Listen to the sound of Wikipedia’s recent changes feed. Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for…Continue Reading Listen to Wikipedia
Pandemonium – Janet Cardiff and George Burres Miller
A site specific sound installation at Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary. The project draws from the locations complicated past and stories drawn from that history. from Janet Cardiff and George Burres Miller’s website: Tip tap tip tap. Is that the sound of dripping or is it someone in a cell tapping a code on the wall?…Continue Reading Pandemonium – Janet Cardiff and George Burres Miller
Digital Empathy
Digital Empathy greets High Line visitors with a variety of messages. At some sites, computer-generated voices speak messages of concern, support, and love, intermingled with pragmatic information. In other sites, those same digitized voices recite poetry and sing love songs to park visitors. http://art.thehighline.org/project/julianneswartz/…Continue Reading Digital Empathy
Hrafn: Conversations with Odin – Chris Watson and Iain Pate
Hrafn: Conversations with Odin is a sound installation that presents the remarkable and seldom-heard phenomenon of ravens gathering to roost. Set in Kielder Water & Forest Park in Northumberland, the audience will be led at twilight on a short walk into the deepest part of the forest. Along the way their guides share ancient raven…Continue Reading Hrafn: Conversations with Odin – Chris Watson and Iain Pate
Film – In Pursuit of Silence
A meditative film about our relationship with sound and the impact of noise on our lives. Soon silence will have passed into legend… –Jean Arp from the kickstarter project: ABOUT THE FILM In Pursuit of Silence is a meditative film about silence, our relationship with sound, and the impact of noise on our lives. In…Continue Reading Film – In Pursuit of Silence
Pressure Sequence – Dance and Sound – Stijn Demeulenaere
Pressure sequence is an exploration of movement, a question of presence, a reconnaissance of body language. Pressure Sequence started out as a question: Dancing is body language at its purest. But can you transform, translate this language? …Continue Reading Pressure Sequence – Dance and Sound – Stijn Demeulenaere
OCT 22 2014 NASA Posts a Huge Library of Space Sounds, And You’re Free To Use Them
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/10/nasa-posts-huge-library-space-sounds-youre-free-use/…Continue Reading OCT 22 2014 NASA Posts a Huge Library of Space Sounds, And You’re Free To Use Them
Ebru Kurbak – Tunable Touch
Tunaeble Touch provides an alternative configuration to what the majority of us experience as the material world. To that end, it employs the sense of touch, a sense that we use for verification especially when we doubt our vision. The sense of touch is often taken as affirmatory and undeceiving, as it grounds and comforts…Continue Reading Ebru Kurbak – Tunable Touch
Headphones – Sound without Space
Headphones: Sound Without Space Curated by Charles Stankievech Architectural Association Independent Radio: aair.fm Headphones: Sound Without Space stems from the research consolidated in “From Stethoscopes to Headphones: An Acoustic Spatialization of Subjectivity” in Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press). Vol. 17. 2007. Download article here. Click here to download an archive of the broadcast in mp3…Continue Reading Headphones – Sound without Space
Whisper of the Wild – NY Times
An incredible article from the NY Times magazine about the state of the soundscape ecology in Denali National Park in Alaska…Continue Reading Whisper of the Wild – NY Times
John Cage – Searching for Silence (The New Yorker)
John Cage’s art of noise. By Alex Ross The New Yorker, October 4, 2010 Issue…Continue Reading John Cage – Searching for Silence (The New Yorker)
Conet Project – Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations
The Shortwave radio spectrum has been used by the worlds intelligence agencies to transmit secret messages. These messages are transmitted by hundreds of Numbers Stations. Shortwave Numbers Stations are a perfect method of anonymous, one way communication. Spies located anywhere in the world can be communicated to by their masters via small, locally available, and…Continue Reading Conet Project – Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations
Happy Halloween – VOICES FROM THE DEAD – EVP
From BBC News magazine In 1969, a mysterious middle-aged Latvian doctor turned up in Gerrards Cross with a large collection of tape recordings. He had, he said, been conducting experiments in communication with the dead, and had established contact with Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and many other deceased 20th Century statesmen. The recordings – 72,000 of…Continue Reading Happy Halloween – VOICES FROM THE DEAD – EVP
Acousmatic listening and other sound and politics.
