The hospital soundscape is known for high noise levels and a perception of chaos, leading to concerns about its impact on patients, families, professionals, and other hospital staff. This study investigates the relationship between sound, Annoyance, and sleep quality in a multi-patient neurology ward. A mixed-methods approach was employed. Interviews were conducted with medical staff (n = 7) to understand their experiences with sound. Questionnaires and sleep tracking devices (n = 20) assessed patient sleep quality and Annoyance caused by sound events. In addition, listeners (n = 28) annotated 429 nighttime audio recordings to identify sound sources and rate Annoyance level, which we considered the key emotional descriptor for patients. Over 9,200 sound events were analysed. While snoring, a patient-generated sound dominated the nighttime soundscape and was highly rated for Annoyance, and staff-generated sounds such as speech and footsteps were found to contribute more to accumulated Annoyance due to their extended duration. This study suggests that patient sleep quality can be improved by focusing on design interventions that reduce the impact of specific sounds. These might include raising awareness among staff about activities that might produce annoying sounds and implementing strategies to mitigate their disruptive effects.@en

Introduction: It has proven a hard challenge to stimulate climate action with climate data. While scientists communicate through words, numbers, and diagrams, artists use movement, images, and sound. Sonification, the translation of data into sound, and visualization, offer techniques for representing climate data with often innovative and exciting results. The concept of sonification was initially defined in terms of engineering, and while this view remains dominant, researchers increasingly make use of knowledge from electroacoustic music (EAM) to make sonifications more convincing. Methods: The Aesthetic Perspective Space (APS) is a two-dimensional model that bridges utilitarian-oriented sonification and music. We started with a review of 395 sonification projects, from which a corpus of 32 that target climate change was chosen; a subset of 18 also integrate visualization of the data. To clarify relationships with climate data sources, we determined topics and subtopics in a hierarchical classification. Media duration and lexical diversity in descriptions were determined. We developed a protocol to span the APS dimensions, Intentionality and Indexicality, and evaluated its circumplexity. Results: We constructed 25 scales to cover a range of qualitative characteristics applicable to sonification and sonification-visualization projects, and through exploratory factor analysis, identified five essential aspects of the project descriptions, labeled Action, Technical, Context, Perspective, and Visualization. Through linear regression modeling, we investigated the prediction of aesthetic perspective from essential aspects, media duration, and lexical diversity. Significant regressions across the corpus were identified for Perspective (ß = 0.41^***) and lexical diversity (ß = −0.23^*) on Intentionality, and for Perspective (ß = 0.36^***) and Duration (logarithmic; ß = −0.25^*) on Indexicality. Discussion: We discuss how these relationships play out in specific projects, also within the corpus subset that integrated data visualization, as well as broader implications of aesthetics on design techniques for multimodal representations aimed at conveying scientific data. Our approach is informed by the ongoing discussion in sound design and auditory perception research communities on the relationship between sonification and EAM. Through its analysis of topics, qualitative characteristics, and aesthetics across a range of projects, our study contributes to the development of empirically founded design techniques, applicable to climate science communication and other fields.

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There is an increased awareness of how the quality of the acoustic environment impacts the lives of human beings. Several studies have shown that sound pollution has adverse effects on many populations, from infants to adults, in different environments and workplaces. Hospitals are susceptible environments that require special attention since sound can aggravate patients' health issues and negatively impact the performance of healthcare professionals. This paper focuses on Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) as an especially sensitive case representing a hostile acoustic environment in which healthcare professionals have little awareness of how unwanted sounds impact the perceived quality of the soundscape. We performed a semi-systematic review of scientific literature on sound assessment studies in NICU from 2001. A thematic analysis was performed to identify emerging themes that informed the analysis of 27 technological solutions for the assessment of sound quality in indoor and outdoor environments. Solutions were categorized by functions and evaluation methods and grouped according to the characteristics of the design components, i.e., acquisition, computation, and communication strategies. Results highlight a lack of solutions to assess the qualitative characteristics of indoor environments such as NICU and forecast the footprint that different sound sources have on the indoor soundscape. Such solutions are urgently needed to empower healthcare professionals, and especially nurses, to actively modify and prevent the negative impact of unwanted sounds on NICU and critical care soundscape.@en

