On Breathing and Geography: Explorations of Data Sonifications of Timespace Processes with Illustrating Examples from a Tidally Dynamic Landscape (Severn Estuary, UK)

Abstract

This paper consists of a discussion of data sonification-a procedure in which information gathered from systems such as bodies or environmental processes is analyzed and reprocessed into audio models, so aspects of the process generating the data (for example, emotional or tidal ebb and flow) can be apprehended by human senses. This serves various purposes relevant to geography. Firstly, it sets out the principles of sonification as a method, defining its basic principles and relating it to both qualitative and quantitative data. Secondly, it offers potential to geographic interests in process, times, rhythm, landscape, place, and more besides-'representing' various aspects of processes that are beyond normal human apprehension, perhaps through register, duration, pitch, and so on. Thirdly, in the illustrating examples, which comprise sonifications of tides and other processes in the Severn Estuary, UK, it highlights possibilities of engaging local communities and stakeholders with the dynamics of landscapes such as tidal processes, which have significant implications for culture, economy, and ecology, as do other tidal and other process geographies elsewhere.

Full text

Environment and Planning A 2013, volume 45, pages 000 – 000
doi:10.1068/a45264
On breathing and geography: explorations of data
sonifications of timespace processes with illustrating
examples from a tidally dynamic landscape (Severn
Estuary, UK)
Michaela Palmer (née Reiser)
University of the West of England, Frenchay Campus, Coldharbour Lane, Bristol BS16 1QY,
England; e-mail: mic.palmer@uwe.ac.uk
Owain Jones
Countryside and Community Research Institute, Oxstalls Campus, University of
Gloucestershire, Oxstalls Lane, Longlevens, Gloucester GL2 9HW, Gloucestershire,
England; e-mail: ojones@glos.ac.uk
Received 24 May 2012; in revised form 19 March 2013
Abstract. This paper consists of a discussion of data sonification—a procedure in which
information gathered from systems such as bodies or environmental processes is analyzed
and reprocessed into audio models, so aspects of the process generating the data (for
example, emotional or tidal ebb and flow) can be apprehended by human senses. This
serves various purposes relevant to geography. Firstly, it sets out the principles of
sonification as a method, defining its basic principles and relating it to both qualitative and
quantitative data. Secondly, it offers potential to geographic interests in process, times,
rhythm, landscape, place, and more besides— ‘representing’ various aspects of processes
that are beyond normal human apprehension, perhaps through register, duration, pitch,
and so on. Thirdly, in the illustrating examples, which comprise sonifications of tides and
other processes in the Severn Estuary, UK, it highlights possibilities of engaging local
communities and stakeholders with the dynamics of landscapes such as tidal processes,
which have significant implications for culture, economy, and ecology, as do other tidal
and other process geographies elsewhere.
Keywords: sonification, process, rhythm, landscape, time, tides
The Severn was brown and the Severn was blue—
Not this-then-that, not either-or,
No mixture. Two things can be true.
The hills were clouds and the mist a shore.
extract from “Severn Song”, The Water Table, Philip Gross (2009)
Introduction
This paper serves a number of purposes for geography and related disciplines. Primarily it sets
out the principles of data sonification as a method of exploring processes in spacetime terrains
such as bodies and landscapes. Data are routinely visualized in a range of diagrammatic
forms (eg, graphs, bar and pie charts) and these are staple forms of scientific analysis
and communication. Data sonification offers the chance of analyzing and communicating
processes in very different ways. Firstly, sonification artefacts or events(1) retain temporal and
performative dynamics within themselves as they play in time. Secondly, human affective
(1) Sonification creations may be called ‘artefacts’ but also be termed ‘events’ as they take place in time
when played/performed.

2 M Palmer, O Jones
processing works very differently between the visual and the aural. We cannot fully explore
these implications here (as it is such a vast subject), but we do point to how differently sight
and hearing work as senses and to affective implications. One need only consider the form and
power of music to begin to engage with the opportunities, and challenges, of sonification.
Sonification takes collected values from some process or other and, through various
manipulations and recalibrations, creates an event that ‘represents’ some or other aspect of
that process in ways amenable to immediate human perception. For example, the rise of CO2
in the earth’s atmosphere since the start of the industrial age (routinely represented by a
graph) could be represented by a ten-minute (or other duration) sound event where changing
note values and tempi represent the increase.
The world is a weave of processes—‘a complex passing of events’ (Whitehead, 1964,
page 78). Current, dominant visualizations or processes struggle to appreciate this as we
freeze the world, cut it up into objects for study, risking that the essence of life is lost. We
hope that sonification can play a part in moving us to a more activist-based philosophy
(Massumi, 2011) in which there are traces of creativity and nonrepresentation (Thrift, 2008).
In what follows we explore the above themes in more detail, then discuss examples of
sonifications of a tidally dynamic landscape (the Severn Estuary, UK). Tidal landscapes
are very obviously in motion all the time, articulated as complex sets of rhythmic flows
generated by the spin of the earth and the relative motion of moon, earth, and sun. The
complex interleaving patterns of daily, monthly, seasonal (and beyond) tide times and ranges,
help shape the spacetimes not only of ecology and geomorphology but of a range of economic
and cultural processes in the estuary and its hinterlands. Sonification and mapping techniques
of data can deepen and intensify people’s engagement with such nonhuman rhythms and
temporalities in this case, as in a range of other terrains (from bodies to landscapes),
and express the dynamism and vitality therein.
We feel that sonification has potential in just about any line of inquiry geographers
and others might be pursuing. One final thing to say in this introduction is that writing
representations of sonifications could be said to be defeating the aim; however, the prototype
sonifications discussed in the paper, created by the authors and students at the University of
the West of England, are online and can be accessed freely.
Life, processes, refrains (a call to arms)
A societal blindness to process (as opposed to objects) is highly problematic for the
flourishing of diversity on earth. Ecocide (Guattari, 2000) is well underway. Lovelock has
recently claimed that the current definitions of life embedded in the biological sciences are
too narrow:
“ [Life as currently defined] must contain DNA, it must reproduce. I think it should
encompass large entities like ecosystems. The atmosphere, the oceans, the first few miles
of surface rock. As alive as the cells in your toes are alive, and part of you, and you are
alive” (Lovelock cited by Ferguson, 2009).
We need to develop greater sensitivities to the life-making processes of the biosphere, which
might operate over eons and in the most ‘mundane’ of materials and registers: for example in
erosion–deposition cycles.
Welland (2009) discusses the processes of rivers in the development of the biosphere
as they transport ‘sand’ (sediment) and organic material from evolving land to evolving
oceans over eons. He observes that “around a third of this natural volume is [now] prevented
from reaching the oceans as a result of being trapped behind dams and other man-made
obstructions” (page 81).
