LISTEN: Sounding uncertainty visualization

Integrated presentation of data with uncertainty is a worthy goal in scientific visualization. It allows researchers to make informed decisions based on imperfect data. It also allows users to visually compare and contrast different algorithms for performing the same task or different models for representing the same physical phenomenon. This work presents LISTEN - a data sonification system - that has been incorporated into two visualization systems: a system for visualizing geometric uncertainty of surface interpolants and a system for visualizing uncertainty in fluid flow. LISTEN is written in C++ for the SGI platform. It works with the SGI internal audio chip or a MIDI device or both. LISTEN is an object-oriented system that is modular, flexible, adaptable, portable, interactive and extensible. We demonstrate that sonification is very effective as an additional tool in visualizing geometric and fluid flow uncertainty.