Real Time Sonification of Stock Market Data with sMax

Recently, cross-platform audio interfaces coupled with broadband communication allow to implement real time data in auditory displays. Within this framework, we present sMax, a toolkit for stock market data sonification. sMax provides an auditory display for the user to monitor parallel-distributed financial data. sMax uses a set of Java and Max modules to map real time stock market information into recognizable musical patterns. The project outcomes range from the creation of art installations to auditory display for mobile computing devices. We present the theoretical background, and the structure of the program.