Knowledge and Information

One task of data sonification is to provide a means by which listeners can obtain new ideas about the nature of the source of derived data. In so doing they can increase their knowledge and comprehension of that source and thus improve the efficiency, accuracy and/or quality of their knowledge acquisition and any decision-making based on it. The purpose of this chapter is to develop an historical understanding of what information is as a concept, how information can be represented in various forms as something that can be communicated with non-verbal sonic structures between its source and its (human) receiver and thus retained as knowledge. Whilst a complete philosophical and psychological overview of these issues is outside the scope of the chapter, it is important, in the context of developing computational design strategies that enable such communication, to gain an understanding of some of the basic concepts involved. A quasi-historical epistemology of human perception and the types of information these epistemologies engender is followed by a discussion of the phenomenal nature of sounds and sonic structures, and their ability to convey information of various sorts.