Abstract

What if the sun could be heard? Listen to the Sun is an auditory experience that transforms solar radiation, temperature, humidity, and wind data into a dynamic, continuously evolving soundscape that reveals the relationships between interdependent climate variables, making invisible environmental phenomena audible and intuitively perceptible.

Description

Listen to the Sun is a continuous audiovisual experience that transforms environmental data into a perceptual environment, allowing climate processes to be perceived rather than read. Conventional representations of climate variables, such as graphs, numerical readouts, and dashboards, demand visual attention and specialist knowledge, offering little sense of how solar radiation, temperature, humidity, and wind interact as an interdependent living system. The project offers an experiential listening medium that enables listeners to perceive temporal patterns, relationships, and gradual transitions within environmental dynamics as evolving processes through sound.

The system is built in Max/MSP using a multi-layered architecture in which each variable retains a distinct sonic identity while remaining perceptually connected. Parameter mapping followed five design principles: temporal coherence, layered variable separation, ecological metaphor, controlled scaling, and cognitive economy, ensuring informational integrity and perceptual clarity throughout. An ecological listening approach underpins the design, employing recognisable auditory cues and gradual transformations, such as atmospheric textures, wind-like noise, and threshold-based sound events, to support intuitive understanding and extended listening engagement.

The interactive relationships between environmental variables inspired the system design. High radiation values drive temperature increases, which in turn raise evaporation and humidity levels. Wind, generated by uneven solar heating, redistributes heat and moisture, acting as a dynamic connector between radiation, temperature, and humidity within the climate system. Within the design, solar radiation acts as the primary structural driver, producing an evolving sound field whose density and brightness reflect the cyclical behaviour of solar energy, while temperature, humidity, and wind emerge as distinct tonal, textural, and spatial layers shaped by data values.

The project is presented as an audiovisual installation in which a synchronised animated visual system driven by solar radiation reinforces temporal structure and cyclical motion, creating a coherent perceptual environment. The installation showed that listeners could perceive gradual environmental change, recurring daily cycles, and relationships between sonic layers over time. Audience feedback also suggested that metaphorical ecological cues supported intuitive orientation.

ISA Entrant: Abeer Mohamed