Other sand-created landscapes such as coastal dunes that slowly creep in the wind—with
accompanying ecological and cultural rhythms/responses—are routinely fixed or eradicated by
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 3
land-use development. Indicative of process blindness is that sand dune conservation strategies
in the UK have sought to fix such creeping landscapes. Over the last thirty years concerns
for the loss of this type of geomorphological feature and its ecologies have led to various
techniques of ‘stabilization’ including the planting of Marram grasses which tolerate such
conditions and bind the sand with roots. However, conservation agencies are now recognizing
that this method ‘kills’ the processes that the sand dunes actually are—their continuous
reformation and migration in relation to wind-blow. So in some cases conservation agencies
are removing areas of grass they had previously planted to set the processes going again.
A similar move towards recognizing that (varying) process is a key part of living landscapes
can been seen in efforts to ‘rewild’ rivers. This is not some sentimental return to the purity of
nature. It is a recognition that rivers are complex processes over time that will move channel,
flood, irrigate, and drain wetland areas, and so on, and that these processes are vital (literally)
for flood management, habitat creation, carbon capture, and other ‘ecosystem services’.
Enlightenment-derived modernist philosophy, culture, politics, and ethics have been a
campaign of divide and (mis)rule. Relationalities and ecological processes are dismissed.
The human body is an extraordinary ongoing process of exchange (breathing, intake of
water and nutrients, and output of waste) and cohabitation, but yet we see ourselves as apart
from and above ‘nature’.
What ‘refrains’ do the processes of the systems and bodies of the ecosphere ‘sing’
(Guattari, 1995)? What other tongues do we need to hear in order to renew a livable contract
with the world (Serres, 2003)? How are those ‘voices’ brought into ethics and politics?
“ The more we look into ecological controversies, the more important it becomes to
consider an ecosystem as a sort of assembly without walls, inside which many types of
‘speakers’ are allowed to ‘have a voice’ … . Because it’s obvious that the traditional site
of politics have moved towards the centre of gravity of ecology. Ecology is not about a
naturalisation of politics—as if one wanted to ‘treat humans like plants and animals’,
it’s about the recognition of the immense complexity involved for any entity—human
or nonhuman—to have a voice, to take a stand, to be counted, to be represented, to be
connected with others” (Latour and Weibel, 2005, pages 458–459).
This is not only about “being alive” Ingold (2011) but staying alive. Geography and related
disciplines need to be seeking ways of getting the work done differently, and methods such
as sonification can play their part in this.
Sonification for geography and beyond
There are a number of contextual reasons why sonification is emerging as an approach.
Firstly, there is the volume of intimate data from systems that exists and/or can be easily
generated. And live streams of data of various types are also becoming more producible
through relatively low-cost technology. This might be so for bodies, financial markets, online
information flows, traffic flows, and also environmental processes such as weather and tidal
flows. If we see bodies, organizations, markets, places, and landscapes as outcome of flows
and connections, and the processes of ecosocial systems as major agential forces (Barad,
2007), then we can begin to ‘hear’ these systems working once sonified. Secondly and
relatedly, new forms of software–hardware platforms where sonifications can be developed,
located, and accessed are becoming ‘everyday’.
Data sonification is emerging in geography. Hear, for example, Evan and Jones’s (2008)
sonification-based rhythmanalysis of urban socionatures. In the ‘film of the paper’ on
YouTube,(2) they show visual graphs or urban water course flow, and then play a sonification
(2) Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQg86oSlVm4;
part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xx1Ya3TA24
a45264

4 M Palmer, O Jones
of the same data as they discuss the Lefebvre-based assertion that the rhythms of the city
“cannot be revealed by images and imaging devices alone” (page 663). They suggest we
need to listen, and to synthesize multiple sensory information inputs, in order to become
“resensitized” to rhythm (and thus process), particularly those that operate beyond everyday
sense due to their location, register, scale, rhythms, and tempi.
There are many aspects of sonification that are of potential interest to geographers. Firstly,
it (obviously) creates audio output and, as we know, the human brain receives and responds
to audio information differently than to visual information. O’Callaghan (2010) discusses
this in his challenging of the ‘visuocentric’ nature of philosophy and understanding of human
becoming. Sounds, he suggests, are experienced as events rather than objects and they have
spatial and temporal dimensions as we perceive them.
Secondly, then, as sonifications run through time they retain the liveliness of an event.
Indeed, they are an event. Thirdly, given their relationship to music and its temporal/rhythmic
characteristics, they might be particularly suited to exploring processes, and within processes,
rhythms, tempi which are so critical in getting a grip on the liveliness of places (Lefebvre,
2004). Fourthly, in its ability to express ‘hidden’ systems, or ‘hard-to-perceive’ processes,
sonification might be particularly useful in not only researching processes of affective
exchange and in generating nonrepresentational refrains of relation life (Guattari, 2000), but
also ecologies of place, bringing the nonhuman into ontological, political, and ethical play.
Ingold (2000) in his essay on the temporality of the landscape discusses issues of attending
to rhythms and the benefits of slowing down/compressing time as a means of engaging with
“dwelt life” within them.
Interplays between (human) geography and art have grown markedly (Hawkins, 2011).
The synthesis of poetics and science at the heart of Lefebvrian rhythmanalysis (Evans and
Jones, 2008)—perhaps a “poetic science” (Berthold, 2004)—seems a fertile ground for
progress in order to deepen ways in which we engage with interactions of peoples, natures,
places, and landscapes. Guattari (2000) turns to the poets rather than to the scientific paradigm
(Pindar and Sutton, 2000), for their abilities to render creative engagements with the world’s
refrains.
Sonification is a process that can interleave natural and social sciences, and artistic
renderings of, and responses to, all manners of process terrains, such as bodies and landscapes.
Artists are using sonifications in suites of methods to explore processes in nature/landscape.
See, for example, the work of Lyons and Piggott (2011) on the River Torridge catchment area
where ‘ecoides’—flexible environmental sensors—can generate flows of data from hidden
processes. Another example is the climate data sonification work of the artist Andrea Polli.(3)
Thus sonification might be of use in all manners of witnessing (Dewsbury, 2003; Lorimer,
2010), sensing (Paterson, 2009), apprehending (Simpson, 2012) ongoing relational (inter-
embodied), affective, processes of ecosocial becoming. We feel the novel methodological
possibilities of sonification can contribute to current debates on studying practice-related
themes (Dewsbury, 2010; Simpson, 2011). Sound has rich potentiality in its materiality
(Kanngieser, 2011; Simpson, 2009; Wood et al, 2007) and thus a whole new palette of process
registers to engage with is opened up, as is a whole new palette of ‘compositional’ tools.
Time geography, tempi, registers, and rhythms
In time geography there has been longstanding interest in diagramming and mapping the social
in ways that seek to highlight spatiotemporal rhythms and routines, (Edensor, 2010; Evans
and Jones, 2008; Elden, 2004; Mels, 2004; Simpson, 2012), and questions of representation/
nonrepresentation and rhythm have been discussed by Simpson (2008).
(3) http://www.andreapolli.com
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 5
Despite social constructionist type accounts of space and nature which see clock time and
social time as floating free from natural rhythms (see Macnaghten and Urry, 1998) a plethora
of natural rhythms in fact suffuses through the social: for example, the seasons, day and
night, the durability of materials and organisms, tides, human and nonhuman body clocks,
as well as longer rhythms of such cycles as sun spots, pole reversal, climatic and volcanic
cycles, and of course these bring rhythms and energies.
