Sonification is the process of converting data into sound, and has a practical function that helps intuitive understanding of data by converting numeric or text data into an audible form. It also has an artistic function that makes ordinary data unfamiliar and intriguing. Sequential data has been the subject of sonification mainly due to its similarity to sounds having an order according to time. In particular, a variety of sonification methods have been studied as scientific research tools for nucleic acid sequence data. In this thesis, three examples of the author's sonification artworks -- <Sound of Plants>, <ViViD>, and <Ŏdŭme/Somewhere(2020)> -- are introduced, and the results of a study on how the sonification art works were accepted by the public are reported. <Sounds of Plants> is a work in which the DNA sequence data of native plant species in the DMZ are sonified under the theme of species diversity, and <ViViD> is a work that visualizes the dynamics and connections of human society through the sonification of the RNA sequence data of COVID-19 and the time series data of the number of infected cases. <Ŏdŭme/Somewhere(2020)>, which deals with ecosystem diversity, is a work that sonified the DNA sequence data of native animals and plants in DMZ and the food web in the ecosystem. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations were conducted through surveys and interviews with visitors to the exhibitions. Through the evaluation, it was confirmed that sonification art can help the understanding of the data and can arouse interest in the data by making the data unfamiliar. This study shows that the interdisciplinary research of science and music — the sonification of biological sequential data as an artistic practice— can create new and important results.
Publication
(in progress) Dayoung Lee and Jusub Kim, Sonification Art of Biological Sequential Data