In the past few weeks we have seen many approaches to visualize COVID-19 data. But, why visualize the data if you can listen to it? Our passion for music led us to implement a system that enables users to listen to the COVID-19 outbreak around the world.
Sonic Virus enables users to listen to the evolution of the COVID-19 outbreak around the world by means of data sonification. In a nutshell, data sonification is the auditory equivalent of data visualization.
To interact with Sonic Virus, the user selects a reference point on the globe (i.e., coordinate) and the symphony automatically starts to play. Under the hood, our platform gathers the raw data from the 2019-nCoV Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE, aggregates the data, and uses it as input for a custom data sonification algorithm we implemented. In aggregating the data, Sonic Virus assigns different weights to the data depending on the linear distance of the reference point. For example, if the user clicks on Switzerland, data regarding the COVID-19 outbreak in Switzerland will contribute more to the symphony being played. Nonetheless, being a global pandemic, the situation of the rest of the world will also influence the symphony, but with a lower weight.
To complement the sound, the globe shows an animation of the new confirmed cases of COVID-19, day by day, in the world (the position within a country is random).
Besides selecting a reference point to geo-localize the symphony, the user can also customize its experience in Sonic Virus as follows:
time interval for the data, i.e., and the symphony; refresh time, yielding to a faster or slower symphony; To implement the data sonification of Sonic Virus we leveraged the expertise of Prof. Nadir Vassena and Alberto Barberis, teachers, composers, and instructors at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana. Besides they have never performed a real-time data sonification on the web, their extensive musical background enabled us to reach a complex, rich, yet meaningful geo-localized data-driven symphony.
The data sonification algorithm is entirely composed of digitally synthesized sounds created on the fly with the Web Audio API. Each time a user interacts with Sonic Virus, she will obtain a different symphony thanks to the dynamism given by some random elements. However, the elements of the symphony are strictly related to the COVID-19 data, as detailed below.
The symphony uses 5 categories of digitally synthesized sounds: kick, white noise, impulse, harmonic field, and arpeggiator. The base sound is the kick reminiscent of a heartbeat. Then, as time passes, new COVID-19 data are fed into the algorithm. In turn, new sounds are added to enrich the symphony.
Each sound and tempo (i.e., metro) is mapped to different characteristics of COVID-19 data. For example, the metro of the kick is mapped to the daily confirmed cases of COVID-19, i.e., more cases, faster tempo, faster heartbeat. The amount of white noise describes the amount of deaths, while impulses represent the recovered cases. The harmonic field is connected with the daily confirmed cases, while the arpeggiator beats time between one heartbeat and the next.
Under the hood, our project uses the following technologies: Vue.js, threejs.org, Web Audio API
and Express.js.Sonic Virus leverages data about infections, deaths and recoveries from a publicly available repository maintained by the Johns Hopkins University here: 2019-nCoV Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE .
Please note that since the 4th of August recoveries are no longer included in the dataset. Sonic Virus continues to use historic recovery data to keep the data sonification working as it was originally intended for earlier dates in the Covid 19 pandemic.