Did you know that the swish of a golf club is a musical learning experience? A walk in the Necklace Park could be music to someone's ears.

Professor decodes life note by note

"Much as people thump a watermelon to test its ripeness, Stanford composer Jonathan Berger wants them to use sound in novel ways to figure out the world. So he put sound to the way professional golfers swing their clubs. The result: It's now possible for pros and duffers alike to improve their game by listening to their own strokes. In another experiment, runners, rowers and other athletes can "hear" how their bodies are performing -- from heart rates to stress levels -- while practicing. And Berger's sounds for digital images of microscopic cells can help doctors distinguish cancerous ones by the "music" they make."

"People take a musical approach in the supermarket by tapping on melons. They do the same with automobile diagnostics by listening to pings, rattles and knocks. The stethoscope, Berger said, is an "anachronistic" 19th century invention in the digital age that doctors still rely on." [via SFGate]

We are constantly mapping our experiences: the way we listen, and the tools we use to make sounds (knuckles, hammers, stethoscopes) tell us about ourselves and our world. How's my swing? Is it hitting the right notes?
A walk in the park has a rhythm and a score. Every step you take, every move you make. Every tree you see, all your memories, add detail to a musical composition. Hours of fun are to be had: recording bits of it, transcribing the sounds to paper or other forms of notation, finding instruments to recreate it as music, performing bits and pieces of it.

Technorati : Durham, Jonathan Berger, SFgate, mapping the necklace, sonifying