Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!Firewall!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!mantis!mathew From: mathew@mantis.co.uk (Giving C News a *HUG*) Newsgroups: comp.human-factors Subject: Re: Audio feedback from GUI's Message-ID: Date: 14 Jun 91 13:29:30 GMT References: Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK. Lines: 28 haltraet@gondle.idt.unit.no (Hallvard Traetteberg) writes: > I've never tried making an interface with sound, but I've often wanted one. [...] > When waiting > for something to happen I would like to look at my desk instead. With my > attention some other place a sound that tells me the sorting is done is > appropriate. Likewise, when the humming from a large NFS transfer vanishes I > know I can go back to work on the machine. The BBC's TV series "The Computer Programme" attempted to teach people to write programs in BASIC. When they were showing the program running, they piped over quiet bits of music -- the instrumental breaks from "It's More Fun to Compute" by Kraftwerk. I've often thought that it would be nice to have similar musical cues to tell me how far make has got through compiling my programs. Each stage of the process would have a different musical motif. In a system with several background processes active, each process could be a different instrument. I have a vision of a computer system playing something like Brian Eno's "Music For Airports", with each type of sound representing a different part of the system and the musical patterns representing the activity going on... mathew