“ As Lefebvre says, ‘(There is) nothing inert in the world’, which he illustrates with the
examples of the seemingly quiescent garden that is suffused with the polyrhythms of
‘trees, flowers, birds and insects’ (2004:17) and the forest, which ‘moves in innumerable
ways: the combined movements of the soil, the earth, the sun. or the movements of the
molecules and atoms that compose it’ (20). Certain natural processes are ‘only slow in
relation to our time, to our body, the measure of rhythms’ (ibid). By acknowledging the
usually cyclical rhythms of nature: processes of growth and decay, the surgings of rivers,
the changes in the weather and the activities of animals and birds which breed, nest and
migrate, we can identify the ubiquitous presences of non-human entities and energies in
and through place” (Edensor, 2010, page 7).
We thus live in complex temporal ecologies formed of varying and intersecting tempi,
velocities, and rhythms embedded in various bodies, materials, and processes (Jones, 2010).
But the complex rhythms of things like landscapes and bodies can be hard to appreciate in
that they are not easily perceived by human senses and/or are ‘other’ to human temporality.
This is a general epistemological problem, and also a problem in terms of ‘managing’ nature–
society relations embedded in processes such as flooding, drought, and landscape-scale
biodiversity management. Wood (2008, page 262) argues:
“ Temporal factors are of paramount importance because the degree to which society and
nature operate in consonance or dissonance profoundly influences the health of the natural
environment, the structure of the social system and, hence, the prospects of sustainable
development.”
Rhythms, tempi, and registers are critical in articulations of timespace (May and Thrift,
2001) generally, and also in how space is patterned into “ground” (Harrison et al, 2004)
which is populated with all manner of formations. As space is patterned, time is rhythmed,
thus creating what Jones (2011) has termed “rhythmpattern”.
There is an interest here in emergence, where distinguishable forms shape themselves
out of a ground, but in essence are still ground. Deleuze (1997) addresses this state of (self-)
determination where something “distinguishes itself—and yet that [its ground] from which
it distinguishes itself does not distinguish itself from it” (page 28). This echoes Nietzsche’s
and other philosophers’ views that being and becoming are inseparable, becoming is merely
the patterning (and rhythmicizing) of being, a self-driven individuating process that conveys
to us the idea of life itself.
The multiple rhythms running through rhythmpatterns of places and landscape can
have differing tempi, durations, and types of sequences in varying combinations. Tides are
powerful examples of this. They comprise complex sequences of sea-level rise and fall, and
related currents, driven chiefly by the gravitational pull of the moon and rotation of the
earth in conjunction with a whole host of other factors, including solar gravity, and coastal
and seabed topography. Tides bring distinct and varying rhythms to coastal areas across the
world, which vary in detail right down to the hyperlocal (harbours only a short distance apart
might have tidal range and timing differences critical to practices such as inshore fishing).
The local rhythmpatterns of sea-level rise and fall and exposure and inundation of intertidal
areas, in turn, are geared in complex ratios with the diurnal and seasonal rhythms to create
intricate local rhythmpatterns of ecosocial becoming.
a45264

6 M Palmer, O Jones
Tidal processes and rhythms (Severn Estuary): arrhythmias, polyrhythmias, and
eurhythmias
The Severn Estuary forms the sea division between southwest England and southeast Wales
and the coastal edge of eleven local authority areas. It is some 557 km2, with 18% of this
being intertidal (100 km2). It is macrotidal (Haslett, 2008), having the highest tidal range in
Europe and the second highest in the world, with the sea level rising and falling by as much
as 14.5 m (Avonmouth) in the space of 12 hours at the highest tides. Approximately 80% of
the estuary’s 370 km shoreline is lined with sea defences which stop the very highest tides
flooding low-lying surrounding land. These are in many places openly accessible, and used
for agricultural and recreational purposes, and accessing/viewing the intertidal areas.
Generated by the never-ending gravitational pas de trois of earth, sun, and moon, the tidal
rhythms are a key part of the aliveness of this landscape in process terms, creating huge, ever-
morphing vistas of shore, intertidal areas, sea, sky, space, and light, and shaping elements
of its physical features, ecology, economy, and culture in terms of spacetime rhythms. The
higher tides wash up the tidal reaches of a number of major rivers (through urban centres)
that drain into the estuary. In the river Severn this creates the Severn Bore, a tidal wave that
runs back up the river to above Gloucester. This entire rhythmic spectacle is ecologically and
culturally significant and attracts residents, tourists, surfers, and artists.
The tides are entangled with a multitude of materialities/practices, which include
transport, recreation, conservation, archaeology, rambling, birdwatching, and beach tourism.
These have complex temporal rhythms geared to the multiple sequences embedded in tidal
cycles. The main sequences are the daily rise and fall of the tide in a semidiurnal rhythm
(tide rising and falling roughly twice in 24 hours); the monthly (lunar) cycle which shows a
progression from spring to neap tides in response to the phases of the moon; and the seasonal
(yearly) sequence of the tidal ranges which respond to the relative positions of the planets
(eg, spring tides at the equinoxes). It is important to note that, firstly, these sequences do not
correspond to the more ubiquitous hourly, daily, and monthly grids in any simple ratio and,
secondly, that the precise heights and times of tides vary with local conditions such as wind
speed and direction, atmospheric pressure, and the amount of fresh water issuing from the
rivers.
Some 3000 000 people live around the estuary (Barker, 2008) in large urban conurbations
and remoter rural settlements. The management of the estuary and its margins poses
considerable challenges due to the highly dynamic nature of the tidal systems. The reach
of the estuary across local and national legislative boundaries, and the many competing
ecosystem services the tidal flows bring compound this complexity. A set of sometimes
conflicting demands is placed upon the tidal estuary: for example, between recreational
use, resource extraction, nature conservation, waste discharge, agriculture (grazing of salt
marshes), transport needs, coastal management and development, and public access. There
are significant pressures on the tidal Severn, and its intertidal areas and ecosystem services,
as there are on estuaries and delta areas worldwide.
Barker (2008) suggests that the communities who live around the estuary (especially
those in large conurbations) have “lost touch” with the tidal/estuarine landscape and its
rhythms as technologies, work, transport, and lifestyle practices have changed. For example,
tide-determined ferry schedules have been replaced by large road bridges. The large ports
around the estuary were, for centuries, tidal ports in the heart of the cities, with their working
and commerce patterns tide-determined rather than day–night-determined; then the ports
were made nontidal; and then new dock facilities were built taking them away from city
centres. Many smaller tidal harbours, which were hubs in busy coastal trading routes, have
now closed.
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 7
Lefebvre (2004) describes four alignments of rhythms—arrhythmia, polyrhythmia,
eurhythmia, and isorhythmia—which together represent a range of dissonance or consonance
between rhythms and the varying consequences of such. We feel examples of these,
particularly the first three, abound in and around the tidal landscapes.
