Artist Bard Edlund sonified the goals during the 2012 Stanley Cup.
The goals tally cumulative scoring for each team (rather than goals against). When a puck crosses the goal line, a musical note plays. There’s one instrument sound for Western Conference teams, and another for Eastern Conference teams. Higher-seeded teams are assigned a higher pitch. This means you can actually hear whether higher- or lower-seeded teams are scoring more, and if Western or Eastern Conference teams are producing more goals.
The beat in the background almost makes it sound like an actual song.
This is a great illustration of how much audio can enhance data visualization, especially for time-dependent data sets.
What a great literal application of the signal to noise ratio. I had trouble figuring out whether the sounds I was hearing were data points or just background noise. Just as in visual design, there can be distracting elements in sound design. I felt the drum beats and sliding tone in the background only helped confuse me, rather than add to the clarify the information.
Wonder if there is an analogy to tufle’s chartjunk…soundjunk? Was the background beat useful in providing regular timing? Was the high/low pitch useful in segmenting the teams? And so forth… I must admit that the sound was initially disorienting as noise (soundjunk). However, I did find a useful rhythm to the sound toward the end.