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
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
This post is adapted from a NY Times article by Michael Kimmelman that uses text and media to share the different ways that we experience sound in the built environment….Continue Reading Dear Architects: Sound Matters
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
“Toward the Circle” is silent short film created by Zackery Belangerduring a research residency at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY. It presents a sequence of enclosures, each with a simulated burst of sound energy, that hints at an important relationship between sound and architecture….Continue Reading Visualizations of Reverberation – Toward the Circle
Unsilent Night is an original composition by Phil Kline, written specifically to be heard outdoors in the month of December. It takes the form of a street promenade in which the audience becomes the performer. Each participant gets one of four tracks of music in the form of a cassette, CD, or Mp3. Together all…Continue Reading Unsilent Night – Phil Kline
Circumstance was established in 2010 as a framework for the collaborations of Duncan Speakman, Sarah Anderson and Emilie Grenier. From 2010 – 2016 we made intimate in-ear stories, subtlemobs, pedestrian symphonies, science fiction theatre , music, and books that go beyond the page.” A Folded Path The performance consists of 30 individual GPS controlled speakers. Each…Continue Reading Circumstance – distributed sounds and subtlemobs
Close your eyes and think about the last time you were at a gig. How did it sound? The band is rocking out on stage, your friends are talking in a group over to your left, a busboy says “excuse me” as he slides past your right shoulder, and the din of the crowd is…Continue Reading Sound All Around: The Continuing Evolution of 3D Audio
As part of a two-year collaboration through Artists Experiment, artist Nina Katchadourian presents Dust Gathering, an audio tour offering visitors an unexpected perspective on The Museum of Modern Art by examining its dust. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3610…Continue Reading Nina Katchadourian – Dust Gathering
Through a combination of passive and active acoustics, architects and acousticians can control the sounds of spaces to fit any kind of need. With sound-proofing and selective-amplification, we can add reverb or take it away. We can make churches sound like clubs and clubs sound like opera houses. This degree of acoustic control, however, is…Continue Reading 99% Invisible – 236- Reverb
Here is an article by Michael Kimmelman about our relationship to sound in the spaces we inhabit.http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/29/arts/design/sound-architecture.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/29/arts/design/sound-architecture.html…Continue Reading Dear Architects: Sound Matters
Here is our vocal interpretation of 5h avenue and 13th street from 10-19-16 with some radical de-noising and a side helping of reverb….Continue Reading The song of 13th and 5th
The microphone alters listening. The mere comparison between how our ears listen and how the microphone picks up sounds in the environment, brings alerted awareness to the soundscape. Not only the recordist’s listening is intensified, often also that of people witnessing the microphone’s presence. It creates an occasion and new significance of a place. Sometimes…Continue Reading Hildegard Westerkamp – Linking Soundscape Composition and Acoustic Ecology
Voices of the Rainforest is a recorded soundscape of a day in the life of the Kaluli people of Bosavi, Papua New Guinea. As the day progresses, one hears birds, water, insects and other ambient voices of the rainforest interspersed with Kaluli songs and instrumental sounds of work, leisure and ritual. The album was recorded…Continue Reading Steven Feld – Voices of the Rainforest (sound anthropology)
Using archive and field recordings, Chris Watson recreates a passenger ride across the country on a line that no longer exists. It’s been more than a decade since the last service operated by the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM). Watson spent a month on board one of the trains as a sound recordist working with a film crew documenting a BBC TV series on Great Railways Journeys. The atmospheres captured with sensitive microphones in the country reveal the environment at its most open, intimate and natural setting. An additional post-production of looping train samples, turns this mere field recording into a mesmerizing trip. This is more than just a sound portrait lifted off a television show. Watson composes a cinematic narrative bringing the listener (and the observer) into a setting unattainable alone. …Continue Reading Chris Watson – El Tren Fantasma – El Divisadero
Tremulously I stand in the subways, absorbed into the terrible reverberations of exploding energy. Fearful, I touch the forest of steel girders loud with the thunder of oncoming trains that shoot past me like projectiles. InertI stand, riveted in my place. My limbs, paralyzed, refuse to obey the will insistent on haste to board the train while the lightning steed…Continue Reading Helen Keller – From My Later Life
