Art installation recreates how our environment might sound to people with Alzheimer’s Disease

The global engineering firm Arup and BLOXAS Architects collaborated on a soundscape installation to demonstrate what our everyday environment might sound like to a dementia sufferer….Continue Reading Art installation recreates how our environment might sound to people with Alzheimer’s Disease

The Beeping, Gargling History of Gaming’s Most Iconic Sounds

THE BOUNCY BEEPS of Pac-Man. The percussive build-up in Legend of Zelda. The effusive gibberish of The Sims. The sounds in videogames tell us to speed up, start over, and of course, to keep playing. But how does one set of beeps so effectively tell you you’ve gained power, while another indicates your character has died? And how, exactly, does someone create the sound of the Dark Knight punching the Joker in the face? The answer: Genius sound design….Continue Reading The Beeping, Gargling History of Gaming’s Most Iconic Sounds

Ultra-Red Five – Five Protocols for Listening

In honor of May Day, Ultra-red release the PDF of our latest workbook for militant sound inquiry, “Five Protocols for Organized Listening” (5.8MB). The workbook compiles protocols for collective listening developed by multiple teams of investigators from 2009 to 2011 in cities across North America and Europe. “Five Protocols” is also accompanied by links to related sound objects on the School of Echoes Soundcloud page. Please feel free to download and distribute. We only ask that you send us feedback on your experiments with organized listening and militant sound investigation….Continue Reading Ultra-Red Five – Five Protocols for Listening

Anna Mlasowsky – Glass and Sound

Anna Mlasowsky is a German-born glass artist who works across many media including video, installation, and performance. As the description below for the project “Resonance” attests, her work with sound emerges from her own challenges with hearing perception. …Continue Reading Anna Mlasowsky – Glass and Sound

Annea Lockwood – Sound Map of the Hudson River

An aural journey from the source of the river, in the high peak area of the Adirondacks, downstream to the Lower Bay and the Atlantic Ocean; Lockwood traces the course of the Hudson through on-site recordings of its flow at 15 separate locations. Annea Lockwood has recorded rivers in many countries to explore the special state of mind and body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens intently to the complex mesh of rhythms and pitches. The listener will find that each stretch of the Hudson has its own sonic texture, formed by the terrain, varying according to the weather, the season and downstream, the human environment whose sounds are intimately woven into the river’s sounds. 71 minutes 33 seconds…Continue Reading Annea Lockwood – Sound Map of the Hudson River

Feeling Music – artists exploring the physical impact of sound

Humans come into contact with sound all the time. Our first tactile listening experience is in the womb, feeling our mother’s heartbeat. This kind of physicality continues into our everyday: We feel our own hearts beating, we hear the sound of our footsteps. By its very nature, direct contact with music through its natural vibrations introduces us to an experience we’ve been missing, one that is crucial to our proper understanding of it….Continue Reading Feeling Music – artists exploring the physical impact of sound

Anke Eckardt’s GROUND

The ground is in motion. GROUND acts as a LOOKING GLASS, as an AMPLIFIER for what we normally can´t perceive – tectonic plates are continously shifting … the permutations of landscapes constitute an infinite process of becoming… geosphere is a complex system that interferes with biosphere but also with anthroposphere, that part of the environment, that is made and modified by humans.

GROUND is moved by immense mechanical forces. The motion can be felt, heard and seen. Rough sounds are mechanically produced through friction between the concrete elements … visitors might experience the loss of their visual reference points, it becomes unclear what is still and what isn´t… there is an afterglow of a moving ground in the visitors physical memory after leaving the installation. …Continue Reading Anke Eckardt’s GROUND

Audible Spaces: Exhibition explores physicality of sound

Audible Spaces presents three sound installations that encourage participants to explore the subtleties of listening. Tristan Perich, Zarouhie Abdalian, and [The User] have each created immersive environments using seemingly uniform sounds that dissolve into tonal, tactile, and temporal variations as participants engage with them….Continue Reading Audible Spaces: Exhibition explores physicality of sound

Marco Fusinato – Constellations

A 40-metre wall with a 1.5-metre gap at each end is built to bisect the gallery. Hidden
inside the wall are a series of microphones connected to a PA system. The entrance side of the gallery is empty. On the other side of the gallery, coming out from the bisecting wall a baseball bat is attached to a steel chain. The audience is invited to strike the wall. Their action is amplified at 120db….Continue Reading Marco Fusinato – Constellations