Today local residents not connected to the tidal estuary by work, leisure, or casual
acquaintance of locality may only occasionally experience a clash of tidal and diurnal
rhythms, such as a swing bridge disrupting rush-hour traffic as a boat passes into port. Some
cities might be at risk of flooding if high rainfall coincides with high tides (arrhythmia).
Farmers who get the benefit of grazing livestock on the salt marshes will, on occasions,
have to ensure their livestock is moved to safety at the very highest tides (polyrhythmia).
Visitors to this landscape might notice the coming and going of birds, birdwatchers, and
pleasure and commercial sea crafts, and other travelers that are timed to make the most of the
tides (eurhythmia). These characterizations of rhythms are initially useful, but we feel are
not a sufficiently subtle and flexible framework to deal appropriately with the complexity of
the rhythmic exchanges between inhabitants and landscape. The potentiality of sonification
is to interweave rhythms of these types into accounts that engage with the complexity and
interchange between them.
There might well be hints of romanticism in these concerns to reconnect community with
the processes and rhythms of natural landscapes, but not only does they chime with local
environmental governance trajectories, as hinted at above, they chime with numerous eco
and materialist philosophies and also concerns for the problematic overwriting of the cyclical
in everyday life by the linear as considered by Lefebvre (see Simpson, 2008). To return to the
eradication of refrains, tidal processes can be seen in this sense:
“ Rhythmanalysis has the power to perform a similar critique of the effects of capitalism on
socio-nature as it does on the purely social life world, revealing rhythms that are being
progressively homogenised by the process of development and destruction. The rhythms
of birdsong are removed by the process of brownfield development, which infills sites
that are used for feeding in densely built-up urban areas. Similarly, a river that has been
culverted, or put underground, will have had its rhythms changed dramatically, with a
far more pronounced flow regime. The rhythms of its meanders, which strike a balance
between local topography and precipitation, have been stunted in order to constrain its
floodplain and free up space for development. Listening to the regimes of urban rivers
over the last 200 years would produce a pronounced effect on the listener, as intensity and
noise levels increase. Similarly, charting the meander and sinuosity ratios would reveal
a shortening of rhythm, as the modified river tended towards a value of 1” (Evans and
Jones, 2008, page 664).
Reconnecting local communities to landscapes and geomorphological processes is an
important aspect of developing resilience and sustainable management (Cabinet Office, 2008).
Under the UK Flood and Water Management Act 2010, local authorities are responsible for
managing the risk of local floods (groundwater, surface water, and ordinary water course
flooding). One important step in meeting those demands is to develop better understandings
of local water issues with communities in order to support effective decision making and
behaviour change. This is how one organization puts this:
“ We believe a deeper connection to local water bodies can bring a new cycle of
community hope and energy that will lead to healthier urban waters, improved public
health, strengthened local businesses, and new jobs, as well as expanded educational,
recreational, housing, and social opportunities” (Urban Waters Federal Partnership 2011).
a45264

8 M Palmer, O Jones
Sonifications of tidal and other rhythms/processes in the Severn Estuary
Landscapes are “polyvocal, dynamic, cultural processes” (Maddrell, 2010, page 138), but
we argue that such polyvocalism needs to extend to nonhuman, ecological, processes and
their rhythms. If, as Barad (2007, page 141) states, “the primary ontological units are not
‘things’ but phenomena—dynamic topological reconfigurations/entanglements/relationalities/
(re)articulations of the world”, we need ways of engaging with the polyvocalism of landscape
as manifestation of ecologies of processes.
Differing human senses are tuned to differing manifestations of timespace. Music,
which is fundamentally about rhythm (sonic temporal patterning), shows us that hearing
is a key means of perceiving patterns of/in time. Thus turning various system rhythms that
are inaccessible to human perception—either because they are outside the human hearing
register, and/or operating in time durations beyond habitual perception—into sound, music
even, can be an important way of engaging with them.
A software artefact that sonified the tide at Avonmouth (see figure 1 and online at http://
www.digital-arts.org.uk/tide.htm) was introduced ‘face-to-face’ to members of the public
attending the Bristol Festival of Nature, 2010. In this Avonmouth prototype a number of
important decisions as to data sources, sonification methods, and sound design had to be taken,
which makes it a useful candidate for a case study. This artefact eventually became the catalyst
for a developing a multifaceted body of work, created in collaboration with University of the
West of England music technology students, who produced further data-inspired sonifications
and compositions of various social and ecological phenomena of the Severn Estuary. Audio
examples of this newer work (figure 2) can be found at http://www.sonicsevern.co.uk.
In sonification parlance, the process of finding and applying sounds to communicate
complex processes and rhythms is called ‘mapping’. It is one of the key steps that decide
on whether and how relationships within and between data sources can be perceived by its
listeners. The reference to a ‘map’ may be due to the sound designer’s need to graph out
how the artful crossover from quantitative measurements to sound perception is attempted.
Figure 1. Screengrab of the software interface of the Avonmouth prototype, 2010. Code, design, and
photographic media by the authors. Copyright by the authors.
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 9
Figure 2. [In colour online.] Sonic Severn web platform (each image is a link to a sonification or
sound composition). Site design copyright by the authors and participating students.
a45264

10 M Palmer, O Jones
A sonification artefact/event is often easier to listen to if it allows listeners to merge qualitative
and quantitative aspects, lived experience and observation, which also represents the basic
principles of how humans map out landscape: by measuring and calculating it, but also by
experiencing it.
Yet experience is an inaccurate map. One moment, the estuary’s wind sandblasts the body,
shoves the hair about, and forces tears from the eyes; sand blows into mouth and ears; and
the drizzling rain sticks it all together. The next moment, feet still sinking into the mud, we
catch ourselves describing our sojourn in the estuary to an imaginary dialogue partner as if it
was already in the past. How smoothly experience can morph into internal storyline-weaving.
Are we only really experiencing when our continuous process of interpretation encounters
unforeseen ruptures between experience and expectation: as, for example, in setting out on
a recording trip to Severn Beach—perhaps in the hope to capture seagulls, waves, and small
boats—only to find a vast open space full of wind, industrial noise, and traffic. An encounter
like this may seem disappointing but has the potential to initiate a refreshed and more critical
engagement with what we are actually immersed in. The opportunity arises to experience
more intensely, and what we find then does not lend itself to being easily communicated.
But quantitative estuary maps can be equally flawed. For example, the Severn has one
of the best-described sedimentary regimes of any estuary in the world (Kirby, 2011). Thirty
million tonnes of fine silt are suspended in the estuary’s waters during a typical spring tide, but
not equally: research revealed that there are areas of denser and less dense suspensions, some
suspensions remain at fairly specific locations within the estuary; others move about quite
unpredictably with the changing neap and spring tides (Kirby, 2011). Moreover, the amount
of moved material depends on the severity of the tide, a process that contributes to the constant
redistribution of the landmass. Thus research—as well as first-hand observation—tells us
that, in this intertidal environment, a simple distinction between elements—water and land,
salt water and fresh water, water and materials carried in it, is quite misplaced: here they all
permeate each other. Static representations of the coastline, high-tide and low-tide markers
and the like, cannot fully capture that what is in-between, what is forever in a process of flux.
