Delineating the microbial ecology of the deep ocean is essential to the collective conceptual and functional understanding of the global biosphere and for humanity’s regard for the preservation of the seas. Access to the origins of this knowledge base is distant and complex from the sampling of remote natural ecosystems to the subsequent data development, perceptions, interpretations and conclusions that fuel scholarly conversation and environmental scientific theory.
The soniDOME Project (Sonification Interactions with Deep Ocean Microbial Ecology) introduces an innovative sensorial path of inquiry for artist-scientist collaborations and the creative and scientific exploration of experiential data interactions with deep ocean microbial ecologies. The path of this art-science collaboration spans data development and analysis through data display, interaction, open source software toolkit distributions and public engagement. soniDOME is expanding the sensoria of existing methods of complex data interpretation from visual forms to interactive soundscapes as a means to explore and interpret the structures, interactions and dynamics of remote microbial communities.
The soniDOME Project is supported by the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI).