Data sonification with R: the sound of Twitter data

(This article was first published on SoMe Lab » r-project, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

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# Author: Jeff Hemsley jhemsley at uw dot edu# Twitter: @JeffHemsley# Created: Sometime in 2013# # the location of the files I used are at:# http://somelab.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/test_tweet_like_data.txt# Grab these files or make your own and fix the path info below## load the tuneR packagelibrary(tuneR) dir.path <- "c:/r/rt_nets/"dir.path.dat <- "c:/r/rt_nets/dat/"#dir.path.dat <- "c:/r/sound/"tweet.data.file.name <- "earthRTs.txt"#tweet.data.file.name <- "test_tweet_like_data.txt"tweet.data.file <- paste(dir.path.dat, tweet.data.file.name, sep="") # tweet data is stored in a file, often a big one with a tab as the separatertweet.data <- data.frame(read.delim(file=tweet.data.file, sep='\t', stringsAsFactors=F, row.names=NULL)) # ok, just so we can see what we got...colnames(tweet.data)dim(tweet.data)tweet.data[1,] # now, we want have certain characters given some sounds, everything else we# treat as a pause so as to sort of mimic language and bird chirps. So# here is a list of the characters we will create sound for. Spaces give us# us something like different words.chars.to.sonify <- c("#", "@", "-", ",", ".", "'", letters, as.character(0:9))chars.to.sonify.length <- length(chars.to.sonify) # sampling rate. this is how many data points (I think) per secondsampeling.rate <- 6000 # how rich the sound is?bits <- 8 long.pause <- .5 # in secondsshort.pause <- .1 # in secondscharacter.sound.length <- 0.01 # we are going to setup a range of tones for each user# to do that we need to find the total range, how many users, and a min and max for each user# and then stuff it in a dataframe so we can get those ranges depending on who is "talking"# note, Hz low values are deep song, and high values are high pitchedmin.Hz <- 600max.Hz <- 8000Hz.range <- max.Hz - min.Hz # get the users from the original dataframeusers.vector <- sort(unique(tweet.data$user.screen_name))users.vector.length <- length(users.vector)num.tone.start.buckets <- floor(Hz.range/users.vector.length) # ok, now make the dataframeuser.voice.df <- data.frame(screen.name=users.vector, min.tone=rep(0, users.vector.length), max.tone=rep(0, users.vector.length))user.voice.df$min.tone <- seq(from=min.Hz, by=num.tone.start.buckets, length=users.vector.length)user.voice.df$max.tone <- seq(to=max.Hz, by=num.tone.start.buckets, length=users.vector.length)user.voice.df[1,] # whats the first row look like?user.voice.df[users.vector.length,] # whats the last row look like? #ok. Now, we don't want to do all of the tweets, just a sample, for experimenting# do like 3 to 10.num.tweets.to.sonify <- 10num.obs <- dim(tweet.data)[1] if (num.obs < num.tweets.to.sonify) {  num.tweets.to.sonify <- num.obs}tweet.rows.to.sing <- sample(x=1:num.obs, size=num.tweets.to.sonify) # here is the sonify loop: for each user sing thier tweetfor (i in 1:num.tweets.to.sonify) {   if (i == 1) {    # wait! if this is the first iteration, lets make a wave object: a "coversation" of tweets    w.conversation <- silence(duration = long.pause, xunit = c("samples", "time")[2], bit=bits, samp.rate=sampeling.rate)  }   # i-th sample  df.tweet.row <- tweet.rows.to.sing[i]   # get the user and set their range  the.user <- tweet.data$user.screen_name[df.tweet.row]  the.user.index <- which(user.voice.df$screen.name == the.user)  user.min.Hz <- user.voice.df$min.tone[the.user.index]  user.max.Hz <- user.voice.df$max.tone[the.user.index]  user.Hz.range <- user.max.Hz - user.min.Hz   # get the tweet text  the.tweet <- tweet.data$text[df.tweet.row]  the.tweet.length <- nchar(the.tweet)   # break into a vector of characters  # lowercase the letters. stuff it all in a vector  tweet.text.vec <- unlist(strsplit(tolower(the.tweet), ""))   # For each character in the tweet, find it's index in the chars.to.sonify   # (see above for our 'alphabet' of chars we are sounding out)  tmp.index <- match(tweet.text.vec, chars.to.sonify)   # each 'talker' starts with a pause of silence  wobj <- silence(duration = long.pause, xunit = c("samples", "time")[2], bit=bits, samp.rate=sampeling.rate)   # ok. for each character in the tweet, make a little wave for it.  for (j in 1:the.tweet.length) {    # j <- 1 + j    if (is.na(tmp.index[j])) {      w <- silence(duration = short.pause, xunit = c("samples", "time")[2], bit=bits, samp.rate=sampeling.rate)    } else {      tweet.char.freq <- (tmp.index[j] * (user.Hz.range/chars.to.sonify.length)) + user.min.Hz      w <- sine(tweet.char.freq, duration=character.sound.length, xunit = c("samples", "time")[2], bit=bits, samp.rate=sampeling.rate)    }     # add each part of the wave to the wave object    wobj <- bind(wobj, w)  }   # add each talker's tweet to the conversasion  w.conversation <- bind(w.conversation, wobj)} play(w.conversation)# write it all to a wav file.writeWave(w.conversation, "c:/r/sound/tweet_data_sonification.wav")

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