Since both experiential and quantitative maps have their shortcomings, it is worthwhile
considering what new perspective a sonic map of the estuary could add. An advantage of
sonic representations is that their temporal nature has a natural relation to rhythmpatterns
and makes for a flexible mapping material. Thus a sonic map could redraw itself in time,
in step with the tide, while still allowing for the sensation of site-specific estuary sounds,
like the seagull colonies on Flatholm. Such iconic sounds carry a great deal of information
about the physicality and materiality of a location and its sounding objects (Gaver, 1993),
which helps to ‘ground‘ listeners. To explore the map, listeners would need to interact with
it in some way. Perhaps by moving horizontally, listeners could hear sounds within a certain
range of their position, like one would do on sound recording trips. Movement would thus
encourage discovery via comparative listening—for example, the discovery of different
wave sounds caused by a different bathometries in the estuary: at Clevedon seafront one
might hear small waves rushing onto a pebble-covered bay, while at Burnham-on-Sea the
wide-open sandy flats produce only occasional water ripples. To further an understanding
of the interdependence of the environmental processes in the estuary, the sonic map would
need to be scalable in dimension and time, as this allows for synthetic listening (listening
to the estuary as a whole), and also need to make new connections between certain sonified
data streams: for instance, between lunar zenith and its following high tide, or between wind
conditions and tide height. Such an interactive sonic map would be an enormous undertaking
that could only be approached step by step. The Avonmouth prototype (discussed in the
following) can only be a first small part of it. Nevertheless, the investigation of its methodology
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 11
is useful, since a larger artefact would build on the decisions made and the problems solved
in the prototype.
Data mapping methodology used in the prototype
Whether a sonification event communicates successfully depends on the acoustic perception
of its listeners and on its mapping, and in the field of sonification it is recognized that mapping
cannot usefully apply an empirical approach, but requires a semiotic approach that reflects
both listening context and intended listeners. Mapping can therefore be understood as a
“representation continuum”, ranging from analogic (intrinsically related) to symbolical
(arbitrarily related) sounds (Kramer, 1994). Successful communication via sound thus
depends much on the expertise of the sound designer as well as on the feedback of a test
audience. Yet it has also been pointed out that the musicality of a sonification (as opposed to
using pure sine wave tones, etc) is significant, as it facilitates ease of listening, which in turn
helps listeners to correctly interpret what they hear (Vickers and Hogg, 2006).
With this in mind, the main technique chosen for the Avonmouth sonification was
parameter mapping (Scaletti, 1994), which means that changes in numeric data streams affect
changes in the parameters of the sounds (that represent these data). Thus by interpreting
audible differences (perhaps in onset, pitch, duration, or amplitude of a sound), a listener
is able to ‘hear’ what sort of processes take place in the data. A known disadvantage of
parameter mapping is that listeners need to know exactly how the data relate to the sound
before they can correctly interpret what they hear (Hermann and Ritter, 2004). However, this
learning requirement can be lessened considerably if the sounds are mapped intuitively and
consistently. For example, in the Avonmouth artefact, the water of the flood was represented
by a mass of musical notes whose duration and interduration intervals were shortened in
time with the rising tide to give the impression of a gradually faster moving and intensifying
musical body.
But for multidimensional data like the Severn Estuary data, parameter mapping can
quickly become complex. Since human memory is limited—our short-term memory can
hold only about seven items of information at the same time (Miller, 1956)—it is impossible
to follow a large number of changing sounds without losing track of the sonification as a
whole. Listening to too many data streams from the estuary would have made the cyclical
nature of tidal sounds—as well as their interrelations—no longer perceivable. Hence in the
prototype, only three data streams were mapped: the level of the tide over the mean sea level;
weather data (wind speed and direction); and the solar–lunar constellation. These three kinds
of data were mapped to three groups of sounds, each with a distinct timbre. Changes within
the data could be communicated by altering some of the parameters within its sound group
(onset, duration, decay, pitch, etc), and yet its overall timbre would remain constant and
thereby identifiable. This strategy encourages comparative listening, a mode in which the
specific local conditions (variations in the data) can come to the fore. To increase the intuitive
attribution of sound to data source further, and to aid the comparative listening process, some
sound metaphors (increased presence of sounds = swelling of a water body) or self-labelling
sounds (wind sounds = wind data) were used.
The tidal data were represented by synthesized bell sounds. This choice may initially seem
counterintuitive, but the wave-like swinging motion that creates the sounds of real bell-type
instruments was relied upon to act as a conceptual bridge to the wave motion of water: one
might associate larger waves/bells with lower sounds, smaller waves/water ripples with higher
pitched and more polyphonic sounds. The bell sounds were synthesized within the program-
ming environment Max/msp and tuned to a Pythagorean scale, so they would harmonize with
each other when rung in a random order but without suggesting a chord progression or distinct
melody that would distract listeners from hearing important data changes. The bell sounds
a45264

12 M Palmer, O Jones
were created by using frequency modulation and, to avoid listening fatigue, by randomizing
some of the bell-sound partials.
The weather data focused primarily on the wind conditions forecast for the day: 7 kts
(13km/h) north–northeasterly wind, Beaufort scale 3. This equates to a gentle breeze where
leaves and small twigs would be moving and flags would be extending. On the sea one would
see some larger wavelets but only a few white crests. Considering the wind data of 12 June
was important as they helped to predict the character of the coming tide. The funnel-shaped
Severn Estuary extends from a south–southwesterly to a north–northeasterly direction,
with south–southwest being the predominant wind direction. The north–northeasterly wind
predicted for 12 June would have enforced the receding tide, and slowed down the incoming
high tide by a small degree. This is why in the artefact the ‘wind sounds’ become more
audible as the tide goes out. To allow for an intuitive interpretation of these sounds as wind,
sound samples, and synthesized sounds (created via noise filters and convoluted sustained
bell sounds) were combined, and added as another layer to the receding water sounds.
The 12 June 2010 was chosen not only because it coincided with the Festival of Nature
where the artefact would be exhibited, but also because on this day there was a new moon.
When sun and moon are on the same side of the earth, their gravitational forces combine.
At these times, the high tides are especially high and the low tides are very low, creating
the so-called spring high tides/low tides. Since the sun’s gravitational force on the earth is
about 46% of that of the moon, the position of both celestial bodies is important in order
to predict the strength of the tide. On 12 June, the north–northeasterly wind enforced an
already remarkable spring low tide. For this reason the sonification placed special emphasis
on enhancing the listening experience during the receding tide. As an effect of the celestial
constellation, the duration of the bell sounds would gradually extend, and a flanging effect
(a sound delay of <20 ms, adding a ‘whoosh’ to the sound) would come in, creating an
increasingly eerie atmosphere. Combined with the wind sounds, this enforced the sonic
suggestion of a vast open space and was added to help listeners to intuitively perceive that
this low tide was a special tidal event.
