Preliminary sonification of ENSO using traditional Javanese gamelan scales

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, echoing ENSO's quasi-periodicity; layered polyphonic modes explore the broadest phase space regions; and the two scale families induce qualitatively distinct coupling regimes between spectral brightness and energy -- predominantly anti-phase in pelog but near-independent in slendro. Phase space trajectory analysis provides a rigorous geometric framework for comparing sonification designs within a complex systems context. Perceptual validation remains necessary; we contribute the dynamical systems methodology for evaluating such mappings.