The BQEar is an enormous trumpet-like horn perched atop the fence of the outdoor sculpture venue The Art Lot in Red Hook, Brooklyn.The project was meant to be a listening device to transfigure the sound of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (the BQE) johnroach.net/pages/2010_bqear.html (Source: http://johnroach.net/)…Continue Reading John Roach – the BQEar
Film – Touch the Sound
This brief clip is from the film Touch the Sound, a documentary about the world renowned percussionist Evelyn Glennie who happens to be deaf . While the entire movie is beautiful, this particular snippet is a great example of the mingling of sounds in the city and the way that attention alters the way that…Continue Reading Film – Touch the Sound
David Tidoni – A Balloon for Linz
“A Balloon for Linz” brings to light the acoustic response of specific locations in Linz. Together with the video, a series of exploratory walks were organized in the city of Linz. Participants were invited to pop balloons and listen to the acoustic architecture of the urban space. The project received an honorary mention at the…Continue Reading David Tidoni – A Balloon for Linz
R. Murray Schafer – Listen
Listen by David New, National Film Board of Canada ‘I imagined the soundscape as a huge musical concert that is running continuously. The tickets for this concert are free, and we are all listeners. But we are also performers because we make sounds. To a certain extent, we could also aspire to be composers and…Continue Reading R. Murray Schafer – Listen
Jacob Kirkegaard – 4 rooms: Gymnasium
It’s been said that many make sacrifices for their music, but, in the recording of 4 Rooms, Jacob Kirkegaard went above and beyond. Almost 20 years after the Chernobyl disaster, Kirkegaard traveled into the villages surrounding Chernobyl, places largely uninhabited and still teeming with radiation, an unheard and unseen but never forgotten result of Reactor 4’s fateful meltdown in April 1986….Continue Reading Jacob Kirkegaard – 4 rooms: Gymnasium
Bill Fontana – Satellite Soundbridge
Soundbridge Köln/San Francisco» In 1987 the first satellite bridge in the history of radio was produced with two sound sculptures: Soundbridge Köln – San Francisco. The «orchestra» consisted of 18 sound sources in the city of Cologne and 18 in San Francisco. Simultaneous events in the two cities, parallel but completely independent of one another,…Continue Reading Bill Fontana – Satellite Soundbridge
Helen Thorington — 9-11 scapes
9.11.01 Scapes was composed to accompany a series of collaged images created by Jo-Anne Green the day New York’s World Trade Center was attacked. Green’s palette consisted of NASA images of earth and photographs of diatoms and ground Zero. Each Scape consists of multiple layers. Thorington used the layers’ titles, and the texts that accompanied the NASA images to weave her multilayered narrative for the Notes; and much as Green used found ‘pigments’, Thorington used found sounds to create the soundscore for the series. 9:11:01 Scapes was the winner of an Honorable Recognition, Prix Bohemia Radio Festival, Czechoslovakia, 2003; and the Winner, Aether Festival, KUNM-FM, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2003….Continue Reading Helen Thorington — 9-11 scapes
Sarah Peebles – Walking through Tokyo at the Turn of the Century
info here: http://www.allmusic.com/album/108-walking-through-tokyo-at-the-turn-of-the-century-mw0000983708…Continue Reading Sarah Peebles – Walking through Tokyo at the Turn of the Century
Peter Cusack – Oil Field Soundwalk
info about Sounds from Dangerous Places here: http://sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/ info about the oilfield recordings here: http://sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/caspian_uk.html Field Recording as Sonic Journalism http://sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/sonic_journalism.html ‘Sonic Journalism’ is the aural equivalent of photojournalism. It describes the practice where field recordings play a major role in the discussion and documentation of places, issues and events and where listening to sounds…Continue Reading Peter Cusack – Oil Field Soundwalk
India Soundscapes – Loudspeaker
A vividly colorful audio snapshot from one of the world’s most exotic locations, India. Trains, bells, peacocks, and ocean waves mix with the incomparable sounds of humanity: quiet conversations, laughing children, salesmen, gamblers and hustlers. From bustling metropolis to rural village, with a variety of feelings and moods, “Indian Soundscapes” takes you to the Asian…Continue Reading India Soundscapes – Loudspeaker
Toshiya Tsunoda – Bottle at park
The most important thing for my field work is the possibility of describing the experience of landscape,” he reports. “I want to know how to fix the experience of landscape. It’s a different method to using photography to fix it. We can see the outline of objects clearly in photographs. But when recording, things are not so clear and it is difficult to distinguish what vibrations travel in the place. It’s like a moving sculpture….Continue Reading Toshiya Tsunoda – Bottle at park
Tony Schwartz – sounds of my city
n 1952, Tony Schwartz (born in Manhattan, 1923-died 2008) was recording New York children and untrained street musicians when, just down the place where he lived on 57th Street, he fell on a blind musician he recorded playing his unique percussion instrument on a background of street noises (see tr.#5 above). This was the first…Continue Reading Tony Schwartz – sounds of my city