My time at ICAD 2026

Back in the early months of the year, I decided to submit a paper to the International Conference on Auditory Display. This was a first for me, having no formal academic background.

The paper I wrote was on my Pulsar Sonification system, and had the snappy title, Pulsar Sonification - Period-Preserving Sonification of Pulsar Populations.

The conference was held in three locations concurrently - Barcelona, Spain; Bielefeld, Germany; and Troy, New York. I decided that Barcelona was for me (it's an incredible city).

The conference proceedings were lucky enough to be hosted within ESMUC - Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya - designed by the architect Rafael Moneo. Every room in the school building had a grand piano!

Poster & Performance

I presented my poster on Pulsar Sonification, which provoked many questions and congratulations. Later that evening, I did a live performance with Ljómi, using footage licensed from self-proclaimed aurora chaser, Vincent Ledvina.

This was the first time Ljómi had been shown to the public. I had spent weeks adding features that would allow it detection parameters, overlay settings, and some musical parameters to be adjustable, in realtime, using an external MIDI controller. Ljómi became a performance tool, and it paid off.

Connections

The real value in attending the conference was in rubbing shoulders with other sonifiers, researchers, musicians, and composers. Everyone I met was warm and friendly, and the conversation was particularly nerdy! Excellent!

I hope to submit a paper to next year's. In the meantime, I've started contacting Nordic aurora research institutes with the goal of kicking off some collaboration work that will hopefully see Ljómi brought to the Arctic Circle (or as close as I can get).