Evaluating the spatial sonification of the molecular structures of amino acids using multiple concurrently sounding sources

Abstract

We have designed an interactive form of sonification in which the listener navigates through the molecular structures of amino acids over the network of carbon atoms. We use pitch and density as the two main features for the sound design of the four common chemical elements (H, C, N, O). We use multiple concurrently sounding sources to spatially sonify the atoms around a certain carbon atom of the amino acids. The main goal of this paper is to evaluate this sonification approach. We cover the design, execution and evaluation of two separate cycles of experiments that aim to evaluate our sonification approach and get insight in factors that may influence the individual performance of the concurrently sounding source identification and localization.