Dr Helen Czerski investigates the extraordinary science behind the everyday sounds we hear and those that we normally cannot hear….Continue Reading Sound Waves – The Symphony of Physics
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
Spacewalk Audio immersive audio books
Benjamin Gale is a freelance Sound Editor, Field Recordist and Sound Designer from Bristol, UK currently living in the south of France. He has been developing a series of immersive audio books for children using binaural recordings and SFX to accompany voice acting and illustrations….Continue Reading Spacewalk Audio immersive audio books
Making music from noise – Soundhunters | DW Documentary
Sound artists have experimented with everyday noises for centuries. Now this music is making a comeback….Continue Reading Making music from noise – Soundhunters | DW Documentary
Jennie C. Jones – Sonic and visual abstraction
In her visual and audio work, Jennie C. Jones revels in the affective power of silence and lack, staging encounters with forgotten histories and extra-visual phenomena through the bodies of her viewers….Continue Reading Jennie C. Jones – Sonic and visual abstraction
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
Hong-Kai Wang
Hong-Kai Wang is an artist who works mainly with sound. Her practice includes processes involved in the production and performance of sound as well as their political and social contexts, and, not least, the organisation of listening. In several of her pieces she has employed collective processes, discussions and workshops….Continue Reading Hong-Kai Wang
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
Ragnar Kjartansson – Sorrow
The Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson uses music as a key focus of many of his performance and video works. In the work entitled A Lot of Sorrow (2014) for example, he staged a performance at MOMA PS1 in which he invited the American band The National to play their well-known song Sorrow repeatedly for six hours….Continue Reading Ragnar Kjartansson – Sorrow
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
Maryanne Amacher: Sound, Body, Space
Maryanne Amacher was an experimental sound artist who composed music and created site-specific sound installations. Early in her career she played music on multiple tape machines and mixed them live. She was interested in the experience and perception of sounds in particular spaces….Continue Reading Maryanne Amacher: Sound, Body, Space
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
Rolf Julius – Work That Is Audible to the Naked Eye
In the often derelict but delicate works of Rolf Julius, subtle noise vibrations become palpable, physical things….Continue Reading Rolf Julius – Work That Is Audible to the Naked Eye
Heather Hart – a Half-Buried Roof Shelters Oral Histories
Heather Hart’s “The Oracle of Lacuna” creates spaces for communal exploration of little-known regional oral histories….Continue Reading Heather Hart – a Half-Buried Roof Shelters Oral Histories
Thread about Mechanical Sound Sculpture
Nice collection of projects that Incorporate sound and mechanical elements.Use the slider on the right side to scroll through years worth of posts. https://llllllll.co/t/mechanical-sound-sculpture/803/43…Continue Reading Thread about Mechanical Sound Sculpture
Chris Watson – in Saint Cuthbert’s Time
To celebrate the exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels on Palace Green, Durham from July to September 2013, award–winning wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson has researched the sonic environment of the Holy Island as it might have been experienced by St Cuthbert in 700 A.D….Continue Reading Chris Watson – in Saint Cuthbert’s Time
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
John Cage – Williams Mix
Long before sampling, hip hop, needle drops and mashups John Cage had created his incredibly dense magnetic tape cut-up masterwork Williams Mix (1952). …Continue Reading John Cage – Williams Mix
The History of Sound Art (recording with timeline)
An engaging sound collage presenting an unique historical documentation of Sound Art from the early 20th century to present day. The composition weaves through different sound works throughout the century with narratives and ideas from some of the prominent artists in the field. …Continue Reading The History of Sound Art (recording with timeline)
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 ones 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
Zimoun
Using simple and functional components, Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound. Exploring mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects….Continue Reading Zimoun
P16.D4 – Okay She Said With Her Customary Total Lack Of Consideration
Here’s an example of a more cut and paste style of editing by the experimental outfit P16.D4…Continue Reading P16.D4 – Okay She Said With Her Customary Total Lack Of Consideration
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)
Foley with Disney master on Letterman show
80’s TV Broadcast of the David Letterman Show where “Jimmy” demonstrates many of the objects, some of which he built himself, used to create the sound effects of many of Disney’s early animation classics….Continue Reading Foley with Disney master on Letterman show
Sound editing vs. Sound mixing (Walter Murch)
Walter Murch is one of the most accomplished sound designers and editors in the business and a prolific thinker and theorist when it comes to the relationship between sound and image. Here is a nice description and example of the roles of sound editors and mixers in film….Continue Reading Sound editing vs. Sound mixing (Walter Murch)
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
Hertz, Hearing, Frequency and Pitch
Our human mechanisms for hearing, are, like our tools for seeing, very subjective. It is easy to imagine that everyone sees like we do, hears like we do. At the very least, hearing AND seeing change over time, they are also extremely sensitive and easily damaged which leads to changes in the way we perceive…Continue Reading Hertz, Hearing, Frequency and Pitch
Audition – What is Sampling Rate and Bit Depth?
Resolution in an audio file is similar in some ways to thinking about resolution in a digital image. In Photoshop if you have more pixels in an image it is rendered more accurately: In audio, the waveforms and the fidelity of the sound are also impacted by the amount of digital information in the file. There…Continue Reading Audition – What is Sampling Rate and Bit Depth?
Foley – f701 Sennheiser headphone commercial
Really nice commercial that shows how the sound effects for this animation were created. …Continue Reading Foley – f701 Sennheiser headphone commercial
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