← cd ..

COVID-19 DATA SONIFICATION

By Chelidon Frame



Click here to experience in fullscreen

Artist's Note

In the COVID-19 era, information is made of digits. New data, total data, suspect cases, confirmed cases, recovered patients, deceased patients – and for each, a number. But can we truly get the meaning of those numbers, at a time when all we’re surrounded by, day after day, is the same 9 figures in different orders?

“COVID-19 DATA SONIFICATION” puts those numbers into sounds. Extracting official data of the Italian situation from covid19api, a specifically designed algorithm turns the daily numbers of confirmed cases, recovered patients and new deaths into ever-evolving sound waves. Day by day, as the Covid-19 situation evolves, the numbers change, and so do the frequencies of the sounds that we hear, abandoning the initial harmony.

The result? Sound waves clashing relentlessly, generating interferences with only the smallest change. An entropic journey that – only by stirring us – can clear up what we struggle to see.

Chelidon Frame is an experimental electronic music project that mainly works with field recordings, radio interferences, guitars and processed sounds.

His installations are experienced-based and suggest a dialogue between the location (both virtual and physical) and the sounds proposed, aiming to deliver a message in the simpler yet most effective way. The use of code, data analysis and data-driven sounds, allow information to be experienced anew.

In his studio works and live sets different layers of sounds - guitars, synthesizers and custom-made instruments - piles up creating unexpected new soundscapes.