“A forerunner of radar, acoustic mirrors were built on the south and northeast coasts of England between about 1916 and the 1930s. The ‘listening ears’ were intended to provide early warning of incoming enemy aeroplanes and airships about to attack coastal towns. With the development of faster aircraft the sound mirrors became less useful, as…Continue Reading Acoustic Mirrors
“Without all the beeps and chimes, without sonic feedback, all of your modern conveniences would be very hard to use. If a device and its sounds are designed correctly, it creates a special “theater of the mind” that users completely buy into. Electronic things are made to feel mechanical. It’s the feeling of movement, texture…Continue Reading 99% Invisible – Sounds of the Artificial World
It’s unclear if this project still exists, but the idea is interesting, to make audible the twitter traffic in a specific geographic location. The country in question is Germany. from Heavylistening http://heavylistening.com: #tweetscapes converts all German tweets into sounds and images – live and in real-time. — #tweetscapes aims to add a sensual element…Continue Reading #tweetscapes
http://stillspotting.guggenheim.org https://snohetta.com/project/31-stillspotting-guggenheim While the vitality and stimulation of the urban environment can be pleasant, those living in or visiting densely populated areas, such as New York, can have wildly different experiences. The ever-present cacophony of traffic, construction, and commerce; the struggle for mental and physical space; and the anxious need for constant communication in person…Continue Reading Stillspotting – Arvo Pärt and Snøhetta – To a Great City
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/guided-by-voices.html “the human telephone was like an electromagnetic update to the oracle at Delphi: a lone female figure with access to distant voices, dancing slowly across a dance floor secretly wired from below, an interactive surface whose hidden technology extended up into her very clothing. “…Continue Reading The first sound art installation?
‘Bird Language’ or Kus Dili, is a centuries-old whistled dialect used to communicate across hillsides in the village of Kuskoy, Turkey. Will it survive the digital age? WSJ’s Joe Parkinson reports. Here’s a report from the Atlantic online: For centuries, residents of Kuşköy have communicated over rural Turkey’s vast distances with kuş dili, which literally…Continue Reading Bird Language
12min Jack Hitt visits Toby Lester, who has mapped all the ambient sounds in his world: the hum of the heater, the fan on the computer. (12 minutes) https://m.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/110/mapping?act=2#act-2…Continue Reading This American Life – episode110 – Mapping (mapping hearing)
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
from DeLaurtenti’s website: Released on compact disc in 2007 by GD Stereo, Favorite Intermissions collects surreptitiously recorded improvisations by symphony musicians before and between orchestra concerts. The album’s liner notes, “Intermissions with the Orchestra,” has more: Then, I grant you, the composer-conductor lives on a plane of existence unknown to the virtuoso. With what ecstasy…Continue Reading Christopher DeLaurenti – Favorite Intermissions
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
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
