Frierson, Dargan MTwedt, Judy R2023-08-142023-08-142023-08-142023Twedt_washington_0250E_25759.pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/1773/50462Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2023Climate change is a geologic event in which we are both witnesses and participants. It defies straightforward categorization yet increasingly alters daily life and poses an existential threat to species around the world. And so there is an urgent need for transdisciplinary approaches to promote collective understanding of the staggering changes that are recorded in, and predicted by, environmental data. This document outlines a multi-year creative experiment making music compositions with climate data from ice cores, weather stations, and satellites. These compositions have been performed for live audiences, played on public radio stations in multiple countries, displayed in museum exhibits, and discussed in popular media articles. This dissertation surveys the theory and practice of data sonification, situates environmental data sonification in historical context, and describes the collection of compositions made from environmental data: the process, techniques and outcomes. Part I of the dissertation gives an orientation to the body of work. Chapter one provides historical context and situates the global network of climate data monitoring sites within its tangled history of colonialism, by outlining two threads in the development of meteorology in Britain and the United States. Chapter two describes features and methods of sonification, and describes a range of environmental sonifications by contemporary sound artists and scientists, to show the breadth of this interdisciplinary approach to environmental communication. Part II of the dissertation describes the extant collection of sonifications that comprise this multi-year experiment: documenting the intentions, methods, and process of the different compositions. Each chapter focuses on a different set of compositions. Chapter three outlines three early works which I composed after completing a masters degree in Atmospheric Sciences and prior to studying digital sound synthesis. These digital pieces are a sonification of the Keeling Curve, documenting the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a sonification of the record of global mean surface temperature, and a sonification of Arctic sea ice. Chapter four presents an acoustic composition and score of the satellite record of Arctic Sea Ice written for piano. I describe the process and structure of this composition, as well as the youth-led workshop which this piece inspired. Chapter five outlines a multi-artist, multimedia project which blends environmental health data with recordings of human breath and interviews, as part of an exhibition called “Breathing in a Time of Disaster.” Chapter six presents the Timescales Collection, a four-piece collection which sonifies the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide on multiple different timescales, spanning weeks to hundreds of thousands of years, showing the different layers of change that is recorded in this geologic record.application/pdfen-USCC BY-NC-SAauditory displayclimate datadigital soundmusic compositionscience communicationsonificationMusical compositionEnvironmental scienceClimate changeIndividual programThesis