UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Mark Ballora, associate professor of music technology, will present "Seeing With Your Ears: Visualizing Data With Sound" as the final Research Unplugged event of the spring semester at 12:30 p.m. on April 23 in Schlow Centre Region Library.
The Research Unplugged series, now in its 11th year, brings together Penn State researchers and the State College community for lively public discussions.
Sonification is the process of taking large scientific data sets and translating them into musical audio files. The resulting sonification creates a new way of experiencing the pattern of the data while being pleasing to the ear.
“There’s something about music; everyone reacts to it. People are so responsive to sound,” says Ballora. “So if you can listen to a data set instead of just look at it, maybe that can tap into or create an experience or understanding you wouldn’t otherwise get.”
Ballora joined the Penn State faculty in 2000 and holds a joint appointment in the School of Music and the School of Theatre. His sonifications of astronomical and physiological datasets have been used by percussionist/ethnomusicologist Mickey Hart on his band’s albums "Mysterium Tremendum" and "Superorganism," as well as the film "Rhythms of the Universe," which Hart conceived with cosmologist George Smoot.
At Penn State, he has worked with ecologist Michael Sherrif and created a sound project that reflects the body temperature of Alaskan squirrels, data that helps researchers understand how animals adapt to changes in snow cover.
Research Unplugged events are free and open to the public. A question-and-answer session is part of the program.
The Research Unplugged series is made possible with the support of the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office of Strategic Communications, as well as Schlow Centre Region Library. For additional information, contact series coordinator Melissa Beattie Moss at 814-865-2614 or mbmoss@psu.edu.