Perceptualization of scientific data

In this paper we discuss data exploration as a particularly difficult case within the general problem of data visualization. We describe (1) a novel graphic technique for displaying multidimensional data visually and (2) an auditory display integrated with the visual display that allows us to represent multidimensional data in sound. The visual/auditory display employs an "iconographic" technique that seeks to exploit the spontaneous perceptual capacity to sense and discriminate texture. Structures in data to be analyzed can appear, both visually and aurally, as distinct textural regions and contours when the data are represented iconographically. Sound can be used to reinforce the visual presentation or to augment the dimensionality of the visual display. The immediate focus of the work reported here is to investigate how best to transform data into perceptible visual and auditory textures, that is, how best to "perceptualize" the data. A key problem we discuss is deciding which fields of a multidimensional data set should be represented in the visual domain and which in the auditory domain. This activity is part of the University of Lowell's Exploratory Visualization (Exvis) project, a multidisciplinary effort to develop new paradigms for the exploration and analysis of data with high dimensionality.