Initial Ideas

1. Need to organize the data by either region or by latitude so that any comparisons make sense
2. Should a time axis be added to the data
3. The data need a considerable amount of work in order for them to used appropriately.
4. Can't do latitude in PD, so tried to list by region
5. Task 1: Choose one simple example to try -- look males and females for life expectancy across regions -- could use two different sounds for a chord or we could look at the difference between the two levels. This task is simple in terms of what the resulting sonification will be.

Experimenting

1. For the comparison of male and female life expectancy with the data sorted into regions, numbers were converted to bursts based on longer bursts with larger numbers. Certain numbers would need to be modified so that they fit into suitable ranges. It was decided that a ratio would best. The metaphor was suggested that we could think about this as "knocking on the door" of a country and having them "answer" us in terms of resonance, frequency and duration. It was also suggested that the regions could be represented by a parameter rather than sorting. We tried first the length as the region and frequency was ratio ---- country was in alphabetical order. We found this wonderfully entertaining! Then we tried region as frequency and ratio (male divided by female) as length. This was interesting but not very compelling in terms of understanding the data. Then we assigned the regions to an octave range (Africa is C, for example.)The breaks in the data are where the missing values are.
2. Took total unemployment, total school sorted into regions....one of the variables is a sawtooth (sawtooth) and one is a filtered (total school) and the regions are sinewaves. Then we tried mapping to different octaves for the two variables with the sinewaves in the background and slowed it down. When the sound is cons tant, there are missing values.

Evaluation

does it work ?

Yes, number 1. works.....number 2 didn't work as well.

Whats next?

we would like to do...

A more complex exploration looking a "quality of life" would be an more interesting sonification. GDP, life expectancy, unemployment, etc. It would be interesting to look at 3 different sonfications: one for all people, one for male, and one for female. This could also be broken down into separate sonifications or they could be one composition moving from young to old or male to female.