Thank you Clara! I completely agree it would be great to study how these techniques can be used across many scientific disciplines.  There is a knowledge-share group called Sonification World chat that has members across a number of different kinds of science, though astronomy is most heavily represented. Geology would be a fantastic place for such kinds of data representation truly, the data would easily translate to these formats if it isn't being done already.  I would love to chat more on this!

Thanks Lexi for the support! We are so interested in seeing how these techniques can be applied in the classroom too. And thanks for sharing your video link - inspiring!!

Karen, thank you so much! I really enjoy hearing about the MIT project (I've just looked it up - super interesting!) as truly that is the sort of thing that inspires me to think outside the box, outside the sense of sight.  

We are now starting to research some techniques to help us potentially compare the geometries of astrophysical objects through sonification, whether radial slices moving through a cluster, or stepping along an edge-on galaxy, etc.  Also we have been working on attaching sound to geospatial (astrospatial?) data, eg, in extended reality experiences to expand the multimodality of them.  Essentially we are looking for places where sonification can add to the information quotient, the meaning-making, the overall experience of the user.  

We do, yes. We have a manuscript in preparation that does talk about the positive benefits for learning, enjoyment, and engagement for sighted and blind or low vision groups across the range of expertise in astronomy, but particularly on the more non-expert side. There seems to be some triggering of emotional response with this multimodal approach, which perhaps can help make the more esoteric seeming concepts of astrophysics a bit more approachable. There is perhaps also some signifiers towards increased trust in science, and a bit of data to show that multimodal projects can help raise awareness of how other people access information. More to come in the paper though! Thanks so much Susan for your comments and questions.

I can also add that I've used these sonifications in presentations and planetarium shows for people all ages, sight levels, and levels of scientific background and get similar responses every time. Although groups of BVI people have been more engaged and reactive. It seems to provoke active listening and hence active learning, since people know there is some information they can extract from the sound (kind of like a puzzle to be solved). My foray into sonification actually started when I was preparing a presentation on TRAPPIST-1 for 12 year olds. I knew that explaining the pattern of resonances or showing images or graphs wouldn't have much effect, but by sonifying the orbits they were able to experience it themselves and it got an instant reaction. We've had similar experiences creating a sonification-based exhibit for the Ontario Science Centre. Parents had a hard time pulling their kids away from it!

Thank you! And wonderful question! For our first study we did a quick look at user perception/response with basic questions on engagement/learning/etc., looking for differences between expert and non expert, and BVI and sighted, audiences.  I'm particularly inspired by my colleague Dr. Wanda Diaz's research that showed astronomers can become better listeners and use that skill for their data.  So I imagine it would be a useful study to look at this type of multimodality's potential in what you're thinking. I would be happy to chat more about this, really interesting. 

Hi Dan, Thanks for stopping by!  My colleague Christine Malec, who is blind, said recently that for sighted folks these sonifications are like dessert, but for her, they're like a main meal.  To me, those are both perfectly valid forms of eating (I love dessert) but the nutritional value- and necessity - is going to be higher in the meal than the dessert.  So yes it can be inspiration but its also very much about access to the data and meaning-making of that data.  There are a number of projects now in astronomy that are also trying to establish sonification as a method for scientific data analysis as well.  

With our project, I was rather surprised at the large, positive response from sighted communities as I had thought primarily BVI communities would engage with it.  But like what can sometimes happen when you build something better for someone you can often make it better for everyone (eg cut curb effect).  In our preliminary study of this project we saw evidence that sighted audience members learned about accessibility of data for BVI communities, so there are some promising nuggets in that.  I really like framing this project as having potential to create more connections between communities and will think more on that. Hope that helps. 

Thanks Cali - good pun! ;)  Your project looks great, I'm such a fan of universal design.  Thanks so much for sharing!

Thanks Victor! You can actually do just that on this web-based sonification app we're developing. It uses the same sonification mapping used in some of the Chandra sonifications (a left to right scan, mapping height to pitch). It's originally by an artist named Olivia Jack. We modified it, added accessibility features, and did testing with sighted and BVI people as part of the Sonification World Chat group Kim mentioned earlier. 

I just tried it. It is wonderful. I too create tools connecting science and music. I actually wanted to include a somehow similar feature in our musical spectrogram www.listeningtowaves.com/spectrogram 

If you have ideas for making the musical spectrogram even more musical I'd love to hear them. Thanks so much!

Wow, very well done, that's the real deal! Very fun, intuitive, and educational. Some kind of rhythm loop functionality (like a visual drum machine) might be cool, but I like the simplicity of the app as is. I'd love to use your app the next time I teach sonification/music, thanks for passing that along!

One partial answer, if you've seen the VR app Notes on Blindness, it does an interesting job visualizing a soundscape (sort of the inverse of hearing a picture). I wrote a blog post on it a while back. 
https://www.playfulrealities.com/2021/01/creati...

Thanks! The closest thing we've done is a 360 video of the first 5000 exoplanets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOwI3nTAHIc and the blind listeners we talked to did report enjoying it more than the non-360 version. The visuals were more engaging in the standard one so there's a trade-off, which is why we did both. But, I agree that full VR would really add a lot to the experience since it forces active exploration. I assume it would be more natural for rendered 3D scenes or full sky data (rather than small field of view static images) but would love to try either way. 

Hi Kim!  They are actually the sonifications threaded throughout the video yes :)  You can hear all of them in full including as separate pieces on our site at chandra.si.edu/sound.  Thanks for the nice note and for stopping by!

Amazing. thank you!

Yes, certainly, we have witnessed astronomers who use sound to discover patterns in the stars, etc., and sometimes the blips in the sonified data are detected more readily than they would have been with visual data. It's pretty fascinating.