Infosphere: COVID London

The Infosphere project is an ongoing experiment to understand the possible coalescences between technologies that elicit emotion such as a musical instruments and the increasing prevelance of digital data and algorithms in our lives. It explores how the agencies of data and the algorithms that produce and frame them can be intentionally repurposed or coloured for reinterpretation.

This sonification depicts rising and falling pollution over London during the first coronavirus lockdown. Using Max MSP and a hardware synthesisier a custom built algorithm applies tonal values and sequencing to data from 6 locations. By parsing a dataset the algorithm tells a story of how the socio-ecology of a city is changing in terms of traffic, human activity and ambient weather. 

 The sonification uses two basic rules, average particulate pollution is broken down into bands of the air quality index to dictate overall tempo (lower is slower) and chord phrasings for individual locations become increasingly complex with more overtones as a reading lowers. In essence, when the air is clearer we are able to here more.

Selected in June 2020 for the Sustainability First Art Prize and exhibited at the Bermondsey Project Space in London.