PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Digital audio in its various appearances is ubiquitous in our everyday life. Searching and sorting of sounds collected in extensive databases e.g. sampling libraries for musical production or seismographical surveys is difficult and often bound to tight restrictions of the used standard human-computer interface technique of keyboard and mouse. Also the common technique of tagging sounds and other media files has the drawback that it needs descriptive words, which is a not to underestimated difficulty for sounds. We therefore created AudioDB, an intuitive human computer interface to interactively explore sound by representing them as physical artifacts (grains) on a tabletop surface. The system is capable for sonic sorting, grouping and selecting of sounds represented as physical artifacts, and can therefore serve as a basis for discussions on audio-related tasks in working teams. AudioDB however is not a special solution for problems appearing in a dedicated field of work, but is moreover designed as an easy-to-use multi purpose tool for audio-based information. As a side-effect, AudioDB can be used for grounding work on how humans handle digital information that is projected onto physical artifacts.