Auditory illustration

I was listening to the latest episode of the wonderful Radiolab this morning on the drive into work, and there was an article describing the origins of the HIV virus, both in humans, and then back beyond to it’s origin in species of chimps which it is believed occured in Cameroon at some point before the early 1900s.

The piece itself was a great listen, but (about 38 minutes in if you want to skip to it) there was an amazing piece of audio soundscape (a “visualisation” in sound, if you will) describing how the particular strain of virus might have originally developed in chimps from virii found in two other types of monkey. It is a really clever use of audio, and well worth checking out. It also brings home how we are so very focused on the visual senses to do this kind of thing in day-to-day life (slides, diagrams and so on) but rarely have the tools available to enable us to do it in other senses…