Sonification Abstraite/Sonification Concrète: An Aesthetic Perspective Space for Classifying Auditory Displays in the Ars Musica Domain

Source: Paul Vickers and Bennett Hogg, “Sonification Abstraite/Sonification Concrète: An ‘Aesthetic Perspective Space’ for Classifying Auditory Displays in the Ars Musica Domain,” Proceedings of ICAD 2006, pp. 210–216. (Vickers & Hogg, 2006) Local PDF

Central claim

How people listen helps set the practical boundary between sonification and music. Musical organisation and sound design can improve a functional system’s clarity, endurance and use.

Evidence and method

Vickers and Hogg build a conceptual classification from auditory-display projects, electroacoustic practice, listening theory and prior perception studies. Their aesthetic perspective space places works by their degree of indexical relation to data and by whether listeners approach them as information or music.

The paper distinguishes attention to a sound’s source, acoustic attributes and meaning, though these listening modes overlap (pp. 210–211). Background-awareness systems benefit from coherent sets of sounds whose frequency, intensity and semantic relations do not interfere with one another (pp. 211–212).

Potentially continuous monitoring poses a specific design problem: recognisable patterns and repeated musical structures can produce fatigue, so timbre and duration may need to carry information without demanding constant attention (p. 212). Aesthetic design can reduce fatigue and annoyance, but an attractive musical result can also distract the listener from the intended information (p. 215).

Key concepts

• Aesthetic perspective: The same sound can be approached as information, music, or both.
• Indexicality: A sound can retain a direct relation to its source or depend on an abstract mapping.
• Acoustic ecology: Sounds within a system need compatible spectral, dynamic and semantic roles.
• Background awareness: Audio can remain peripheral until a relevant change calls for attention.
• Listening skill: Designers need to hear masking, fatigue, structure and context rather than treat sound as raw output.

Limits

The proposed equivalence between sonification and music is deliberately broad and should not replace Hermann’s stricter definition when data interpretation matters. Several cited systems lack formal evaluation, and the paper offers no evidence about health effects or present-day generative apps. Its claims concern communication and listening quality rather than therapeutic efficacy.

Link to generative functional apps

Long-running functional audio needs low fatigue, controlled variation and limited masking, with enough coherence to remain tolerable without demanding attention. These criteria differ from the memorability, climax and fixed form often used to judge recorded works.

Music and background function can coexist because a listener can move between attentive listening and peripheral task support. An app can support that movement through sound which remains coherent without repeatedly interrupting the task.

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