Sonification of Spatial Data

Sonification is the use of sound and speech to represent information. There are many sonification examples in the literature from simple realizations such as a Geiger counter to representations of complex geological features. The data that is being represented can be either spatial or non-spatial. Specifically, spatial data contains positional information; the position either refers to an exact location in the physical world or in an abstract virtual world. Likewise, sound itself is spatial: the source of the sound can always be located. There is obviously a synergy between spatial data and sonification. Hence, this paper reviews the sonification of spatial data and investigates this synergy. We look at strategies for presentation, exploration and what spatial interfaces and devices developers have used to interact with the sonifications. Furthermore we discuss the duality between spatial data and various sonification methodologies. [