Creating an entertaining and informative music visualization

Abstract

Auditory music is a universal art form that has spanned millennia. Music provides an insight into the collective culture of a society and acts as a vehicle to transmit shared knowledge that is common to all members of society. People who are deaf, deafened or hard of hearing tend to have a limited access to music and as a result can be excluded from this shared knowledge and cultural experience. A music visualization system, MusicViz, was developed based on a model of audio-visual sensory substitution. An evaluation of six different music genres showed that the visualizations were enjoyable and able to convey some information and emotions to the participants. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.