Hearing the Unseen
My sister Brenda and I are developing a software application for the visualization and sonification of stock market data.
In our system five stocks are monitored. All five streams are simultaneously heard, but only one visible. Using an hrtf (head-related transfer function), positions of the five data streams that are represented visually can be simultaneously monitored aurally. The amount of activity of each share (volume) is represented by the amount of rhythmic activity in a sound, and changes in the price the share by upward or downward sequences of pitch.
The shares form a virtual space around the viewer with the front share visible on the screen:
Here is an audio file produced by our system.
We ultimately want to create a game called “Our Tax Dollars at Work”.
