Python Sonification

Our speaker for Python Charlottesville on this evening is Erin Braswell. Erin is a Software Developer at the Center for Open Science, where we will be meeting. Previously, she has worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and for the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. She will be talking to us about how to take python data off of the screen and turn it into visual or sound representations:

What do geiger counters, black holes, heart monitors, and volcanoes have in common? They all can use sound to convey information! This talk will explore using python for sonification: the process of translating data into sound that could otherwise be represented visually. Have you ever wondered how to use python to represent data other than making charts and graphs? Are you a musician looking for inspiration in the world around you? This talk will go over how to use python to translate time series data to MIDI that can be played back in real time. We’ll sonically interpret light-curve data from the Kepler space telescope using pygame, MIDIUtil, and astropy, turning points on a graph into a musical masterpiece! Come learn about how data sonification is used to help people, to expand the impact of scientific research, and to create music from data.

NOTE: As usual, we will also kick off with lightning talks. If anyone has a 10-minute, rapid talk they can present, come prepared to do so! If there are no volunteered lightning talks, we'll spend 10 minutes sharing people's favorite PyCon 2017 talks, and previewing PyCon 2018, which is coming up fast.