Beautiful Data: Reflections for a Sonification and Post-Sonification Aesthetics

My art-science practice orbits the duality of data sonification: translation of complex events in sonic material and objects for musical poiesis.Data are raw elements for a compositional process that transcends the materiality of the original information in a postsonification praxis: The data stream is open for elaboration as driver of a compositional environment I use data as a sculptor would use clay to mold any object or create any design.

PERCEPTUALIZATION OF DATA THROUGH SOUND

Navigation of data in perceptive ways is a highly complex endeavor mainly achieved through the visualization of graphs. Sonification, the representation of data by acoustic means, is a critical alternative and complement to visual approaches that becomes essential when the data space is large.

POST-SONIFICATION AS ARTISTIC PRACTICE

Completed at Djerassi as a tribute to the Italian synchrotron radiation facility ELETTRA, un giro db'anello (six experiments for electric string quartet and fixed media) [1] epitomizes my postsonification aesthetics in musical composition. Its fixed media component is based on the sonification of scientific data in sound synthesis and temporal evolution; the strings depart from the sonification canon while maintaining a unifying connection and theme.

Conceptual score and compositional design of un giro d'anello, 2017. (© Marco Buongiorno Nardelli)

Graphical score of UNKNOWN, a journey, miniature opera for prerecorded soprano and piano samples, 2017. (© Marco Buongiorno Nardelli) Music by Marco Buongiorno Nardelli; conception, design and libretto by the Band of Six (Ken Eklund, Adria LeBeouf, Heather Spence, Peter Walter and Marco Buongiorno Nardelli). The libretto is composed of the following words: TRANSFORM, ILLUMINATE, FLOURISH, SYNTHESIZE, EVOLVE, LISTEN, ENVISION, STEW, PITCH, FAIL, PRUNE and DIG.

SPACE AS THE SCORE: THE MINIATURE OPERA PROJECT

As a result of my participation in the installation UNKNOWN, a journey, designed for the Djerassi Open House event, I extended my compositional practice beyond digital data to include space and movement as triggers of musical events. In the miniature opera project, space becomes an interactive score; participants express their own sense of a creative journey by connecting the words of a physical libretto. Thus they build short operas in real time [2].

Supplementary Material

• Nardelli: un giro d’anello – score (.pdf 12 MB)
Full score of the string quartet (parts and fixed media audio files for performance available upon request). (© Marco Buongiorno Nardelli)

• Nardelli: un giro d’anello – trailer (.mp4 64 MB)
six experiments for string quartet and fixed media: Mia Detwiler, Karim Ayala Pool, violin; Kathleen Crabtree, viola; Kourtney Newton, cello. This trailer presents selections from the six movements of the piece juxtaposed with images that convey an abstract interpretation of the music. The full version is available on Vimeo. (© Marco Buongiorno Nardelli)