Andy Hunt

CV and Research Overview

Andy has been working at the University of York since 1988. He works on interactive interfaces using audio, and also composes music for TV, Film and Multimedia. Outlines of various current and previous projects are listed below.

Short CV

Dr Andy Hunt, Department of Electronics, University of York, is known internationally for his pioneering work on Interactive Sonification (the science of displaying data as sound, with real-time user interaction). He is the co-instigator of the Interactive Sonification Workshop [1] (most recently held at York in Feb 2007) with Dr Thomas Hermann (Bielefeld University, Germany). Together they were Guest Editors for an IEEE Multimedia [2] Special Issue on the topic, and have given presentations on the subject at the International Community for Auditory Display (ICAD) [3] which inspired the 2005 conference towards the theme of ‘interactivity’. Dr Hunt’s EPSRC first grant on Improved Data Mining through an Interactive Sonic approach (Grant ref: GR/S08886/01) was recently completed and assessed overall as ‘tending towards outstanding’, and produced internationally respected publications such as [4-6]. This research facilitated many of the above benefits and brought together the team for this current application. Dr Hunt is currently co-investigator with Dr Alistair Edwards (Dept. Computer Science, University of York) on Sonification of cervical smear data to improve screening accuracy (Grant ref: EP/C512413/1) He is UK representative for the EU’s COST-287 programme (Gestural control of audio systems) [7] and a working group leader and book editor for the European team. He is also supervising a number of Masters and PhD students in the area of sonification, aiming at improving auditory display interaction and software design and verification. He has managed several large-scale projects for the University (including EPSRC and EU Marie-Curie coordination) and has written a book on the subject of research management for upcoming researchers [8]. He has recently been awarded the RAE Engineering Teaching Prize 2007 for long-term contribution to the encouragement of young engineers and enthusiastic promotion of the discipline.

[1] Hunt, A. & Hermann, T., The Discipline of Interactive Sonification, in Proceedings of the Int. Workshop on Interactive Sonification, Bielefeld, Jan. 2004 (see www.interactive-sonification.org).
[2] Hunt, A. & Hermann, T. (Guest eds.), “Interactive Sonification”, IEEE Multimedia special issue,  Apr-June 2005.
[3] Hunt, A. & Hermann, T., The importance of interaction in sonification, Proc. International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), Sydney, July. 2004. http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/Conferences/ICAD2004/papers/hunt_hermann.pdf
[4] Pauletto, S. & Hunt, A. The sonification of EMG data, Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD), London, UK,  http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/research/imc/icad2006/proceedings/papers/f17.pdf
[5] Pauletto, S. & Hunt, A. A comparison of audio and visual analysis of complex time-series data sets. Proc. ICAD, Limerick, Ireland., July, 2005.  http://www.idc.ul.ie/icad2005/downloads/f30.pdf
[6] Pauletto, S. & Hunt, A., A toolkit for interactive sonification, Proceedings of ICAD (the Int. Community of Auditory Display), Sydney, July. 2004. http://www.icad.org/websiteV2.0/Conferences/ICAD2004/papers/pauletto_hunt.pdf
[7] Ng, K., Bernadini, N., Hunt, A. & Arfib, D., COST-287 Gesture Controlled Audio Systems, Proc. EVA   (Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts), London, July 2003
[8] Andy Hunt "Your research project: how to manage it", Taylor & Francis, Routledge Study Guides, 2005.
[9] Pauletto S. & Hunt A., Interactive Sonification of Helicopter flight data and muscle (EMG) data, Bielefeld, Jan 2004, see www.interactive-sonification.org
[10] A. Hunt, T. Hermann, S. Pauletto, Interacting with sonification systems: closing the loop, (2004), Proceedings of the International Symposium on Non-visual and Multi-modal Visualization, M2Vis04, IEEE Computer Society, London

For a full Publications list click here.

Interactive sonification

Member(s): Dr Andy Hunt
Contact: adh@ohm.york.ac.uk
Further Info: http://www.interactive-sonification.org/
Sonification is the use of sound to render data, so that it can be interpreted by a human being for analytical purposes. It is the audio counterpart of visualisation. The main differences of sound displays over visual displays are that sound can:
* Represent frequency responses in an instant (as timbral characteristics)
* Represent changes over time, naturally
* Allow microstructure to be perceived
* Rapidly portray large amounts of data
* Alert listener to events outside the current visual focus
* Holistically bring together many channels of information
Andy Hunt has worked with several European researchers on this topic, and particularly Dr Thomas Hermann of Bielefeld University, Germany. Together they have launched the Interactive Sonfication Workshop (next one January 2007, York) and have published several papers, including Guest Editing a special issue of IEEE Multimedia on the topic.

