DATASONICA — Data Sonification: Turning a Building Into an Instrument (Unit London, Future Botanic)
DATASONICA is an audiovisual installation that transforms live environmental data into sound and light.
Using a network of sensors embedded within Building 59 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in San Francisco, California, the work listens to the building’s internal and external environment — translating data like air temperature, humidity levels, solar radiation, and dew point into an evolving composition.
Through data sonification, DATASONICA transforms the raw numerical streams into frequencies, harmonics, and then movements. Each data source generates a distinct sonic behaviour: air temperature plays on a church organ, humidity shapes a double bass, solar radiation drives energy and rhythm through a violin, while dew point defines tonal decay with a glockenspiel.
The resulting soundscape is both analytical and emotional — a living framework where architecture produces and performs its own data.
Commissioned by Future Botanic for the panel discussion “Narrating Planetary Crisis: Art, Data, and the Language of Sustainability” during London Art+Climate Week 2025, the work offers a new way to see and listen to climate data.
Concept and context
The project shows a new way to experience climate information — not through graphs or dashboards, but through listening. In DATASONICA, data is not abstract or distant; it is sensory, spatial, and affective. The work challenges how we perceive built environments, treating buildings as sentient bodies capable of generating their own music.
DATASONICA forms one of the building blocks of the larger ongoing research “Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost”, an exploration of how data absence, environmental change, and urban transformation can be rendered perceptible through sound and light.
Making of
The project was created through an iterative process of data visualisation and sonification design, combining numerical analysis with musical structure. Data from the laboratory’s sensors — collected at 15-minute intervals — was first visualised to understand its temporal rhythm, then mapped into musical parameters using a sonification tool that converts datasets into MIDI sequences. Each dataset was assigned an instrument and sonic range, creating a layered composition that evolves with the day’s environmental fluctuations.
Post-production in LogicPro and visual systems built in TouchDesigner were used to transform the raw sonification into a cinematic audiovisual environment.
Outcome
The installation premiered at Narrating Planetary Crisis: Art, Data, and the Language of Sustainability during London Art+Climate Week at Unit London in Mayfair. The piece enveloped the audience in deep frequencies and immersive visuals — transforming a day of environmental readings into a sensory experience of the building’s inner climate.
DATASONICA demonstrates how data-driven design and sound can create new ways to understand the invisible systems that shape our environment — linking the technical and the poetic, the scientific and the emotional.
DATASONICA — premiere during London Art+Climate Week
Commissioned for: Future Botanic, Narrating Planetary Crisis: Art, Data, and the Language of Sustainability
Tools: TouchDesigner, TwoTone, LogicPro
Data source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – Building 59 Environmental Sensors
Part of: Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost
Keywords: Data Sonification, Data Visualisation, Environmental Data, Climate Art, Audiovisual Installation
Future development
DATASONICA is the first completed module of a larger, evolving system. The next phase of the work involves connecting the framework to a real-time live data feed, allowing the installation to continuously perform the building’s environment as it changes — minute by minute, breath by breath.
This will transform the piece into a living, always-active sonification engine, capable of streaming environmental conditions anywhere in the world as sound and light.
If you're interested in collaborating on this next phase — integrating live environmental data, commissioning a custom sonification system, or exploring how real-time data can transform physical or digital spaces — the studio is open for conversations.
Get in touch to discuss how we can build a live data-driven installation together.
DATASONICA extends the conceptual framework of the Tiziana's series' “The Building Orchestra”, proposing architecture as a sentient body that listens, feels, and performs the data it generates. It reimagines environmental sensing not as surveillance or measurement, but as a collaboration between systems, humans and the climate itself. Watch DATASONICA here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_KHc3RyVl8