Since the Avonmouth prototype sonified only one tidal cycle, it was decided that the
influence of solar and lunar force would become only indirectly noticeable. If the artefact
were to be extended (to sonify the tide of a full month, for example), a more direct sonic
representation of solar and lunar path would become necessary.
Data window and suggested sound journey
The prototype used the data points for interpolation (shown in table 1). The time window for
the sonification was set as 9:24 am—21:42 pm GMT. This would stretch across 12 hours and
18 minutes, or 738 minutes. This window would allow the sonification to start mid-tide, fall
to low tide, rise to high tide, and then end once the tide had again fallen back to the starting
point; so, in other words, one full cycle had been sonified. From a listener’s point this allows
for a fairly interesting sound experience as the first part leading to low tide is reached quickly,
then there is a longer build up to high tide where the piece exceeds the starting point, and then
finally the return to the beginning brings the piece to a close.
Table 1. Data for the port of Avonmouth 12 June 2010 (source: National Oceanographic Centre, 2012).
Moon rise: 04:28 Moon zenith: 13:11 Moon set: 21:54
Sun rise: 04:54 Sun zenith: 13:11 Sun set: 21:28
Predicted tide height for Avonmouth 12 June 2010:
High tide: 06:46 12.4 m Low tide: 13:28 1.6 m High tide: 19:06 12.8 m
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 13
The sound journey begins with a mix of ambient, recorded sound samples that were
looped to evoke a feeling of situatedness (water lapping). This is useful as recorded sounds
already carry a great deal of information about the physicality and materiality of location
and their sounding objects (Gaver, 1993). With the receding waters the duration of the bell
sounds extends, and their reverberation increases, suggesting a wide-open, empty space,
supported by trailing wind sounds. The sonic experience of low tide is thus fairly abstract;
especially since any all-too-literal sound markers were here neglected. Then with flooding
waters the bell sounds ring shorter, with shorter interduration intervals. This creates more
sound overlaps, suggesting a faster movement of waves, combined with larger wave sounds.
The piece ends with water lapping.
Developing the sonification through user feedback
The development of the Avonmouth prototype—described above—has also been shaped by
listening experiences. For example, at the very first conceptualization stage three decisions
were taken, two of which were later overturned by listeners’ feedback. These decisions were
to reduce the number of estuary data sources to a few, to sonify the tide in real time (not time-
compressed), and to largely neglect data visualizations.
Early prototype testing with a small group of users soon revealed that the restriction of
data sources was useful (these participants could easily identify and follow different data
sources by listening), but the larger tidal cycles were difficult to perceive, and the lack of
data visualization made the artefact not very intuitive to use. The last two points had to
be addressed prior to introducing the Avonmouth prototype at the Festival of Nature to the
public.
The difficulty of perceiving tidal changes relates to our expectations of duration and
rhythmic repetition. The scale of real-time tidal events does not sit comfortably with our
habitual listening modes: for reasons of survival, humans pay attention to sound events with
high sound levels and accents (waves crashing into a seawall), but tend to ignore long-drawn-
out processes with little change of rhythm and dynamics (a receding tide revealing mud
flats). Only if we were to habitually listen to long-drawn-out processes could we eventually
hear their rhythms and understand them as living processes extended in time.
The Avonmouth tide, a duo-diurnal rhythm that reaches the end of one basic unit of time
(or beat) after 24-or-so hours, is such a process. Interpreted as a rhythmic composition, it
would fall into a ‘macro-timescale’ of musical architecture, which is measured in minutes,
hours, or days (Roads, 2001, pages 3–4). The relative positions of earth, moon, and sun
on the other hand repeat themselves only every nineteen years or so, a rhythm which
corresponds to a ‘supra-timescale’, covering months, years, decades, and centuries (Roads,
2001, pages 3–4). Since neither timescale coincides much with our habitual experiences
of rhythmic compositions, only someone who regularly steps beyond their usual listening
modes would be able to perceive, say, the rhythm of a monthly spring–neap cycle, or the
annual tidal cycle.
Weather patterns, on the other hand, fall into the everyday experience of duration, but are
characterized by arrhythmic repetition; indeed, strong gusts of wind, or rainy days with sunny
intervals are quite common in the estuary. Therefore a further difficulty for nonspecialist
listeners was to perceive the connections between the seemingly chaotic weather patterns
and the seemingly regular tidal patterns. To aid listeners in this task, it was decided to scale
the data before playing them back as sound. The real-time window of 738 minutes was
converted into 738 metronome counts, one count initially representing one minute of real
time. By increasing the metronome speed it was then possible to compress the tidal cycle
into shorter and shorter periods of time, whilst still maintaining the characteristics of the
data. Thus, although the real-time sonification aspect was now lost, the tidal rhythmpatterns
a45264

14 M Palmer, O Jones
and the relationships between their data sources could became more transparent. Listeners at
the Festival of Nature, who could choose from eight such time-compression presets, initially
preferred the higher compression rates but, as if listening out for more details the second time
around, then often changed to a less compressed rate that would re-extend the piece for them
in time.
The second point that needed addressing was to interrelate the data more intuitively.
To underline the connections between celestial and tidal data, a tidal prediction graph (see
figure 3) and two astronomical tables were read into Max/msp and translated into vertical
sliders. These sliders visualized tide height, sun rise and set, and moonrise and set, and
allowed audience members to observe the movement of sun, moon, and tide whilst hearing
the sounds change. This allowed for a more intuitive understanding of the processes in
question. Moreover, new connections could be made; for instance, the connection between
solar/lunar zenith and its following high spring tide could now be seen and heard.
With the data scaled, time-compressed and (some of it) visualized, for most listeners at
the Festival of Nature the interrelations between the three data streams became apparent; in
other words, when all three data streams fell into the habitual human reference frame they
could ‘easily hear what was going on’. Indeed, within the habitual human reference frame,
we have developed a high sensitivity for structured motion (rhythm) and patterns, and it is
this that allows us to perceive things afresh. Thus the key point confirmed at the Festival of
Nature was that a shift of timescales can open the door to new insights. This resonates with
Lefebvre’s observation that
“ Our scale determines our location, our place in the space–time of the universe: what
we perceive of it and what serves as a point of departure for practice, as for theoretical
knowledge … . Another scale would determine another world. The same? Without doubt,
but differently grasped” (Lefebvre, 2004, page 83).
Sonification and the politics of mapping
The Severn sonifications use well-known sonification tools, like parameter mapping, sound
grouping, and data scaling as envisaged by Kramer et al (1999). However, there were also
some methodological differences that raised questions about the sonification process itself.
Figure 3. [In colour online.] High and low water times and heights for Avonmouth 12 and 13 June
2010. Copyright: National Oceanographic Centre. Permission granted.
Tidal elevations for Avonmouth
Observations (blue) Astronomical predictions (red)
Height (m)
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
12 June 13 June
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 15
Recently it has been demanded that, within a scientific context, sonifications must reflect
objective relations in the input data, use systematic means to translate the data into sound,
and should be set up in such a way that they are repeatable and reproducible (Hermann, 2008,
page 5).
