#1 Overview - Data Sonification
In this assignment, I used 2 different datasets about Economics to design my song: 1.The dataset of S&P500 index from 2012/08/02 to 2014/08/02. 2.The dataset of Consumer Price Index in the US from 2012/08/02 to 2014/08/02. Since I have a great interest in investment, I keep track of some important Economic index everyday. As I looked through the instruction of this assignment, I felt the index of stocks, funds, or Economics are a good fit to the dataset as it contains a set of almost arbitrary high and low data. The S&P500 index is regarded as a gauge of the large cap U.S. equities market. The index includes 500 leading companies in industries of the U.S. economy, which are publicly held on either the NYSE or NASDAQ, and covers 75% of U.S. equities. As a result, it can be viewed approximately as the Economic performance of the US. First, I used the index data of S&P500 from August 2012 to August 2014 to generate a sound that presents the high and low spirit of the index in order to hear how the US Economic "sounds" in the past two years. Because the index graphic in stock, fund or Economics all looks like saw wave, I modified the oscillator in my file: SongPlayer.ck from sine to saw to make it sound more aggressive. In contrast, I wanted to know how the inflation and deflation rate are associated with the growing Economic in the US, so I used the second dataset: Consumer Price Index from the same time period as the S&P500. The Consumer Price Index has a lower value, so I made it as a low frequency sound in contrast to the S&P500 index sound. Since the Consumer Price Index is recorded every month while the S&P500 index is recorded everyday, the numbers of datasets are not the same. I repeated the data of Consumer Price Index to make a periodical Bass sound as long as the S&P500 sound. In the end, I modified the SongPlayerDuo.ck to play these two index at the same time and also added a little delay to my sound. Later I used audacity to record my art piece in two channels. One for the S&P500 index and the other for the Consumer Price Index. This made it possible to listen to the two index and see how they interact.
#2 Art Piece - High & Low
High&Low.wav
#3 Data Files
SP500.txt CPI.txt
#4 Source Code
DataReader.ck SongPlayer.ck SongPlayerDuo.ck