Preliminary sonification of ENSO using traditional Javanese gamelan scales

Sandy Hardian Susanto Herho, Rusmawan Suwarman, Nurjanna J. Trilaksono, Iwan P. Anwar, Faiz R. Fajary

Preliminary sonification of ENSO using traditional Javanese gamelan scales: 1 upvotes on Hugging Face Daily Papers, #25 of 36 papers on 2026-02-17. Day-by-day upvote history.

Sonification -- the mapping of data to non-speech audio -- offers an underexplored channel for representing complex dynamical systems. We treat El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a canonical example of low-dimensional climate chaos, as a test case for culturally-situated sonification evaluated through complex systems diagnostics. Using parameter-mapping sonification of the Niño 3.4 sea surface temperature anomaly index (1870--2024), we encode ENSO variability into two traditional Javanese gamelan pentatonic systems (pelog and slendro) across four composition strategies, then analyze the resulting audio as trajectories in a two-dimensional acoustic phase space. Recurrence-based diagnostics, convex hull geometry, and coupling analysis reveal that the sonification pipeline preserves key dynamical signatures: alternating modes produce the highest trajectory recurrence rates, echoing ENSO's quasi-periodicity; layered polyphonic modes explore the broadest phase space regions; and the two scale families induce qualitatively distinct coupling regimes between spectral brightness and energy -- predominantly anti-phase in pelog but near-independent in slendro. Phase space trajectory analysis provides a rigorous geometric framework for comparing sonification designs within a complex systems context. Perceptual validation remains necessary; we contribute the dynamical systems methodology for evaluating such mappings.

Paper page on Hugging Face · arXiv

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