HydroScape and Touch the Future—Hear the Climate Change
Design Rhythmics Sonification Research Lab
Two new applications allow for the perception of water cycle and climate change data through integrated visualizations, animations and sonifications. Touch the Future - Hear the Climate Change expresses NCAR's latest climate model data spanning 1920 to 2100 is expressed through a new interactive museum exhibit utilizing musical encoding and beautiful graphics. This project is a close collaboration with Dr. Clara Deser, Head, Climate Analysis Section, and Tim Scheitlin and Matt Rheme of the visualization lab at NCAR. Hydroscape is an new component of WaterViz, an online water cycle visualization, animation, and sonification data exploration and perceptual tool that lies at the nexus among the hydrologic sciences, education, art, and music.
Developer and founder of Design Rhythmics Sonification Research Lab, Marty Quinn has pioneered auditory information designs for many kinds of data through musical encoding for the past 25 years and believes they can provide new opportunities to better know our data and to develop new memories of our data. These products also open up perception of large amounts of data to those who may be visually impaired.