GEAR

This post shares some of the gear that you can check out from the new school and some gear that I have that you can reserve. New School Gear There are a variety of sound-related items you can checkout at the New School.Visit the EQC site for details about their equipment. You’ll notice that there’s…Continue Reading GEAR

Piezos, Machines and the sound of stuff

This is a huge batch of Instagram posts (videos mainly) that feature amplified objects or mechanical solutions to sound -making View this post on Instagram A post shared by Powland (@powland.pt) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Zimoun (@studiozimoun) View this post on Instagram A post shared by @robotmammal View this post…Continue Reading Piezos, Machines and the sound of stuff

Psychoacoustics – An introduction

Ultimately, all sound that we perceive is psychoacoustic. As soon as sound passes through the ears, it stops being a physical phenomena and becomes a matter of perception. What we hear is almost by rule different from what is actually sounding, due to the peculiarities and limitations of our hearing. And what we hear can largely differ from what we think we are listening to, due to the many tricks that perception plays on our awareness….Continue Reading Psychoacoustics – An introduction

Camille Norment – Plexus

A video of the artist Camille Norment in conversation with musician, author, and curator David Toop about Camille Norment: Plexus, her exhibition at Dia Chelsea in 2022. Toop has long engaged with Norment’s practice. He contributed to the Camille Norment: Rapture (2015), and is a contributor to Plexus’s accompanying publication from Dia….Continue Reading Camille Norment – Plexus

What is a Sound bath?

According to the sound bath practitioner Sara Auster: A Sound Bath is a deeply-immersive, full-body listening experience that intentionally uses sound to invite gentle yet powerful therapeutic and restorative processes to nurture your mind and body. Sound Bath by Guadalupe Maravilla Here is a LINK to Maravilla’s project at Creative Time. Sound File of Maravilla’s…Continue Reading What is a Sound bath?

What Should a Nine-Thousand-Pound Electric Vehicle Sound Like?

Here’s an article in the New Yorker about the challenges of vehicles that hardly make any sounds.  “E.V.s are virtually silent, so acoustic designers are creating alerts for them. A symphony—or a cacophony—of car noise could be coming to city streets.” LINK New Yorker ↗…Continue Reading What Should a Nine-Thousand-Pound Electric Vehicle Sound Like?

Scientific innovations harness noise and acoustics for healing

Today, the role of sound in science extends beyond the range of audible frequencies: Ultrasonic and other silent acoustic waves have made their way into researchers’ repertoire, helping them push the boundaries of conventional medicine and research.
In examples from four Stanford labs, scientists are investigating the full spectrum, harnessing the nuances of noise and the power of acoustics to generate inventive, if not unexpected, technologies that show just how potent the combination of sound and science can be….Continue Reading Scientific innovations harness noise and acoustics for healing

Planeta Abuelx – Guadalupe Maravilla

Through Totemic Sculptures and Sound Art, Guadalupe Maravilla Explores the Therapeutic Power of Indigenous Ritual. Maravilla works across painting, sculpture, and sound-based performances all veiled with autobiography, whether informed by the Mayan architecture and stone totems that surrounded him as a child or his cancer diagnosis as a young adult. His pieces are predominately therapeutic and rooted in Indigenous ritual and mythology,…Continue Reading Planeta Abuelx – Guadalupe Maravilla

Top Secret by Rimini Protokoll

A locative audio work that explores the idea of surveillance within the context of the museum.
What do states keep secret? What secrets do other states attempt to uncover with their intelligence services? How is this information passed on, compiled, evaluated? When can state secrets become valuable currency? The value of every piece of information changes at the very moment it is shared with someone else: when does it become worthless?…Continue Reading Top Secret by Rimini Protokoll

Island Songs – Nyey

A radio work and immersive sound installation that explores the emergence in 1963 of the earths newest land mass –  a small island off the coast of iceland.