This raises a couple of questions; one of which is whether the data-driven sonifications may
be called a sonification in the scientific sense. What is often criticized about artefacts is that
their algorithms are not made transparent, and so it remains unclear whether the sonification
was carried out objectively and systematically. It is true, however, that a sonification of
data merges qualitative and quantitative information, as it already involves the perception
of the researcher who maps data to sound. Moreover, for a sonification to communicate
successfully to its listeners, it can be necessary to make certain patterns in the dataset more
easily recognizable than others. This means altering the mapping in such a way that listeners’
attention is drawn to these patterns, and by doing so adding a layer of interpretation. Thus,
rather than attempting to eliminate the role of perception and interpretation in a sonification,
it seems more helpful to acknowledge and discuss their roles.
The second question is one of taking field conditions into account: while perceptive
mapping processes are rarely ‘accurate’, neither are the (quantitative) data available. In the
case of a Severn estuary sonification, for example, the problems start with the sheer size of
the estuary and its area of influence. As they are part of larger (aquatic and littoral) ecosystems
and catchment areas, it is difficult to define the boundaries for estuary data streams; and
local weather conditions measured on the ground are often merely effects of changes caused
somewhere else in the system. An additional complication is that much publicly available
scientific field data are still not available in real time, making the sonification input look
comparatively coarse. Like a chain that is only as strong as its weakest link, data quality,
processing capacity, and mapping strategy must be adequately balanced in order to arrive at
a pragmatic solution.
When mentioning field conditions, Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis once again
provides a useful prompt: firstly, because a rhythmanalyst’s frame of reference forms an
important part of the research and, secondly, because it links a researcher to a geographical
location where the observation of rhythms takes place. Yet this concept is not unproblematic
either. In the “Rhythmanalysis of Mediterranean cities”, Lefebvre introduces the notion of
“lunar towns of the oceans”, and “solar towns of the Mediterranean” (page 91), because
of the powerful tidal refrains of the former and the stronger solar refrains of the latter. This
distinction certainly works at some level, but a historical and hybrid perspective is likely
to be more productive.
(Historical) rhythmanalysis of the settlements around the Severn estuary would certainly
reveal how the influence of tidal rhythms has been engrained into their fabric, culture, and
economy. However, it would also show that today’s estuary inhabitants might be guided more
by diurnal than by lunar rhythms. It might be fair to say that, for some, clock time is no longer
perceived as fragmenting local lunar rhythms, but that lunar rhythms now inconveniently
interrupt diurnal rhythms via bridge closures, inconvenient road layouts, or irregular work
times. In lunar towns of the oceans, do rhythms (still) clash? An interesting question in many
ways, not in the least because only a participant observer could answer it.
Sonification, and related sound art constructions, can play a part in reconnecting the
communities that live around the estuary’s shores, and other stakeholders, to this dynamic
landscape by letting them hear its living rhythms in more accessible forms than their actual
space–time registers. This relinking of communities to their watershed rhythms (be they
tidal, flood, or drought rhythms) is considered by a range of agencies as a necessary step in
developing local resilience and contexts for effective environmental management in the face
a45264

16 M Palmer, O Jones
of a series of challenges which include climate change, flood risk, large-scale development,
and changing marine and terrestrial governance structures which are impacting so negatively
on this and other estuarine environments.
Conclusion—breathing and geography
Those observing the tides before Newton’s revelation of gravity struggled (understandably!)
to explain the extraordinary ebb and flow of the oceans’ levels and margins. But some had
the sense that it was some rhythmic physical process linked to the moon—a process akin to
breathing:
“ As the moon passes by without delay, the sea recedes and leaves the outpourings in their
original state of purity and their original quantity. It is as though it is unwittingly drawn
up by some breathings of the moon, and then returns to its normal level when this same
influence ceases” (Opera de Temporibus, Section XXIX, The Venerable Bede, 703 AD).
Tides have also been referred to as the pulse of the earth (Clancy, 1968). Are such metaphors
anthropomorphic or do they effectively capture that bodies and landscapes are the outworking
of rhythmic processes?
There are approximately 12 000 resting human adult breath cycles to each Severn tidal
cycle. However, counting thousands of breaths in order to grasp the nature of the tide is not
intuitive; the difference between the two durational scales involved is simply too great. If,
on the other hand, the observer is encouraged to mentally switch scales, and observe how,
like the tide, each breath unfolds slightly differently each time; how it naturally accelerates,
decelerates, pauses, and turns direction, then an intuitive link can quickly be made. Indeed,
the breathing metaphor allows us to explore some of the more complex phenomena like
fluctuations, flow restrictions, or pauses after the in- breath and out-breath (slack water); in
this way almost allowing the observer to perceive these phenomena ‘from the inside’. When a
sonification artefact subliminally calls on the everyday experience and corporeal memory of its
listeners, it can initiate deeper levels of experience, and really strike a chord with its listeners.
As each tidal cycle in the Severn estuary unfolds, the differences within each repetition
become perceptible to various means of observation and recording. Thus there is regularity
and novelty in complex relation. This is, in a sense, a basic characteristic of (interacting/
evolving) human/nonhuman life that includes combinations of cycles (repetition) and novelty.
The tidal cycles and their variations will be important to, and perceptible in differing ways
to, differing observers. Those who live and work with the tides might immediately notice and
recognize some of the differences, but whole levels of detail will still remain hidden, even
from their view.
We suggest that sonification can be valuable (methodological) practice for all sorts of
terrains that are rhythm-rich, in what we call rhythmpatterns. From bodies to landscapes
these are essentially rhythmic entities. How to ‘represent’ that? How to think of time and
space together rather than in separation (Adam, 1998; May and Thrift, 2001)?
Sonifications can not only express the rhythmicities of such ‘terrains’, they can show
both common ground and conflict ground between them. We can begin to think of the data
of his/her basic bodily functions (repeating waves, impulses like breathing or the heartbeat)
in relation to others. Our bodies live through rhythms; so do landscapes and other systems
such as ecosystems. By listening to the refrains perhaps we can begin to hear the other voices,
pulses, and life forces of the world. We can maybe even see life in different terms. Recently
James Lovelock (in Ferguson, 2009) has said that the definition of life that underpins, and
emanates from, biology is far too narrow. Systems live (and breathe) differently. We need to
learn to listen to that breathing.
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 17
Acknowledgements. Thanks to the Bristol Festival of Nature 2010 and the Faculty of Environment
and Technology, University of the West of England who provided funding to support the work reported
upon in this paper.
