Creating a Coral Symphony: Sound Art and Sonification

Abstract

There is a rich history of artists representing the visible world through imagery. What of the invisible? What if you could harness hidden voices of the natural environment? Artistic sonification is an emerging artistic endeavour at the intersection of mathematics and music, which sees big data transformed into sound. This paper describes the background and development of Coral Symphony - a Sound Art installa-tion unveiling voices from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Installation constituent materials evolved from the sonification of ecological data over twenty years, supplemented with field recordings.