British Library Says 6.5 Million Sounds Are in Jeopardy

Luke McKernan, lead curator of news and moving image, wrote in the January 12 announcement: “Archival consensus internationally is that we have approximately 15 years in which to save our sound collections by digitising them before they become unreadable and are effectively lost.” The recordings date back to the 1880s, including everything from the voices of…Continue Reading British Library Says 6.5 Million Sounds Are in Jeopardy

99% Invisible -Episode 148: The Sizzle

The first trademark for a sound in the United States was issued in 1978 to NBC for their chimes. MGM has a sound trademark for their roaring lion, as does 20th Century Fox for their trumpet fanfare. Harley Davidson tried to trademark the sound of their motorcycles, but after years of litigation, they finally withdrew their application. Right now…Continue Reading 99% Invisible -Episode 148: The Sizzle

NASA – Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility

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

The Field Recordist – Film

Lawrence Barker has finished his audiovisual autobiography, The Field Recordist. This film is a personal reflection of my own passion for audio field recording over the past 45 years. All film audio is from recorded narrative and original captured field recordings and does not contain fabricated or synthesized audio, or non-field recorded music. Any layered audio tracks will be individually recognised, such…Continue Reading The Field Recordist – Film

Stephanie Loveless – Cricket, Tree, Crow

  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

Cities Unlocked, Sound-Based System for Guiding Blind People Through Cities

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

Acoustic Ecology and Ethical Listening

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

A Beginner’s Guide To…Field Recording

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

This Man Can Hear Wi-Fi

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

Extracting audio from visual information

Algorithm recovers speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag filmed through soundproof glass. Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of…Continue Reading Extracting audio from visual information

ALMA Music Box: melody of a Dying Star

http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/musicbox/ ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is a state-of-the-art radio telescope developed and operated by 20 countries and territories in East Asia, Europa and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. Connecting 66 parabola antennas deployed in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, ALMA works as a giant radio telescope with a diameter…Continue Reading ALMA Music Box: melody of a Dying Star

Scientists Use Sound Waves To Levitate And Manipulate Matter

A team of researchers in Switzerland have developed a way of levitating and transporting small objects using nothing but sound. Using ultrasonic waves that is, sound waves whose frequencies are too high for humans to hear, scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have made water droplets, instant coffee crystals, styrofoam flakes,…Continue Reading Scientists Use Sound Waves To Levitate And Manipulate Matter

How hacking the sounds in your head could be the key to happiness

“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

Furniture Music – Brian Eno

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

Korinsky – Volum in the Berliner Dom

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

Konrad Smolenski – Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More

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

Doron Sadja “I Am Immensely In Touch With My Emotions And Music Is Magic To Me”

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”

Susan Hiller – Witness 2000

Witness 2000. Each speaker in the installation Witness 2000 transmits a voice telling a story. A wide variety of languages represent testimonies from all over the world. The witnesses describe the experience of an encounter with UFOs or creatures from other spheres. A range of similarities emerges in the descriptions and in the type of…Continue Reading Susan Hiller – Witness 2000

Patrick Feaster – Pictures of Sound

Another great resource related to sonification: This video is derived from a slideshow that was presented by Patrick Feaster at the 2011 ARSC Conference: “Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio: 980-1980” is a book/CD set produced by Patrick Feasterhttp://www.dust-digital.com/feaster/…Continue Reading Patrick Feaster – Pictures of Sound

Sergei Tcherepnin’s Music for One – Massage Performance

Sergei Tcherepnin created a work for a single listener that involves a sort of sonic massage. from the New York Times “the main attraction — which was booked in 15-minute private appointments — was the “massage,” performed in a back room behind makeshift curtains. It took a few minutes for me to experience the sensations…Continue Reading Sergei Tcherepnin’s Music for One – Massage Performance

David Tudor – Rainforest IV

Here’s an example of tactile or surface transducers in action. David Tudor (1973) — Rainforest IV: collective performance The fourth version (1973) is the result of a collaborative work environment, mixing in space sounds live suspended sculptures and found objects, and transformed by an audio system reverberations. Here’s another version: From the Getty Research Institute:…Continue Reading David Tudor – Rainforest IV

