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 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
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
‘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)
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
Tony Oursler’s Imponderable (2015–16) offers an alternative depiction of modernism that reveals the intersection of technological advancements and occult phenomena over the last two centuries. Presented in a “5-D” cinematic environment utilizing a contemporary form of Pepper’s ghost—a 19th-century phantasmagoric device—and a range of sensory effects (scents, vibrations, etc.), Imponderable is an immersive feature-length film…Continue Reading Tony Oursler: Imponderable
“Slow modulations called binaural beats are perceived when tones of different frequency are presented separately to each ear. The sensation may show how certain sounds are processed by the brain. -– Scientific American 1973 In 1839, German experimenter Heinrich Wilhelm Dove discovered that illusory “beats” are perceived when pure tones of slightly different frequency are separately…Continue Reading Sound and Psychology – Binaural Beats
An interesting accompaniment to the David Byrne TED talk and the Diana Deutsch Radio Lab episode “Suddenly Behaves so Strangely”…Continue Reading How the orchestra is arranged by the biology of the brain
For those of us who have trouble staying in tune when we sing, Deutsch has some exciting news. The problem might not be your ears, but your language. She tells us about tone languages, such as Mandarin and Vietnamese, which rely on pitch to convey the meaning of a word. Turns out speakers of tone languages are exponentially more inclined to have absolute (AKA ‘perfect’) pitch. And, nope, English isn’t one of them. …Continue Reading Behaves So Strangely
Ready to hear some trippy stuff? Check out these audio illusions from Diana Deutsch (of Sometimes Behaves So Strangely fame). Explanations for each illusion are at the bottom the post. All the audio and explanations come from Diana Deutsch’s Audio Illusions site, where you can check out her CDs for more brain-bending tracks. And let…Continue Reading Musical Illusions
Have you ever got a song stuck in your head that you just can’t seem to shake? That catchy piece of music on a recurrent loop in your brain, also known as an earworm, may seem torturous but pales in comparison to actual sound torture employed for military purposes. Sound torture is a type of…Continue Reading Torture Methods With Sound: How Pure Noise Can Be Used To Break You Psychologically
Ok besides the incredibly campy delivery in this demonstration, it is a great example of the power of stereo imaging and headphone listening….Continue Reading Virtual haircut
“Putting a spring back into your step could be as simple as listening to the sound of lighter footsteps, new research suggests. Scientists at University College London believe it is possible to ‘hear yourself happy’ by changing the noises that the body hears as it moves around. “…Continue Reading How hacking the sounds in your head could be the key to happiness
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
Hearing things: It’s all in your head….Continue Reading Hyperacousmia
I stumbled across this article that was, oddly enough, written by a friend of mine I have known since high school. Rob Henson is a talented musician and composer who lives in Seattle and works in the ever-evolving world of image and creative content licensing (stock photos, video, etc). I thought this was a nice…Continue Reading 5 Reasons Why Musicians Succeed in Business
“The McGurk effect is a compelling demonstration of how we all use visual speech information. The effect shows that we can’t help but integrate visual speech into what we ‘hear’.” – BBC Two There are some analogies to the visual editing phenomena known as the Kuleshov Effect: here’s an entry from Wikipedia: “Kuleshov edited…Continue Reading The McGurk Effect
