Auditory Augmentation

1. InTroduCTIon The world around us is full of artificially gathered data. Upon that data we draw conclusions and make decisions, which possibly influence the future of our society. The difficulty hereby is not the data acquisition – we already have plenty – but our ability to process it (Gold-haber, 1997). Arising from this circumstance, at least two demands for data preparation can be identified: first, it should gain an appropriate amount of its user's attention depending on both the data domains' nature and the users' needs (Goldhaber, 2006), and second, it should utilise appropriate representations that truly AbSTrACT With auditory augmentation, the authors describe building blocks supporting the design of data representation tools, which unobtrusively alter the auditory characteristics of structure-borne sounds. The system enriches the structure-borne sound of objects with a sonification of (near) real time data streams. The object's auditory gestalt is shaped by data-driven parameters, creating a subtle display for ambient data streams. Auditory augmentation can be easily overlaid to existing sounds, and does not change prominent auditory features of the augmented objects like the sound's timing or its level. In a peripheral monitoring situation, the data stay out of the users' attention, which thereby remains free to focus on a primary task. However, any characteristic sound change will catch the users' attention. This article describes the principles of auditory augmentation, gives an introduction to the Reim Software Toolbox, and presents the first observations made in a preliminary long-term user study. integrate data and algorithmic functionality into the human life-world. Our awareness of being-in-the-world (Heidegger, 1927) is often caused by the intensiveness of multi-sensory stimuli. The experience of walking through a cavern, feeling a fresh breeze that contrasts with the pure solid rock under the feet, hearing echoes of footsteps and water drops serves as a good example for this: All the simultaneous impressions make us aware of our body and its integration into the cavern. The lack of a single sense or only a misleading impression would change the holistic interpretation of the scene. In traditional computer-related work, however, many of our senses such as hearing , taste or smell are underused. Historically developed paradigms such as the prominent Graphical User Interface (GUI) are not able to fully embed the user into the information to be mediated. Possible explanations for their nevertheless widespread use should be searched more in their (historically developed) technical feasibility (Sutherland, …