Apologies! The demo is tuned to be way more intrusive than a real-world data stream would be. Our theory is that if we have people's attention for 15 seconds, we should show them the full range of sound intrusiveness. Hope it wasn't too startling.
Great behind-the-scene thinking. Alarming, sound for issue still made a nice connection in the brain. We have an issue, its software, but its real. 'Houston, we had a problem' feeling. Funny. Should be less alarming 'in production' for sure.
Fantastic project. Themes of sound pollution, ambient sounds, silence, hearing, listening (inside your head included) are much overlooked (!) stuff. And this modality is a very powerful one (as all the others).
Reminded me of http://onesquareinch.org/ and myriads of other projects, people attentive to sounds, recording them, sharing them. Universe in itself.
Apologies for emotional tone, just some quick thoughts.
A minor bug report though; if you toggle playback on and off quickly you can end up with double/triple notifications for events — http://i.imgur.com/mu6Jr2o.png