A wonderful example of found rhythm Anne Tardos – Gatherings (1982). 8137A – Gatherings by Anne Tardos…Continue Reading Ana Tardos – Gatherings
“This song emulates a ride on the New York City Subway’s 2 Train through three boroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx. At any given time, the quantity and dynamics of the song’s instruments correspond to the median household income of that area. Read more about the composition and process of creating this song here: datadrivendj.com/tracks/subway…Continue Reading Two Trains – Sonification of Income Inequality on the NYC Subway
Because of poor acoustics, students in classrooms miss 50 percent of what their teachers say and patients in hospitals have trouble sleeping because they continually feel stressed. Julian Treasure sounds a call to action for designers to pay attention to the “invisible architecture” of sound. This video is a good accompaniment to many other posts…Continue Reading Julian Treasure: Why architects need to use their ears
Technician examines one of the high frequency horns in the Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility at NASA Glenn Research Center’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio. How loud is 166 decibels? It’s about as loud as the thrust of 20 jet engines or a rock concert with 36,000 speakers. It’s also the level of noise some…Continue Reading NASA – Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility
From Stephanie Lawless’ website Cricket, Tree, Crow is a quadraphonic sound piece in three movements that investigates the voices of the cricket, the crow, and the maple tree. All sonic material in the work is based on vocal mimicry of the sounds produced by members of the species themselves. The piece is driven by…Continue Reading Stephanie Loveless – Cricket, Tree, Crow
On a typical day, Jennifer Bottom makes her way around London with her guide dog in tow. Sometimes, “I just wander about, ask people and get directions,” she says. “But if you’re not comfortable with that or you don’t have a lot of free time, it can be quite frustrating and scary.” Enter Cities Unlocked, a…Continue Reading Cities Unlocked, Sound-Based System for Guiding Blind People Through Cities
Check out the list of types of listening. “Learning how to listen is particularly relevant to understanding the lives of other animals. Most wild birds and mammals instinctually avoid human presence, so depending on your eyes alone may be a less effective method of contact than relying on your ears. When the robins nest on…Continue Reading Acoustic Ecology and Ethical Listening
The history of field recording is central to the development of electronic music, with artists – from Eno through Scanner to Burial – drawing on its theories and strategies to create distinctive soundworlds. Lawrence English – boss of the long-running Room40 imprint, and the man behind this year’s exceptional Wilderness of Mirrors – presents this beginner’s guide to…Continue Reading A Beginner’s Guide To…Field Recording
Writer Frank Swain has been able to hear Wi-Fi signals for the past week, and no, it’s not “the result of a sudden mutation or years of transcendental meditation,” he says. Swain wears a special hearing device that gives him the ability to translate wireless frequencies into sounds. Alongside sound artist Daniel Jones, Swain created…Continue Reading This Man Can Hear Wi-Fi
Brian Eno is known as many things: a recording artist, a music producer, and a visual artist to name a few. He is acknowledged for coining the term “ambient music” which harkens back in many ways to Erik Satie’s idea of music that would complement situations in everyday life that he called Furniture Music. And…Continue Reading Furniture Music – Brian Eno
from Everyday Listening: Korinsky is a Berlin-based art collective using technologies and the knowledge about human hearing processes to create sound installations that play with the contrast of visual and acoustic impressions. The thrilling and quite intimidating architecture of the cathedral church is the central space of the soundinstallation „Volum“ at the Berliner Dom. The…Continue Reading Korinsky – Volum in the Berliner Dom
Polish Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2013 The work at the Polish Pavilion is a sculptural instrument that reproduces, at regular intervals, a music piece written for bronze bells, wide-range loudspeakers, and other resonating objects. An active participant of both the independent music scene and the visual art scene for over a decade now, Konrad…Continue Reading Konrad Smolenski – Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More
Using motorized swinging speakers, multichannel sound, and high intensity smoke and light projections, Sadja transforms this expansive industrial space into an architectural and alchemical sonic ecosystem. 8.1 Channel Sound Installation with motorized swinging speakers at the Fragmental Museum in Long Island City….Continue Reading Doron Sadja “I Am Immensely In Touch With My Emotions And Music Is Magic To Me”
