Accordata

Interpreting real-time environmental data as music.

This project requires Unity 2018.2.1f1

ACCORDATA PROJECT DESCRIPTION

There are plenty of existing examples of the sonification of environmental data streams. Think of how the frequency of clicks from a Geiger counter conveys the of the urgency threat from nuclear radiation, for example. A less dramatic, but aesthetically far more pleasing example would be that of windchimes, where a measurement of the current wind speed is transmuted into meditative and infinitely variable music.

With the example of windchimes in mind, the challenge we set ourselves with the Accordata project was to create similarly open-ended, ever-changing soundtracks from environmental data we receive from the world around us, and in doing so to explore how the sensual (sound) and factual (data) can be aligned in a manner that is both faithful and inspiring.

While we expect the Accordata project to continue to expand and evolve, the tangible results of the project are currently two-fold. The first is the free Accordata app for Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.StoneBell.AirQuality and iOS devices which allows users to musically explore the current environmental conditions (air quality, temperature, wind speed, humidity and precipitation) for 78 testing sites around Taiwan, or instead to cycle through the sites for a selected county. Users can also choose to focus on a single site and to review the data points received over the preceding 72 hours. The initial three styles of musical interpretation will be expanded through future app updates to include a number of additional styles.

The second product of the project are the underlying Unity3D project files, including the C# scripts and the audio playback plugin for the Accordata project. These are all made available under an open source GPL3 license in the hope that it will prove useful to others exploring similar areas of interest.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Tyng-Ruey Chuang at Academia Sinica for approaching us with the original idea for the project, largely fully formed and including a lot of the details that made it into the final app. We appreciate the trust he placed in us to execute on his vision, and for allowing us the creative freedom to expand on it. We would also like to thank the staff of Dimension Plus for their guidance throughout the course of the project. Finally, a sincere thank you to the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan for making this project possible.

For more information regarding the Accordata project, visit http://accordata.org All project files can be found at https://github.com/moshang/Accordata

– MoShang, 2018-10-05