Coming into this reading, I had a very different idea of what “sonification” meant, and after learning that the direction of flow is from nonsonic information to sonic, I had a hard time understanding how data could be better represented through sound. Sitting in class, listening to a Professor teach, I have an extremely hard time internalizing any knowledge that is said but not written on the board; it takes a conscious effort for me to listen and write down what is said, and if I don’t write it down, I will surely forget. Sound, to me, is for music–for enjoyment. I don’t particularly enjoy receiving concrete information through sound. When I read about the three categories of sonification, however, I realized that sound is in fact an important means of signifying information–more important than I thought when first introduced to the idea of sonification.

Stern and Akiyama discussed the importance of the ear for its ability to “detect anomalies that might ‘pop out’ of a continuous stream of information” and the potential for signification as an art form, but I was not convinced that sonification is a useful tool for scientific interpretation and manipulation of datasets. The musical DNA and Atmospherics projects seem like intriguing art pieces, but as Polli’s statement makes clear, the primary benefit is gaining an emotional understanding of the data: “In my artwork, I have tried to develop strategies for the interpretation of data through sound that has both narrative and emotional content because I believe that an emotional connection with data can increase the human understanding and appreciation of the forces at work behind the data.”

In short, I believe that sound as a medium is best to convey emotion, while visualization is best to convey more “concrete” (for lack of a better word) information. Seeing is believing, hearing is feeling.