I’ve been exploring the possibility of sonifying covid case data from different countries. For instance a few of the countries’ new case data looks like this:
…and I made a little demo for 3 violas based on the US, UK and Italy graphs, which sounds like this:
If you want to check out the code, it’s here:
https://git.sr.ht/~marcevanstein/covid_sonification/tree
Anyway, just thought it might be of interest to some of you!
While I find the sonification process, the code and the result interesting, I find the choice of the topic a little bit macabre for my point of view. That being said, can you please explain how you sonify the time-series? Kind regards, from Germany
Part of the soundtrack to “Psycho: 2016 - 2020”. Sadly, its a franchise with multiple sequels in the works.
As for sonification here, it seems to work. One can hear the tragedy grow and shrink over time, with increasing tension and worry and chaos…
P.S. You could title it “BUKIUS” – Brazil United Kingdom Italy United States 
You’ve demonstrated a really nice way to map the data to music here.
Totally understand how it might seem macabre! I just find the counterpoint between the different countries’ experiences kind of remarkable.
The way it works it that each violist alternates between two notes a fifth apart, with the alternation growing louder and faster as new cases rise. When new cases in the country get high enough, the bottom note starts to jump up an octave, and the notes start to bend increasingly out of tune.
Yeah, I feel like I stumbled on something that really worked. It’s simple enough to be clearly perceptible, and yet it’s not too simple — it has a richness to it. Sometimes you get lucky!