Pierre Sauvageot’s Harmonic Fields

Sauvageot describes his creation as “a symphonic march for 1,000 aeolian instruments and moving audience”. It is not only a striking piece of land art, but a carefully constructed piece of music, with an integral balance of theme and structure. “It’s important that it is not just a circuit of weird noises,” Sauvageot says. “The…Continue Reading Pierre Sauvageot’s Harmonic Fields

Tactile Transducers

Also known as Surface Transducers and other things… https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10975 “Surface transducers give you the awesome power to turn almost any surface into a speaker. They’re essentially just a speaker except instead of a cone, the coil is attached to a pad that conducts the vibration into whatever you press it against. Hook it up to…Continue Reading Tactile Transducers

Songs of War – Music as Torture

Music elates, touches the soul and bypasses reason. Music is magic. But precisely this magic can turn it into an insidious weapon – for music and violence belong together. The brutal power of African war dances, the ferocity of Maori Hakas, the earth-shattering roar of US sound guns blasting Metallica at Taliban hideouts – the…Continue Reading Songs of War – Music as Torture

5 Bizarre Ways You Won’t Believe Sound Screws With Your Body

Science has been messing with light like a middle-school bully since forever: shoving it all together to make a laser beam, bending it to make invisibility cloaks, giving it wedgies until it stops altogether. Maybe it’s time to pick on something else. Might we suggest sound? It doesn’t seem as sexy as light, but by…Continue Reading 5 Bizarre Ways You Won’t Believe Sound Screws With Your Body

The Singing Comet

Rosetta’s Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious ‘song’ that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. RPC principal investigator Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, head of Space Physics and Space Sensorics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, tells us more. RPC consists of five instruments on the Rosetta orbiter that provide a wide variety of complementary information about…Continue Reading The Singing Comet

Alvin Lucier – I am Sitting in a Room (1981)

The first recording of I am sitting in a room was made at the Electronic Music Studio at Brandeis University in 1969. This recording, from October 29 and 31, 1980, was created in the living room of Lucier’s home in Middletown, Connecticut. It consists of thirty-two generations of the composer’s speech and was made expressly for…Continue Reading Alvin Lucier – I am Sitting in a Room (1981)

Sway – Caitlin Morris

Sway is a space where sound and physical form meet. The environment reflects the palpable experience of listening to music, in which many small parts work together to create a larger whole. When visitors become immersed in the mass of translucent reeds that form the geometry of the room, the sound composition reacts at the…Continue Reading Sway – Caitlin Morris

In The Garden of Sonic Delights – videos

You Are the Sweet Spot by Stephen Vitiello & Bob Bielecki Listening Is as Listening Does by Suzanne Thorpe We Fall Like Light by Laurie Anderson & Bob Bielecki Catenary by Eli Keszler Wild Energy by Annea Lockwood & Bob Bielecki Sunken Gardens by Betsey Biggs Diacousticon by Stephan Moore The [Music] Room by Francisco…Continue Reading In The Garden of Sonic Delights – videos

Max Neuhaus – Times Square

From Gothamist: Visit The Eerie Circa-1970s Sound Installation In Times Square The late Max Neuhaus, a percussionist known for creating site-specific sound sculptures, created one of his best known pieces in Times Square in 1977, a sound installation that filters up through the subway grates on Broadway. According to Dia Art Foundation, the installation originally…Continue Reading Max Neuhaus – Times Square

Earthquake Sound of the Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan earthquake (Zhigang Peng)

This webpage contains earthquake “sounds” created from seismic recordings around the world generated by the 2011/03/11 Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan earthquake. They provide a unique way for us to listen to the vibration of the Earth that is otherwise inaudible to us, and to decipher the complicated earthquake physics and triggering processes….Continue Reading Earthquake Sound of the Mw9.0 Tohoku-Oki, Japan earthquake (Zhigang Peng)