Sonified Aerobics – Interactive Sonification of Coordinated Body Movements

This paper introduces a new hard-/ and software system for the interactive sonification of sports movement involving armand leg movements. Two different sonifications are designed to convey rhythmical patterns that become auditory gestalt so that listeners can identify features of the underlying coordinated movement. The Sonification is designed for the application to enable visually impaired users to participate in aerobics exercises, and also to enhance the perception of movements for sighted participants, which is useful for instance if the scene is occluded or the head posture is incompatible with the observation of the instructor or fitness professional who shows the practices in parallel. Furthermore, the system allows to monitor fine couplings in arm/leg coordination while jogging, as auditory feedback may help stabilizing the movement pattern. We present the sensing system, two sonification designs, and interaction examples that lead to coordination-specific sound gestalts. Finally, some qualitative observations are reported from the first uses of the prototype.