This project uses speech synthesis and sound cues to sonify data generated by the automated book retrieval system at the British Library in London. It was used to replay data delivered as a large tab-separated file for an event at the library.

Internally it was designed for realtime input, preprocessed in PHP, and visualised in Processing using inter-process messaging via Redis. Some effort went into making time "elastic", to prevent overlapping speech, as books are usually issued and returned in batches. The design was stripped bare to retain a mechanical feel.

• realtime and file replay input
• multithreaded Processing/Java
• simple terminal-like visualisation
• sound cue playback (afplay)
• OSX speech synthesis (say)
• data preprocessing via PHP
• inter-process communication via Redis
• designed at Clay Interactive

Presented at the unveiling of the library's Living Knowledge digital strategy, on two sizeable projector and LCD displays. See a clip here