Orchestrating change: An artistic representation of software evolution

Abstract

Several visualization tools have been proposed to highlight interesting software evolution phenomena. These tools help practitioners to navigate large and complex software systems, and also support researchers in studying software evolution. However, little work has explored the use of sound in the context of software evolution. In this paper, we propose the use of musical interpretation to support exploration of software evolution data. In order to generate music inspired by software evolution, we use parameter-based sonification, i.e., a mapping of dataset characteristics to sound. Our approach yields musical scores that can be played synthetically or by a symphony orchestra. In designing our approach, we address three challenges: (1) the generated music must be aesthetically pleasing, (2) the generated music must accurately reflect the changes that have occurred, and (3) a small group of musicians must be able to impersonate a large development team. We assess the feasibility of our approach using historical data from Eclipse, which yields promising results.