References
Adam B, 1998 Timesscapes of Modernity (Routledge, London)
Barad K, 2007 Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter
and Meaning (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
Barker N, 2008 Managing Tidal Change, Final Project Report of Winston Churchill Memorial Trust
Travelling Fellowship Award 2006 report available from natasha.barker@btopenworld.com
Berthold D, 2004, “Aldo Leopold: in search of a poetic science” Human Ecology Review 11 205–214
Cabinet Office, 2008 The Pitt Review—Learning Lessons from the 2007 Floods
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100807034701/http:/archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/
pittreview/thepittreview/final_report.html
Clancy E P, 1968 The Tides: Pulse of the Earth (Doubleday, University of Michigan)
Deleuze G, 1997 Difference and Repetition (Athlone Press, London)
Dewsbury J D, 2003, “Witnessing space: knowledge without contemplation” Environment and
Planning A 35 1907–1932
Dewsbury J D, 2010, “Performative, non-representational, and affect-based research: seven
injunctions”, in The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research in Human Geography
Eds D DeLyser, S Aitken, M Craig, S Herbert, L McDowell (Sage, London) pp 321–334
Edensor T (Ed.), 2010 Geographies of Rhythm (Ashgate, Aldershot, Hants) pp 189–203
Elden S, 2004, “Rhythmanalysis: an introduction”, in Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life
H Lefebvre (Continuum Books, London) pp vii–xv
Evans J, Jones P, 2008, “Towards Lefebvrian socio-nature? A film about rhythm, nature and science”
Geography Compass 2 659 –670
Ferguson E, 2009, “The Books Interview: James Lovelock” The Observer Sunday 9 August,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/09/interview-james-lovelock?INTCMP=SRCH
Flood and Water Management Act, 2010 Public General Acts—Elizabeth II chapter 29 (The
Stationery Office, London)
Gaver W W, 1993, “How do we hear in the world? Explorations in ecological acoustics” Ecological
Psychology 5 285 –313
Gross P, 2009 The Water Table (Bloodaxe Books, Tarset)
Guattari F, 1995 Chaosophy (Semiotext(e), New York)
Guattari F, 2000 The Three Ecologies (Athlone Press, London)
Harrison S, Pile S, Thrift N, 2004 Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture
(Reaktion Books, London)
Haslett S, 2008 Coastal Systems 2nd edition (Routledge, London)
Hawkins H, 2011, “Dialogues and doings: geography and art, landscape, critical
spatialities and participation” Geography Compass 5 448–530
Hermann T, 2008, “Taxonomy and definitions for sonification and auditory display”, in Proceedings
of the 14th International Conference on Auditory Display, Paris,
http://www.icad.org/Proceedings/2008/Hermann2008.pdf
Hermann T, Ritter H, 2004, “Sound and meaning in auditory data display” Proceedings of the IEEE,
Special Issue: Engineering and Music 92 730–741
Ingold, T, 2000 Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (Routledge,
London)
Ingold T, 2011 Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (Routledge, London)
Ingold T, 2008, “The temporality of the landscape”, in Contemporary Archaeology in Theory
Eds R W Preucel, S A Mrozowski (Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, Sussex) pp 59–76
Jones O, 2010, “‘The breath of the moon’: the rhythmic and affective time–spaces of UK tides” in
Geographies of Rhythm Ed. T Edensor (Ashgate, Farnham, Surrey) pp 189 –203
Jones O, 2011, “Lunar–solar ryhthmpatterns: towards the material cultures of tides” Environment
and Planning A 43 2285–2303
a45264

18 M Palmer, O Jones
Kanngieser A, 2011, “A sonic geography of voice: towards an affective politics” Progress in Human
Geography 36 336–353
Kirby R, 2011, “The fine sediment regime of the Severn Estuary, UK”
http://www.severnestuary.net/sep/pdfs/ecsa/19rkirby.pdf
Kramer G, 1994, “An introduction to auditory display”, in Auditory Display Ed. G Kramer
(Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA) pp 1–79
Kramer G, Walker B, Bonebright T, Cook P, Flowers J, Miner N, Neuhoff J, 1999, “Sonification
report: status of the field and research agenda”, International Community for Auditory Display,
http://sonify.psych.gatech.edu/publications/pdfs/1999-nsf-report.pdf
Latour B, Weibel P (Eds), 2005 Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA)
Lefebvre H, 2004 Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (Continuum Books, London)
Lorimer J, 2010, “Moving image methodologies for more-than-human geographies” Cultural
Geographies 17 237–258
Lyons A, Pigoot J, 2011 The Confluence Project,
http://antonylyons.macmate.me/unmapping/unmapping/confluence.html
Macnaghten P, Urry J, 1998 Contested Natures (Sage, London)
Maddrell A, 2010, “Memory, mourning and landscape in the Scottish mountains: discourses of
wilderness, gender and entitlement in online debates on mountainside memorial”, in Memory,
Mourning, Landscape Eds E Anderson, A Maddrell, K McLoughlin, A Vincent (Rodopi,
Amsterdam) pp 263–281
Massumi B, 2011 Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts (MIT Press,
Cambridge, MA)
May J, Thrift N (Eds), 2011 Timespace: Geographies of Temporality (Routledge, London)
Mels T, 2004, “Lineages of a geography of rhythms”, in Reanimating Places: A Geography of
Rhythms Ed. T Mels (Ashgate, Aldershot, Hants) pp 3–44
Miller G A, 1956, “The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for
processing information” Psychological Review 63 81–97
National Oceanographic Centre, 2012, “High and low water times and heights for Avonmouth”,
http://www.pol.ac.uk/ntslf/tides/?port=0060
O’Callaghan C, 2010 Sounds: A Philosophical Theory (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
Paterson M, 2009, “Haptic geographies: ethnography, haptic knowledges and sensuous dispositions”
Progress in Human Geography 33 766–788
Pindar I, Sutton P, 2000, “Translators’ introduction”, in The Three Ecologies F Guattari (Athlone
Press, London) pp 1 –21
Roads C, 2001 Microsound (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
Scaletti C, 1994, “Sound synthesis algorithms for auditory data representations”, in Auditory Display
Ed. G Kramer (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA) pp 223–253
Serres M, 2003 The Natural Contract (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI)
Simpson P, 2008, “Chronic everyday life: rhythmanalyzing street performance” Social and Cultural
Geography 9 807–829
Simpson P, 2009, “ ‘Falling on deaf ears’: a post-phenomenology of sonorous presence” Environment
and Planning A 41 2556–2575
Simpson P, 2011, “ ‘So, as you can see …’: some reflections on the utility video methodologies in the
study of embodied practices” Area 43 343–352
Simpson P, 2012, “Apprehending everyday rhythms: rhythmanalysis, time-lapse photography, and
the space–times of street performance” Cultural Geographies 19 423–445
Thrift N, 2008 Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect (Routledge, London)
Urban Waters Federal Partnership, 2011, “Urban waters vision”, Urban Water Federal Partnership,
Washington, DC, http://www.urbanwaters.gov/pdf/urbanwaters-visionv2.pdf
Vickers P, Hogg B, 2006, “Sonification abstraite/sonification concrete: an ‘aesthetic perspective
space’ for classifying auditory displays in the ars musica domain”, in Proceedings of the
International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2006) (London, UK) pp 210–216
a45264

Explorations of data sonifications of timespace processes 19
Welland M, 2009 Sand: A Journey Through Science and Imagination (Oxford University Press,
Oxford)
Whitehead W A, 1964 The Concept of Nature (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Wood C H, 2008, “Time, cycles and tempos in social–ecological research and environmental policy”
Time and Society 17 261–282
Wood N, Duffy M, Smith S J, 2007, “The art of doing (geographies of ) music” Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 25 867–889
a45264