Interactive Sonification of 3D Swarmalators

This paper explores the sound and music possibilities obtained from the sonification of a swarm of coupled oscillators moving in a virtual space called "Swarmalators". We describe the design and implementation of a Human-Swarm Interactive Music System based on the 3D version of the Swarmalator model, which is used for signal analysis of the overall sound output in terms of scalability; that is, the effect of varying the number of agents in a swarm system. We also study the behaviour of autonomous swarmalators in the presence of one user-controlled agent, which we call the interactive swarmalator. We observed that sound frequencies barely deviate from their initial values when there are few agents, but they diverge significantly in a highly dense swarm. Additionally, with the inclusion of the interactive swarmalator, the group's behaviour tends to adjust towards it. We use these results to explore the potential of swarmalators in music performance under various scenarios. Finally, we discuss opportunities and challenges to use the Swarmalator model for sound and music systems.