Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data

Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2020–2024.

Tantacrul

commentary · evergreen

Open on YouTube

Tantacrul examines sonification, the practice of turning data into sound or music, and critiques how scientists and musicians, including NASA and CERN projects, use it well and poorly.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Recommended as an incisive look at the real potential and common misuse of data sonification, often brought up in threads on space sonifications.

people recommended it: 2
separate months: 2
strong recommendations: 1
discussed on HN: 2020–2024

“Tantacrul has a typically incisive video [1] about the real potential of sonification as a powerful technique for understanding data”
— omnicognate, Aug 2022, in “New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix”

What HN commenters said

3 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

jw1224Jun 2020Strongly recommends

As soon as I saw this pop up on HN, I thought “hey, MuseScore — isn’t that the notation software Tantacrul loves to hate?”. I’m not a composer, and I’d never heard of let alone used MuseScore before stumbling on his videos a couple of weeks ago. What a great surprise to see they’ve been listening to their critics! After finding his channel I slowly worked my way through watching all his videos. One of my favourites is about “sonification”, or creating sound from of data. Might be quite interesting to the HN crowd: ▶ this video

in “MuseScore 4: Moving from notation software to composition software” · View on HN

omnicognateAug 2022Recommends

Tantacrul has a typically incisive video [1] about the real potential of sonification as a powerful technique for understanding data, and its real artistic possibilities, vs the dishonest and arbitrary way it gets used to generate publicity. [1] ▶ this video

in “New NASA Black Hole Sonifications with a Remix” · View on HN

richbellOct 2024Cites it

I'm reminded of "Sonification & The Problem with Making Music from Data" by Tantacrul. ▶ this video

in “Hear the sounds of Earth's magnetic field from 41,000 years ago” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Music theory, synthesis & production Data visualization & information designsonificationmusicdatanasaaudification