Listen to Wikipedia

Do not just look at these GIFs. You’ve got to hear this to get the full experience: Listen to Wikipedia

The way it works is to watch the edits being made on Wikipedia and playing notes in response, as it happens live. Stick it up in the background and listen to the data.

I really like this kind of thing, for a multitude of reasons: it uses an unusual input as an effective way to create structure; it gives me a completely new way to understand the data; and it creates listenable music that’s totally generated but still has a very human connection.

Listen to Wikipedia was built by Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud Hashemi, and you can peruse the source code on Github.

http://listen.hatnote.com/