AEROSONIC: A New Atmospheric Controller Expands Hugo Paquete’s CEEC‑FCT Research at INET‑md
Hugo Paquete, CEEC‑FCT Research Fellow and Principal Investigator of the project AI as Catalyst: Transformative Impacts on Digital Performance, Computational Music, and Cultural Creativity (FCT 2024.09158.CEECIND), has unveiled a new experimental device that deepens the intersection between sound, computation, and environmental data: the AEROSONIC controller.
Developed within the research ecosystem connecting DeCA-UA, INET‑md, Absonus Lab, Planetário do Porto – CCV, and OTTOsonics, AEROSONIC is a custom-built interface that transforms atmospheric fluctuations — CO₂ levels, humidity, pressure, and micro‑environmental variations — into dynamic sonic parameters. Through sensors, multimodal pipelines, and generative algorithms, the controller enables the environment itself to act as a co‑creator in performance and installation contexts.
AEROSONIC aligns with the conceptual framework of AI as Catalyst, a CEEC‑FCT project running from 2026 to 2029, which repositions Artificial Intelligence as a creative co-agent rather than a passive tool. The project explores modes of emergent creation such as Algorithmic Listening, Meta‑Production, and the AI‑Chimera, a hybrid entity that challenges authorship, intentionality, and control.
Within this broader research landscape, AEROSONIC joins other experimental tools such as the Cyberattack Sonifier, expanding the field of advanced sonification and exposing hidden infrastructures — ecological, technological, and atmospheric — through sound. These tools introduce new compositional materials (real-time data streams), distributed authorship, and unpredictability as a method.
Paquete describes the device as part of a larger effort to reveal the technological unconscious: the invisible systems and flows that shape contemporary experience. AEROSONIC will be integrated into performances, installations, and experimental studies throughout the project’s execution period, contributing to new forms of computational music, digital performance, and audiovisual ecologies.
With this development, Hugo Paquete reinforces the role of INET‑md and the University of Aveiro as key contributors to international research in sonification, creative AI, and post-digital performance — merging scientific rigor, artistic experimentation, and cultural speculation.
AI as Catalyst: Transformative Impacts on Digital Performance, Computational Music, and Cultural Creativity – INET-md
