EcoTune: Transforming Carbon Footprint into Music To Evoke Emotional Resonance

Aswathy Sudhakaran

This project is aimed to resolve people’s emotional disconnect towards the concept of climate crisis. Based on the impact of music on emotions, and how it can be used to tackle climate crisis, a mobile application was ideated and designed to help people track and calculate their carbon footprint. The user’s monthly carbon footprint is generated as a 30 second musical compositions using data sonification technology. Specific instruments are assigned to each four metrics of the contributors of carbon footprint, ie., Household energy consumption, Transportation, Food consumption and Shopping/Activities. The settings of the instruments can be adjusted. The frequency of instrument track tempo increases as the user’s carbon footprint increases in value, thus making the music more disturbing to hear as the carbon footprint increases. This produces a sense of urgency and danger within the user, thus attempting to create emotional awareness about climate crisis and their contribution to it. The app also offers the user ways in which they can reduce or offset their carbon emission and also to track their progress in it.