10 Postscript

If we sum up the history of sonification as a method for the recording of principles and structures, at first sound or music were primarily associated with mathematical relations and metaphysical concepts. This was because instrumental sound as a display medium initially only allowed the abstract. With the technological development of music recording and playback as well as the possibilities associated with digital sound processing and synthesis, our understanding of music has also changed. Today we find that the data substrate of sonification increasingly stems from our digitalized everyday world, but that none of it has its own materiality. Converting data from outer space transmitted by satellites into sound becomes a creative act, and, in contrast to Kepler, today we are not limited to the notion of music of the spheres. Whether the result is convincing depends in equal parts on the methodological transparency of the scientific application as well as the skillful sound design and the awareness for the natural and cultural determinants of the experience of hearing, of which the latter is a genuine skill of music composition.