Sonifying Satellite Imagery: Exploring the Environmental Context of Architecture Faculties in Italy

This study presents a sonification method employing parameter mapping to analyze the environments surrounding 33 Italian architecture schools. Satellite imagery from Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 was used to evaluate NDVI (vegetation), NDWI (water bodies), BU (built-up areas), and LST (land surface temperatures) within a bounding box of 20 km sides around each school.These indices were processed to create synthetic ‘galaxy-like’ images and translated into sound, where specific data streams were mapped to distinct musical instruments and timbres.The process incorporates differentiated BPMs to reflect territorial variations and uses the Lydian scale to harmonize note production.The sonification output is integrated into videos that dynamically combine acoustic spectra with satellite imagery.These visual-audio representations highlight the spatial heterogeneity of the landscapes while making complex data accessible to non-specialists and architecture students. This approach transforms static satellite data into dynamic temporal features, illustrating progressive territorial differences of contexts surrounding architecture schools making them comparable at a more intuitive level