Sonification: A Prehistory

The idea that sound can convey information predates the modern era, and certainly the computational present. Data sonification can be broadly described as the creation, study and use of the non-speech aural representation of information to convey information. As a field of contemporary enquiry and practice, data sonification is young, interdisciplinary and evolving; existing in parallel to the field of data visualization. Drawing on older practices such as auditing, and the use of information messaging in music, this paper provides an historical understanding of how sound and its representational deployment in communicating information has changed. In doing so, it aims to encourage a critical awareness of some of the sociocultural as well as technical assumptions often adopted in sonifying data, especially those that have been developed in the context of Western music of the last half-century or so.