In the field of data sonification, the construction of meaning is hampered by the lack of shared perceptual codes derived from common modes of perception, as it happens for the visual register. In this paper, we re-organize knowledge from previous experimental projects to build the foundations of future work in data representation. This experimental investigation aims to identify patterns in the translation process from different sensory modalities. To this end, 80 audiovisual sonifications have been collected and analyzed through phenomenological analysis with the goal of recording sensory correspondences. The resulting cross-sensory design map is a visual synthesis of the analysis, and it has a dual function. In the research domain, it proposes testable hypotheses for a systematic approach to data sonification. In the practice, it offers a space that is based on shared conventions that aim to standardize the actions and the choices of both sonification experts and communication designers.@en

Over the past ten years there has been a large increase in the number of projects using sound to represent astronomical data and concepts. Motivation for these projects includes the potential to enhance scientific discovery within complex datasets, by utilizing the inherent multidimensionality of sound and the ability of our hearing to filter signals from noise. Other motivations include creating engaging multisensory resources, for education and public engagement, and making astronomy more accessible to people who are blind or have low vision, promoting their participation in science and related careers. We describe potential benefits of sound within these contexts and provide an overview of the nearly 100 sound-based astronomy projects that we have identified. We discuss current limitations and challenges of the approaches taken. Finally, we suggest future directions to help realize the full potential of sound-based techniques in general and to widen their application within the astronomy community.@en

In recent years, efforts to frame sound-related areas of research such as sonification, sonic interaction design and product sound design in terms of design methodologies became more common. Sound designers seem to be willing to structure a field traditionally characterised by tacit knowledge in terms of explicit design processes, tools and methods, to increase the reach and impact of the field. In this paper, we describe the first two stages of a commercial sonification project for the design of sounds for Electric Vehicles. The project was developed applying a design methodology that integrates a specific tool (the sonification canvas), which we describe in detail. We approach the creation of sounds for Electric Vehicles as a designerly endeavour with the goal of contributing to the transition of sound design from a heterogenous, practice-based field to a structured discipline that can enrich the creation of fulfilling experiences.@en

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown meant a greatly reduced social and economic activity. Sound is of major importance to people’s perception of the environment, and some remarked that the soundscape was changing for the better. But are these anecdotal reports based in truth? Has traffic noise from cars and airplanes really gone down, so that more birdsong can be heard? Have socially distanced people quietened down? This article presents a case study of the human perception of environmental sounds in an urban neighborhood in the Basque Country between 15 March and 25 May 2020. The social restrictions imposed through national legislation divided the 69-day period into three phases. We collected observations, field audio recordings, photography, and diary notes on 50 days. Experts in soundscape and architecture were presented with the recordings, in randomized order, and made two separate perceptual analyses. One group (N = 11) rated the recordings for pleasantness and eventfulness using an adapted version of the Swedish Soundscape Quality Protocol, and a partly overlapping group (N = 12) annotated perceived sound events with free-form semantic labels. The labels were systematically classified into a four-level Taxonomy of Sound Sources, allowing an estimation of the relative amounts of Natural, Human, and Technological sounds. Loudness and three descriptors developed for bioacoustics were extracted computationally. Analysis showed that Eventfulness, Acoustic Complexity, and Acoustic Richness increased significantly over the time period, while the amount of Technological sounds decreased. These observations were interpreted as reflecting changes in people’s outdoor activities and behavior over the whole 69-day period, evidenced in an increased presence of Human sounds of voices and walking, and a significant shift from motorized vehicles toward personal mobility devices, again evidenced by perceived sounds. Quantitative results provided a backdrop against which qualitative analyses of diary notes and observations were interpreted in relation to the restrictions and the architectural specifics of the site. An integrated analysis of all sources pointed at the temporary suspension of human outdoor activity as the main reason for such a change. In the third phase, the progressive return of street life and the usage of personal mobility vehicles seemed to be responsible for a clear increase in Eventfulness and Loudness even in the context of an overall decrease of Technological sounds. Indoor human activity shared through open windows and an increased presence of birdsong emerge as a novel characteristic element of the local urban soundscape. We discuss how such changes in the acoustic environment of the site, in acoustic measurements and as perceived by humans, point toward the soundscape being a crucial component of a comprehensive urban design strategy that aims to improve health and quality of life for increasingly large and dense populations in the future.

