Description:

Strategies for Continuous Auditory Display of Arousal and Valence

Sound is capable of profound emotional experiences: one need look no further than the importance of music in film. Sonification is field of research interested in the use of sound to convey information in general, but what happens when the data is emotion? To objectively and systematically convey this data, I have explored sources of auditory-emotion induction in environmental sound and music. Choosing wisely from these sources, emotion can be communicated when social displays of affect are unavailable, misleading, or inappropriate. In my thesis, I developed sonification strategies based upon select structural/acoustic features and auditory-cognitive mechanisms. I produced the first ever computational evaluation of a sonification of emotion, using a publicly available tool for music emotion recognition. The evaluation highlights benefits and limitations of computational design, a technique that in addition to practical applications, can be used to acoustically instantiate mathematical models of musical emotion.

IDMIL Participants:

• Marcelo M. Wanderley
• R. Michael Winters

Research Areas:

• Sonification

Funding:

• NSERC

Publications:

• Michael Winters, R., Wanderley, M. M. (2014). Sonification of Emotion: Strategies and Results from the Intersection with Music. In Organised Sound (pp. 60–69). Cambridge University Press.

Press:

Video

Video example available from Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/53756746