Sound is capable of profound emotional experiences: one need look no further than the importance of music in film. Sonification is field of research interested in the use of sound to convey information in general, but what happens when the data is emotion? To objectively and systematically convey this data, I have explored sources of auditory-emotion induction in environmental sound and music. Choosing wisely from these sources, emotion can be communicated when social displays of affect are unavailable, misleading, or inappropriate. In my thesis, I developed sonification strategies based upon select structural/acoustic features and auditory-cognitive mechanisms. I produced the first ever computational evaluation of a sonification of emotion, using a publicly available tool for music emotion recognition. The evaluation highlights benefits and limitations of computational design, a technique that in addition to practical applications, can be used to acoustically instantiate mathematical models of musical emotion.

• Organised Sound Paper Accepted 2013/10/20
• Two Papers Presented at ICME2013 in Jyväskylä 2013/06/12
• MIREmotion Visualizer Released on GitHub 2013/05/08

This project was inspired by a six-month NSERC Engage Grant:

• R. Michael Winters and Marcelo M. Wanderley. “Sonification of Emotion: Strategies and Results from the Intersection with Music,” Organised Sound, 19(1), 2014.
• R. Michael Winters and Marcelo M. Wanderley. “Sonification of Emotion: Strategies for Continuous Auditory Display of Arousal and Valence,” International Conference on Music and Emotion, Jyväskylä, Finland, June 10-15, 2013.
• R. Michael Winters, Ian Hattwick, and Marcelo M. Wanderley. “Integrating Emotional Data into Music Performance: Two Audio Environments for the Emotional Imaging Composer,” The International Conference on Music and Emotion, Jyväskylä, Finland, June 10-15, 2013.
• R. Michael Winters, “Sonification, Emotion, and Music: Strategies for Continuous Auditory Display of Arousal and Valence,” CIRMMT Music Perception and Cognition Colloquium, Jan. 24, 2013. PDF
• R. Michael Winters and Ian Hattwick, “Audio Environment for the Emotional Imaging Composer,” NSERC/CIRMMT Engage Grant Demos, Sep. 26, 2012.

Thesis Proposal, Accepted January 2013.