Interactive Sonification of Weather Data for The Locust Wrath, a Multimedia Dance Performance.

To work flexibly with the sound design for The Locust Wrath, a multimedia dance performance on the topic of climate change, the author developed software for interactive sonification of climate data. An open-ended approach to parameter mapping allowed tweaking and improvisation during rehearsals, resulting in a large range of musical expression. The sonifications represented weather systems pushing through Southeast Asia in complex patterns. The climate was rendered as a piece of electroacoustic music, whose compositional form--gesture, timbre, intensity, harmony, spatiality--was determined by the data. The article discusses aspects of aesthetic sonification, reports the process of developing the present work and contextualizes the design decisions within theories of cross-modal perception and listening modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]