SOMson
12 videos • 177 views • by Musical Acoustics Demonstration of SOMson, a sonification of Self Organizing Maps (SOMs) aka. Kohonen Maps. The benefit of SOMs is that they reduce a high-dimensional space to two dimensions that are easier to explore and interpret. Their downside is that a lot of the original information is hidden. It can only be visualized one-by-one, and not in an integrated fashion. The benefit of sonification is that it has the ability to represent multiple dimensions at once in a way that the dimensions integrate well but are still distinguishable. The downside of sonification is that learning to use it takes experience and practice. SOMson combines the best of two worlds: Sonification provides the information that is otherwise hidden in SOMs. The SOM on the other hand helps users learn the sonification (given that you know enough about SOMs).