A Radical New Interdisciplinary Space for Sonification

RADICAL is a new three-year project with the ambitious goal of developing a fundamental understanding of the relationship between sonification design and the listener and to stimulate a revitalised agenda for sonification research and practice. Understanding of the role of embodied perception, spatial considerations, and aesthetics in our listening to, and perception of, sonification remains limited. This interdisciplinary project draws together experts in computer science, sonification, listening and perception, ethnography, music composition, and aesthetics to derive a fundamentally new understanding from which to derive concrete guidelines for better and more successful sonification design. The act of listening involves embodied perception, that is, making sense of and responding to sound involves not just our ears but is shaped by aspects of our entire physical body as well as our interactions with the space in which listening takes place. We are conducting a comprehensive study of sonification making and listening to better understand the relationships between sonifications, their designers, and their listeners. From this we will develop a new theory of sonification listening and derive an aesthetics of sonification which, up till now, has no accepted definition. These outcomes will be important in formulating a new framework for successful sonification design.https://projectRadical.github.i