A sonification experience to portray the sounds of Portuguese consumption habits

Authors

Abstract

The stimuli for consumption is present in everyday life, where major retail companies play a role in providing a large range of products every single day. Using sonification techniques, we present a listening experiment of Portuguese consumption habits in the course of ten days, gathered from a Portuguese retail company. We focused on how to represent this time-series data as a musical piece that would engage the listener?s attention and promote an active listening attitude, exploring the influence of aesthetics in the perception of auditory displays. Through a phenomenological approach, ten participants were interviewed to gather perceptions evoked by the piece, and how the consumption variations were understood. The tested composition revealed relevant associations about the data, with the consumption context indirectly present throughout the emerging themes: from the idea of everyday life, routine and consumption peaks to aesthetic aspects as the passage of time, frenzy and consumerism. Documentary, movie imagery and soundtrack were also perceived. Several musical aspects were also mentioned, as the constant, steady rhythm and the repetitive nature of the composition, and sensations such as pleasantness, satisfaction, annoyance, boredom and anxiety. These collected topics convey the incessant feeling and consumption needs which portray our present society, offering new paths for comprehending musical sound perception and consequent exploration.

Conference

25th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2019), June 2019

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DOI