In 1963, off the coast of Iceland, an island has emerged after an underwater volcanic eruption, a rare event that occurs on average twice a century. It was given the name Surtsey, after Surtr, the fire giant of Norse mythology….Continue Reading Island Songs – Nyey

Elevator Pitch – Christine Sun Kim

Elevator Pitch is inspired by Kim’s childhood memories of crowding elevators with her Deaf friends, and shouting so loudly that they could feel the vibrations of each others’ voices. Meanwhile, elevators are often known to hearing people as sites of “awkward silence,” thus the concept of this installation challenges when and where various people have a voice. Born Deaf herself, Kim approaches Elevator Pitch by investigating how Deaf communities of New Orleans experience a city so deeply defined by music, and by highlighting how Deaf people are vital to this culture of sound….Continue Reading Elevator Pitch – Christine Sun Kim

Samson Young – Nocturne

a sound performance, conceived around and in reaction to a series of night bombing videos that the artist has collected on youtube, which are edited into a video that is stripped away of all sounds. These footages originate from a variety of sources including news reports, archival footages, and video captured and uploaded by amateurs. Throughout the performance, the performer watches this silent video on a monitor, and attempts to accurately restore its soundtrack of explosions, gunshots and debris, by playing a live foley set using a series of regular household objects. …Continue Reading Samson Young – Nocturne

Steel-Fonics – Ricardo Iammuri Robinson

The STEEL-FONICS attempts to shed light on a hidden contribution to Pittsburgh’s industrial past. In this culture, African Americans are typecast dancing, singing or marching against a backdrop of poverty, crime or packed arenas in order to be recognized.  This installation employs the power of stereotype and reimagines a creative collective of black industrial steel workers called The STEEL-FONICS.  The African American contribution to the enormous expansion of the American steel industry has been all but invisible.  This exhibition is a new kind of labor strike against historical omission….Continue Reading Steel-Fonics – Ricardo Iammuri Robinson

Quarantine / Isolation Concerts

The COVID lockdown did not shut down the desire to share sound with the world. While the pandemic closed concert and exhibition venues worldwide, undoubtedly damaging many artists financial prospects, it has not kept them from sharing their work. Numerous venues have created platforms for sharing adventurous sound – some of them free, some of them requiring a donation to help the performing artists….Continue Reading Quarantine / Isolation Concerts

Pandemic Projects – Quarantine related sound work

The global Covid pandemic has changed our listening, this is particularly true for those of us living in urban and industrialized areas. What do we hear when the trucks are not rumbling down our street? What do we pay attention to when people are tucked away in their homes and not out on the street in their vehicles? This might mean a heightened awareness of nature, particularly birds, it also might highlight the man-made sounds that were once so prevalent that we simply ignored them — when the trucks are less frequent suddenly we pay attention to them….Continue Reading Pandemic Projects – Quarantine related sound work

Raven Chacon

Originally from the Navajo Nation, Raven Chacon is a composer of chamber music, a performer of experimental noise music, and an installation artist. He performs regularly as a solo artist as well as with numerous ensembles in the Southwest and beyond. He is also a member of the Indigenous art collective Postcommodity, with who he recently premiered the two-mile-long land art/border intervention, Repellent Fence….Continue Reading Raven Chacon

Kevin Beasley – A view of a landscape

Kevin Beasley engages with the legacy of the American South through an installation that centers on a cotton gin motor from Maplesville, Alabama. In operation from 1940 to 1973, the motor powered the gins that separated cotton seeds from fiber. Here, the New York-based artist uses it to generate sound as if it were a musical instrument, creating space for visual and aural contemplation. …Continue Reading Kevin Beasley – A view of a landscape

Trevor Wishart – Red Bird: A Political Prisoner’s Dream

 “Red Bird” (1977) is a 45-minute piece of musique concrète in four movements. Made for the most part of bird sounds, body sounds, and selected mouthed words, it weaves an intricate network of symbols. Completed in 1977, it was made with traditional electro-acoustic techniques. …Continue Reading Trevor Wishart – Red Bird: A Political Prisoner’s Dream

Soundwalk Collective – Oscillation

Soundwalk Collective was given unprecedented access to the halls of the emblematic nightclub Berghain / Panoramabar in Berlin.

A re-incarnation of the legendary Ostgut club, the focal point of Berlin’s techno subculture, the Berghain building is a former East German power plant that is remarkable for its enormous dimensions, 18m high dance floor and minimalist constitution of steel, glass and concrete….Continue Reading Soundwalk Collective – Oscillation