During December 2024 a series of discussions with school of astrophysics Chris Harrison  resulted in an invitation to join the Sonic Intangibles  with an introductory workshop May 2025. Dr Christopher Harrison (Newcastle University) Project Co-Lead Sonic Intangibles. (Reader in Astrophysics and currently holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship at Newcastle University, working in the Astrophysics and Observational Cosmology group. He is an observational astronomer with the main goal of understanding how galaxies formed, and with a particular interest in the role of growing supermassive black holes (i.e., Active Galactic Nuclei; AGN) and galaxy dynamics.

 

'This project seeks to unlock the full potential of sonification, a method of representing data through sound for interdisciplinary research and communication. Sonification involves using computer-generated sounds to convey information, as a Geiger counter does for radioactivity. Visualisation expert Robert Kosara wrote ‘[s]onification is not visualisation for the ears, it follows completely different rules’, and this makes it so interesting and challenging to do well. Sonification lets us select data that we wish to explore or monitor and attach sounds to it, thus bringing the intangible, such as distant galaxies, computer network traffic, the earth’s magnetosphere, or the quantum states of materials into our audible experience. The project challenges the prevalent visual dominance in our society’s understanding of knowledge'.

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Sonic Intangibles Team

Newcastle University: Chris Harrison, Bennett Hogg, Jorge Boehringer, Rose Shepherd 

Chris on behalf of the team 

Northumbria University: Paul Vickers, Lucy Whalley, Dan Ratliff, Shelly Knotts, NUSTEM