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Data sonification is a practice for conducting scientific analysis through the use of sound to represent data. It is now transitioning to a practice for communicating and reaching wider publics by expanding the range of languages and senses for understanding complexity in data-intensive societies. Communicating to wider publics, though, requires that authors intentionally shape sonification in ways that consider the goals and contexts in which publics relate. It requires a specific set of knowledge and skills that design as a discipline could provide. In this article, we interpret five recent sonification projects and locate them on a scale of intentionality in how authors communicate socially relevant issues to publics.

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INTRODUCTION: We present early results of an ongoing investigation into the use of sound for real-time monitoring of anomalous behaviour in digital and digital/physical systems.

OBJECTIVES: We aim to define design guidelines to both support authors in the process of creating sonifications that are both efficient and engaging and the transition of sonification into a mass medium for the representation of data in everyday life.

METHODS: Through two Design Actions, we apply Design Research to the definition of the use case, the interaction paradigm and the experimental protocol for real-world evaluation of sonification tools.

RESULTS: Two Design Actions are described. Methodologies and results of the first experimental phase are presented in detail along with their influence on the second phase, currently ongoing.

CONCLUSION: We sketch a tentative design-driven process for sonifications for the real-time monitoring of anomalous behaviour in digital and digital/physical systems@en

El trabajo por superposición de tramas de información gráfica ha sido una metodología de desarrollo proyectual utilizada por grandes arquitectos como alternativa a otros procesos metodológicos de diseño. Estas capas pueden estar referidas a aspectos tangibles de la arquitectura y el diseño urbano, esto es, elementos físicos, tocables, o a esas tensiones invisibles, intangibles que aportan valor sustancial a la arquitectura. La experimentación con este tipo de trabajo aporta al alumnado una metodología complementaria a otros procesos más lineales y controlados, permitiendo que la propia superposición de capas sugiera la aparición de ‘estructuras de sucesos’ inesperadas. En este artículo se presenta la secuencia de experimentación realizada sobre estas bases metodológicas en tres ejercicios consecutivos desde la composición en dos dimensiones, pasando por lo matérico hasta la creación de un proyecto completo. La pandemia COVID-19 entra a formar parte de estos estratos superpuestos de capas influyendo sustancialmente sobre el resultado final. Overlapping graphic information patterns is an architectural design methodology used in the recent past by renowned architects as an alternative way to other design processes. Design layers can be referred to tangible aspects of architecture and design, this is, physically touchable elements, or to those invisible tensions that add core substantial value to architecture. By experimenting with this kind of work, students acquire a complementary methodology to other more linear and controlled processes, allowing them to bump into unexpected ‘structures of events’ suggested by the very overlapping layers. In this article we present the experimental sequence developed on this methodological basis over three consecutive exercises, from a two-dimensional composition, going through materiality until the pursuit of a whole architectural project. The COVID-19 pandemic enters the picture to take part of this stratified array of layers and substantially influence the final result.@en

Water distribution systems are undergoing a process of intensive digitalization, adopting networked devices for monitoring and control. While this transition improves efficiency and reliability, these infrastructures are increasingly exposed to cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks engender anomalous system behaviors which can be detected by data-driven algorithms monitoring sensors readings to disclose the presence of potential threats. At the same time, the use of sonification in real time process monitoring has grown in importance as a valid alternative to avoid information overload and allowing peripheral monitoring. Our project aims to design a sonification system allowing human operators to take better decisions on anomalous behavior while occupied in other (mainly visual) tasks. Using a state-of-the-art detection algorithm and data sets from the Battle of the Attack Detection Algorithms, a series of sonification prototypes were designed and tested in the real world. This paper illustrates the design process and the experimental data collected, as well results and plans for future steps.@en

In this paper, starting from a case study (the mixed-media data sonification installation Res Extensae), we discuss a number of assumptions on the efficacy of sound as a means to represent and communicate numerical data. The discussion is supported by the results of a questionnaire aimed at validating our assumptions and conducted with fifteen of the participants to the experience. At the same time, we have the ambition to contribute to a wider debate on the value of data sonification. We introduce the first stage of a research on sonification as a design-driven, user-centred and multi-modal experience, in that closer to data design practices rather than to traditional composition and computer music. We describe the usage of physical objects to help users to put sounds and data into a wider context, improving the user experience and facilitating the comprehension and retention of the meaning of data.@en