COLLEGE HALL

By Sarah Gudbaur

Sonifying Virtual Learners

Over 80% of Duquesne’s student body is enrolled in at least one virtual class, and over 1,000 of those students attend their classes exclusively online. This means there are significantly fewer students present on the campus, but this SoundSite aims to give the virtual learners a tangible representation. When you listen to this Site, you can hear your fellow Duquesne classmates logging in to their classes as you travel to yours! This is accomplished through sonification, or the use of audio to represent data. Can you recall the chime sound that plays when you log in to a Zoom meeting? That’s the sound you’ll hear multiplied by hundreds. During this short audio, you will hear a condensed representation of a day of classes in College Hall including virtual learners attending the same classes. Each Zoom chime represents about 10 virtual learners, and each elevator "ding" represents about 10 in-person students attending classes in College Hall. Notice the amount of Zoom chimes versus elevator dings

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Does this audio help you to better grasp the amount of students attending classes virtually?

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Navigating safety measures during the pandemic, our social norms have evolved in many ways, especially with our use of video-communication technologies. Zoom quickly became the most prominent form of communication for classes, work, and socializing. This app has turned into an international symbol that encapsulates the changed social norms of this historic time. It is clear the app holds great cultural significance, but what about the sounds linked to it? As Zoom grew in popularity, the log-in doorbell/chime sound became universally recognized. As we started using Zoom on a daily basis, the sound became a part of our daily life. That sound will forever be a marker of this time in history. It is what soundscape theorist Murray Schafer would call a soundmark. This refers to a “sound that is unique, or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by that community” (Schafer). The community, in this case, is massive. It includes everyone who has used Zoom as a communication platform during the pandemic. This sound is recognized by all those attending work, school, and socializing at this point in time.

Sonifying the data of in-person and virtual learners hopefully gives a more engaging representation than just seeing numbers. When it comes to quantitative data, sonification is a great tool to give a sense of numbers that can be difficult to comprehend visually. Sonification can be used to represent many different kinds of data. For example, NASA sonified sonic events like a supernova, using celestial-sounding instruments like bells and harps. In this project, this Zoom chime soundmark is used to represent data that is relevant to student life at Duquesne. A vast majority of students are attending classes through Zoom, and this chime signifies the student experience during the pandemic. Having the same, recognizable soundmark overlapping and creating huge waves of sound will show the number of students learning virtually, but it could possibly create some kind of emotional response as well. Even though the sound is a universal soundmark, people have different feelings about it. To many, this sound might be considered an annoyance. It could be a reminder, even subconsciously, of a difficult time in our lives. When it comes to quantitative data, sonification is a great tool to give a sense of numbers that can be difficult to gain through visualization, but it also has the ability to impact the way we feel about the data.

Andrea Polli, “Soundscape, Sonification, and Sound Activism.” AI & Society 27/2 (2012): 257-268.

R. Murray, Schafer, "The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World." Simon and Schuster (1993).

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