On Being – Gordon Hempton – Silence and the Presence of Everything

Podcast episode featuring acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton. Silence is an endangered species, says Gordon Hempton. He defines real quiet as presence — not an absence of sound, but an absence of noise. The Earth, as he knows it, is a “solar-powered jukebox.” Quiet is a “think tank of the soul.” We take in the world through his ears….Continue Reading On Being – Gordon Hempton – Silence and the Presence of Everything

Bohyun Yoon – Glass, Sound, Interaction

Bohyun Yoon is from Korea and currently living in Richmond Virginia. He is an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. Inspired by the idea of sound from clear glass, he choreographed avenues for this glass to become a sonic instrument. His residency at Harvestworks included the use different materials like multi channel audio, contact microphones and amplifiers. His recent projects include Glass Helmet (2004), Glass Tube (2012), and Glassorganism (2013). …Continue Reading Bohyun Yoon – Glass, Sound, Interaction

John Oswald – Plunderphonic mashups

John Oswald’s piece de resistance. Twenty minutes of some of the most insane editing, cross-fading, beat matching, cultural name dropping and sampling. No other work even comes close to the intensity of Plexure. John Oswald proves he is a virtuoso of Pro Tools, over a thousand different artists edited, spliced and mixed together….Continue Reading John Oswald – Plunderphonic mashups

Christoph Cox – Dematerialization

Very nice meditative lecture on the idea of the ephemeral in art by Christoph Cox. There is a strong sonic emphasis here, but also on other forces like wind, fire, electromagnetic energy, etc. He begins with an intro but the actual performative lecture begins around 8:11. The names of all of the artists and writers that he uses in the lecture are included at the end….Continue Reading Christoph Cox – Dematerialization

Doug Aitken – Sonic Pavillion

The idea behind Sonic Pavilion (2009) was this: boring of a 200-meter-deep well in the ground in order to install a set of microphones to capture the sound of the earth. By way of a sophisticated system of equalization and amplification, this sound is played in real time inside the empty circular pavilion, which was designed to create equivalence between the audio experience and one’s relation to the surrounding space….Continue Reading Doug Aitken – Sonic Pavillion

2017 The World is Sound at the Rubin Museum

JUNE 16, 2017 – JANUARY 8, 2018
Featuring work by more than 20 artists, The World Is Sound juxtaposes new site-specific commissions and works by prominent contemporary sound artists with historical objects from the museum’s collection of Tibetan Buddhist art to encourage reflection on how we listen and to challenge entrenched ways of thinking….Continue Reading 2017 The World is Sound at the Rubin Museum

Janet Cardiff – Her Long Black Hair

Her Long Black Hair is a 35-minute journey that begins at Central Park South and transforms an everyday stroll in the park into an absorbing psychological and physical experience. Cardiff takes each listener on a winding journey through Central Park’s 19th-century pathways, retracing the footsteps of an enigmatic dark-haired woman….Continue Reading Janet Cardiff – Her Long Black Hair

An Eyeful of Sound (about synaethesia)

‘I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a goat eating carrots? It’s almost too much, it’s so lovely’ An Eyeful of Sound is a collaboration between animator Samantha Moore, Dr Jamie Ward and a group of people with audio-visual synaesthesia. The people with synaesthesia who are taking part in this project have a strong visual…Continue Reading An Eyeful of Sound (about synaethesia)

The Sounds that aren’t there

http://designingsound.org/2017/02/sunday-sound-thought-58-the-sounds-that-arent-there/ What is the sound of one hand clapping? I remember the day I figured out this riddle as a wee youth, only to see it replicated on an episode of the Simpsons shortly thereafter. Bart and I both thought alike: a clap does not need two hands to make sound, one hand can clap…Continue Reading The Sounds that aren’t there

Vertical Studies – Espen Sommer Eide and Signe Lidén

“For Vertical Studies, they (Espen Sommer Eide and Signe Lidén) reimagined the beautiful water tower in the Dutch settlement Sint Jansklooster into a vertical field-lab, where Eide and Lidén are introducing their ongoing investigations into connections between sound, history, wind and weather. For this, they use several specially constructed instruments, created for the recording and…Continue Reading Vertical Studies – Espen Sommer Eide and Signe Lidén

Joe Frank

from NPR Two pieces by legendary producer Joe Frank: Rent-a-Family and Fragments for Mixed Voices. These originally aired on his show Work In Progress, which aired on KCRW from 1986 to 1992. You can learn more about Joe Frank on his website, joefrank.com Two pieces by legendary producer Joe Frank: Rent-a-Family and Fragments for Mixed…Continue Reading Joe Frank