Preliminary sonification of ENSO using traditional Javanese gamelan scales
Sandy Hardian Susanto Herho, Rusmawan Suwarman, Nurjanna Joko Trilaksono, Iwan Pramesti Anwar, Faiz Rohman Fajary

TL;DR
This paper explores sonification of ENSO climate data using traditional Javanese gamelan scales, analyzing how different musical mappings preserve key dynamical features of the climate system.
Contribution
It introduces a novel sonification method applying gamelan scales to climate data and provides a dynamical systems framework for evaluating such mappings.
Findings
Sonification preserves ENSO's quasi-periodic dynamics.
Different gamelan scales produce distinct coupling regimes.
Trajectory analysis reveals meaningful dynamical signatures in audio.
Abstract
Sonification -- the mapping of data to non-speech audio -- offers an underexplored channel for representing complex dynamical systems. We treat El Ni\~{n}o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a canonical example of low-dimensional climate chaos, as a test case for culturally-situated sonification evaluated through complex systems diagnostics. Using parameter-mapping sonification of the Ni\~{n}o 3.4 sea surface temperature anomaly index (1870--2024), we encode ENSO variability into two traditional Javanese gamelan pentatonic systems (pelog and slendro) across four composition strategies, then analyze the resulting audio as trajectories in a two-dimensional acoustic phase space. Recurrence-based diagnostics, convex hull geometry, and coupling analysis reveal that the sonification pipeline preserves key dynamical signatures: alternating modes produce the highest trajectory recurrence rates,…
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Taxonomy
TopicsMusic Technology and Sound Studies · Tactile and Sensory Interactions · Multisensory perception and integration
