Brand Logo Sonification
Date: Mar 2019
Categories: Audiovisual Installation, Data Art, Sonification
Categories: Audiovisual Installation, Data Art, Sonification
Brand Logo Sonification is an audiovisual installation that exists on the border between old and analog technology and new digital practices. It mainly represents the global top 10 brand ranking data and logos from 2000 to 2018 through an oscilloscope, which is an electronic analog instrument, by the computational digital processes of data visualization and sonification.
Based on OpenCV image processing and a vector synthesis technique, it extracts the contours of logos and converts them to audio that can be rendered on a vector display, such as an oscilloscope or laser. While the contours chiefly determine sound textures, the ranking data contributes to the whole composition: The ranking is used to decide the order and duration of brand appearances. And, brand values are proportionally mapped to the size of logos. If a brand’s value increases more than 10%, a brand logo starts with a noisy fluctuation, resulting in a noise sound, and becomes a clear shape at the middle of appearance duration. A degree of noise is proportional to a brand value change. If the ranking of a brand drops, its logo shape deforms smoothly by a flanging audio effect.
Through this process combining analog and digital practices, this work also reveals that our society is getting more affected by digital and IT companies, such as Google, Apple, Amazon, or Facebook, than brands in traditional industries, as their ranking in the data becomes highly positioned over time.
This work is presented with a laser display as a fixed-media and with an oscilloscope display as an interactive version.
Materials: Processing with XYscope library, Oscilloscope emulator, a laser and an oscilloscope display
Data is collected from Interbrand.
This project was made as an individual project in the Vector Hack Workshop at UCSB, led by Derek Holzer.
Brand Logo Sonification at The Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science and Technology(SBCAST), March 7, 2019
Improvisation Test
The above video is an initial test by improvising without relying on the ranking data.
IEEE VIS Arts Program 2019 Exhibition
Related Exhibitions
Oct 2019, “Brand Logo Sonification” Installation at the IEEE VIS Arts Program (VISAP), Vancouver, Canada
Jun 2019, “Brand Logo Sonification” Installation at the MAT 2019 End of Year Show: MADE [at] UCSB, California NanoSystems Institute, UCSB, Santa Barbara, USA