LOUD NUMBERS
Loud Numbers is a data sonification podcast, created by Duncan Geere and Miriam Quick. Data sonification is the process of turning data into sound, and we take it a step further by turning those sounds into music. In each episode, we introduce a data story, explain how we sonified it, and then play the sonification we’ve created.
Miriam Quick is a data journalist, researcher and author who explores novel ways of communicating data. She co-creates artworks that represent data through images, sculpture and sound and has a PhD in music from King’s College London. Her first book, I am a book. I am a portal to the universe., co-authored with Stefanie Posavec, was published in September 2020.
Duncan Geere is an information designer based in Gothenburg, Sweden, interested in climate and the environment. He works to communicate complex, nuanced information to a wider audience for a wide range of clients. He also works part-time for the climate charity Possible, and he's a generative artist and musician.
We’ve tried a lot of sonification tools, and settled on a core technology stack of Google Sheets into Sonic Pi into Logic Pro. We normally do our calculations in Google Sheets, then export the data in .csv format. We then import the .csv to Sonic Pi and code the sonifications there. Finally, we export the sonifications as .wav files, and import them to Logic Pro to turn them into a song. Occasionally, we create simple sonification layers directly in Logic.
