliography list:
Burdett, M. (2019). Extrium > England Noise Map Viewer. Available at: http://extrium.co.uk/noiseviewer.html (Accessed: 3 March 2019).
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