{"id":97,"date":"2017-07-29T01:16:08","date_gmt":"2017-07-29T01:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roberthale.com\/content\/?p=97"},"modified":"2017-07-29T01:19:13","modified_gmt":"2017-07-29T01:19:13","slug":"transforming-data-to-music-electronic-windchime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.roberthale.com\/content\/2017\/07\/29\/transforming-data-to-music-electronic-windchime\/","title":{"rendered":"Transforming Data to Music – Electronic WindChime"},"content":{"rendered":"

Searching for data sets that might work as Sonifications\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0I discovered wind data for the Minneapolis MN area from the year 2015. I selected the wind direction and velocity fields and did a quick and dirty test which resulted in a blast of too much noise. Since one of my objectives is to let the data sound I was hesitant to edit the data however I came up with an acceptable solution. I used a relational database to load the data and label the direction fields according to their ‘general direction’. The quadrants below illustrate the labeling process.<\/p>\n

\"Wind<\/a><\/p>\n

Now with only four directions I set out to see what would happen. The results\u00a0sounded to me like a electronic windchime or a Gamelan orchestra.<\/p>\n

The data was obtained from \u00a0NOAA<\/a>\u00a0who collects vast amounts of data on climate and weather. \u00a0There is an important distinction between weather and climate that is often used to\u00a0muddy the waters in discussion of climate change. Generally speaking weather are the events that take place in a climate. I’ll leave it there.<\/p>\n

I decided to move the sound files to SoundCloud for ease of distrubution. You can hear my ‘songs’ there if you don’t want to read the stories.<\/p>\n