A Path Based Model for Sonification

Recently researchers have been interested in non-visual forms of presentation. Sound, touch, smell, as well as vision can be used to depict information. One important medium is sound; it can encode information for the blind or partial sighted, used to display information when it is impossible to use a screen, and the hardware is cheap and widely available. Researchers have investigated sonifying various data sources with different data types and configurations. In this paper we present a novel path-based model that can be used to describe each of these different sonifications. In summary, the path dictates the sonification tour, the data is mapped into sound via a transfer function, and the quantity of information being sonified is determined by both the span and how the abstract path is registered to the data.