Physical visualisations of bird songs digitally created and translated into wood. A Processing script was created to visually interpret the sound from an individual bird song recording, converting the sound into a series of ‘sound rings’, which is visually reminiscent of tree rings. Each shape can be read from the centre outwards - individual rings in the shape each represents a moment of time in the bird song- the longer the sound then the more rings there are. The distance between the rings is created by the sound levels of the song - so louder points in the sound create larger gaps - periods of silence are represented by tightly packed rings.
The shape of the ring is a representation of the sound ‘spectrum’ - a range of frequencies within the sound at a given point in time. ‘Spikes’ in the ring shape are created at the points in the sound spectrum which have the highest frequency - so low pitches of sounds will create spikes at different points around the ring compared to high pitch sounds