Sonification Contest

The task of the 2013 ICAD Sonification Contest is to use sounds to represent obstacles in a sample frame sequence of a camera moving through a 3D scene. The sonification should allow a blind listener to distinguish the positions and types of obstacles present in the path. Special software for generating scene frames and the scene source file are available here and the instructions to using the program are on the author's website.


The contestants can use one (or more) of the following data sources:
- geometrical positions of obstacles provided in the scene source file (the file only contains starting locations objects, but their relative positions to the observer in subsequent frames can be recalculated using the camera motion vector)
- a sequence of original 2D color images
- a sequence of segmented 2D color images
- a sequence of 2.5D greyscale depth images (can also be read from a text file containing pixel disparity values) All sequences are generated by the provided software. The authors can modify the camera ego motion vector to generate a higher framerate of the sequence (the current settings move the camera 20cm each frame for 600 frames) and choose any image resolution available in the software.


The sonification contest entries must consist of a 3-5 slide ppt od pdf presentation explaining the proposed algorithm, a movie or animation of the sonified contest frame sequence with video synched to the audio (codec, resolution and frame rate can be chosen by the contestants) and optionally a second sonified sequence from a new scene file prepared by the author (contestants are encouraged to do this, especially to prepare a more complex realistic scene).


In an attempt to raise interest in the sonification contest, the ICAD board has decided to allow any conference participants not entering their own submissions to the contest to present an entry by a student or colleague from their university.


The winner(s) will be chosen by a panel consisting of ICAD or AES board members and conference organizers that did not submit any entries themselves or in the name of their students. The prize is traditionally equivalent to the lowest conference participation fee (200EUR); however, the contest panel may choose to increase the prize pool and split it if several exceptional entries are submitted.


All contest participants (or their representatives) should be prepared to deliver a 3-5min presentation about their entry; however, depending on the number of entries, some pre-selection may be performed by the ICAD board to show only the top few entries.


Submissions should be emailed to the conference secretariat - info(at)icad2013.com with the subject line: SONIFICATION CONTEST by the end of June. If the submission files exceed 10MB, please host them online and provide a download link.


Questions about the contest should be directed to the conference secretariat; however, questions regarding the software for generating frame sequences should be directed to the author (his email is provided in the downloaded software).