Musical Sonification of Daily Physical Activity Data: A Proof of Concept Study

Previous research has shown that the temporal dynamics of human activity recorded by accelerometers share a similar structure with music. This opens the possibility to use musical sonification of motion data as a means of raising awareness of an individuals own daily physical activity and promote healthy activity behaviour, granted that human activity and music also share similar temporal structure. In this study a method was developed for quantifying the daily structure of human activity using multigranular temporal segmentation and applying it to produce musical sonifications. To that extent, two accelerometry recordings of physical activity were selected from a dataset, such that one shows more physical activity than the other. These data were segmented in different timescales so that segmentation boundaries at a given timescale have a corresponding boundary at a finer timescale, occurring at the same point in time. These properties are useful to display the hierarchical structure of daily events embedded in larger events, which is akin to musical structure. The segmented physical activity data for one day was mapped to musical sounds, resulting in two short musical pieces, one for each subject. A survey measured the extent to which people would identify the piece corresponding to the most active subject, resulting in a majority of correct answers. We propose that this method has potential to be a valuable and innovative technique for behavioural change. We discuss its potential to aid in interventions for behavioural change towards reducing sedentary behaviour and increasing physical activity.