Use of Sound for Physiotherapy Analysis and Feedback

Member(s): Dr Andy Hunt, Ms Sandra Pauletto
Contact: adh@ohm.york.ac.uk
This project is funded by a 3-year grant from EPSRC (GR/S08886: Improved Data Mining through an Interactive Sonic Approach). We have worked closely with Physiotherapists from Teesside University's School of Health & social care in order to develop a sound representation of EMG data taken from a patient's muscles. Through the sound not only can therapists hear the detailed temporal response of several muscles at the same time, but new insights are gained into the problems that each patient faces, as much of the microstructure and overall shape of the data is perceived in a very different way as sound.
We are working on a system to integrate our sonification prototype with the clinical data gathering equipment, so that patients will be able to hear a live sonic rendition of their muscular performance, and use the aural information to modify their movements, aided by the therapist.

Landmine Detection with sound feedback

Member(s): Dr Andy Hunt, Dr John Szymanski, Prof David Howard, Prof Sultan Barakat (PRDU)
Contact: adh@ohm.york.ac.uk jes1@ohm.york.ac.uk
We have brought together an international cross-discipline academic-industrial consortium to improve the detection rates of hand-held landmine detectors, by providing rich acoustic feedback to the human de-miner. The consortium consists of:
* University of York, U.K. Dept of Electronics (human interfaces & sonification)
* University of York, U.K. Post-war Reconstruction & Development Unit (PRDU)
* ERA Technology, Leatherhead, U.K. (manufacturers of mine detectors)
* University of Bielefeld, Neuroinformatics group (sonification & modelling)
* KTH, Stockholm, Sweden, Dept of Speech, Music & Hearing (psychoacoustics & user testing)
* Norwegian People's Aid (practical de-mining and mine research)
We are currently applying to the EU for a Marie Curie Initial Training Network to provide 4 years of funding to allow young researchers to specialise in this area and travel between the consortium's institutions. We are also applying to EPSRC for a UK-based research project to establish how many sounds (and in what format) a human being can listen to simultaneously, whilst involved in a de-mining task.

Cancer Cell detection using sonic interfaces

Member(s): Dr Andy Hunt, Dr Alistair Edwards (Computer Science)
Contact: adh@ohm.york.ac.uk alistair@cs.york.ac.uk
This project is funded by a 3-year grant from EPSRC (EP/C512413/1: Sonification Of Cervical Smear Data To Improve Screening Accuracy). We are working with clinical cytologists from Leeds Health Trust to improve the detection rates of cervical cancer by rendering the microscope data as sound. Many diagnostic errors are made when trying to detect potentially cancerous cells using microscopic examination of cells which have been smeared across a glass slide.
We are investigating the conversion of the slide data into a real-time sound feedback which will be available to the analyst. Sound may offer a degree of cross-checking against the visual data, and may also serve to help alert the listener to subtle changes in the data, especially data which is outside the current field of view.

High-level control of music synthesis for musicians

Member(s): Dr Al Disley, Prof David Howard, Dr Andy Hunt, Mr Tony Tew
Contact: acd500@ohm.york.ac.uk dh@ohm.york.ac.uk
Sound synthesis can be achieved by many methods, but none provides musicians with controls that are intuitive in musical terms; rather, they make use of low-level parameters such as fundamental frequency, filter cut-off frequency, or filter resonance. If musicians were able to make use of high-level terms that they regularly use during their music making such as bright-dark, poor-rich, focussed-unfocussed, static-dynamic, they would be able to create sounds in a much more intuitive manner. This can only be achieved by investigating the links between what musicians mean when they use high-level terms and the output sounds to which they refer. This project will (a) look at how musicians describe sounds, (b) decide what sound synthesis system would best enable such sounds to be created, and (c) implement a version of that synthesis system where sound creation is controlled using high-level musical sound descriptors.

DPhil - "Radical user-interfaces for real-time musical control"

Andy's DPhil was completed in April 2000, and has supported the hypothesis that:

The real-time control of computer-based musical instruments can be enhanced by the provision of non-analytical performance modes in the user interface.

It challenges the assumption that user interfaces need to be choice-driven (menus, icons etc.) and provides evidence that for real-time musical tasks a different approach is needed - one based on the continuous control of the musical parameters via a set of transformational algorithms known as the mapping layer.  The thesis is available on-line here.  The findings are also summarised in the electronic book 'Trends in Gestural Control of Music'.

New Computer-based Musical instruments

Andy's research work began in the late 1980's with the development of a computer-based musical instrument for people with disabilities - MidiGrid. A video (Windows Media format) of MidiGrid in action can be seen here.  This software allows the user to play notes, chords, sounds and sequences using a computer mouse. It is still widely used in schools and with special needs groups, and is available for PC/Windows.

This developed into a general interest in finding solutions to enable people with disabilities to access musical instruments. Projects involved prototypes of the MidiCreator device which allows switches and other electronic input devices to trigger sounds on MIDI devices. Much of this work was undertaken with Ross Kirk who was the chair of the Ensemble Research Group. This was an interdisciplinary group of engineers, therapists, musicians, teachers and artists who met regularly to discuss, promote and innovate research in the area of music technology for people with special needs.