In light of our reading on sound in public and private space, here are some links that might be called “Sound and Power”. http://soundstudiesblog.com/2014/10/20/the-acousmatic-era-of-surveillance/ “NSA dataveillance listens acousmatically because it hears the patterns of relationships that emerge from various combinations of data—e.g., which people talk and/or meet where and with what regularity. Instead of listening to…Continue Reading Acousmatic listening and other sound and politics.
The Knitted Radio – Ebru Kurbak
I ran across this piece in the fascinating exhibition HOW THINGS DON’T WORK in the Kellen Gallery at 2 west 13th street. Here’s information from the artist’s website The Knitted Radio is a project developed in collaboration with Irene Posch at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in New York. It is part of an ongoing…Continue Reading The Knitted Radio – Ebru Kurbak
One Pig – Matthew Herbert
One Pig, by Matthew Herbert is an album of music made exclusively from sounds recorded during the life cycle of a single farm animal, from birth to plate. Here Herbert talks about his motivations for the project and the process of making it, with unseen footage from the recording process. …Continue Reading One Pig – Matthew Herbert
Textilen & The Electric Ribbon
Sound and Garments from Parsons Faculty Jeannine Han. A 2-year project involving the development of textile-based modules and interfaces for the control and synthesis of music during performance. A textile instrument provides a natural link between action and sound, enabling alternative compositions and improvisations impossible with traditional instruments….Continue Reading Textilen & The Electric Ribbon
The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times
On 27 August 1883, the Earth let out a noise louder than any it has made since. It was 10:02 AM local time when the sound emerged from the island of Krakatoa, which sits between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It was heard 1,300 miles away in the Andaman and Nicobar islands (“extraordinary sounds were…Continue Reading The Sound So Loud That It Circled the Earth Four Times
Hyperacousmia
Hearing things: It’s all in your head….Continue Reading Hyperacousmia
Stephen Vitiello – A Bell for Every Minute
Stephen Vitiello’s site-specific sound work A Bell For Every Minute was installed in 2010 in the High Line’s 14th Street Passage, a semi-enclosed tunnel between West 13th and West 14th Streets. Vitiello’s subtle tribute to New York City is comprised of recordings of bells from throughout New York City, which range from the iconic ring…Continue Reading Stephen Vitiello – A Bell for Every Minute
Jem Finer – Long Player
http://longplayer.org Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced…Continue Reading Jem Finer – Long Player
Stephen Vitiello – Documentary
Stephen Vitiello creates sound installations that often feature pristine recordings of natural environments and phenomena – the Amazon rain forest or flapping moth wings for example– sonically magnified to expose their internal detail and beauty. His installation work also focuses heavily on the use and implications of space as a compositional parameter. Vitiello has released…Continue Reading Stephen Vitiello – Documentary
Field Recording, Sound Art and Objecthood
This article, by Joanna Demers relates well to our focus on reduced listening. My short take on it is that the author compares some sound art to site-specific and minimalist art – in short art that claims to not be referring to anything but itself. “Minimalism emerges in retrospect as an intermediary step in which…Continue Reading Field Recording, Sound Art and Objecthood
Dream House – La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela
When walking down Church Street in Tribeca, keep an eye out for a black door with a cryptic white sign that reads THE DREAM HOUSE. Although this is not your typical dream house with a 4-door garage, it guarantees to be a one-of-a-kind experience, with its completely absorbing, constantly fluctuating soundwaves accompanied by neon pink…Continue Reading Dream House – La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela
Arup Sound Lab
About Arup Founded in 1946 with an initial focus on structural engineering, Arup first came to the world’s attention with the structural design of the Sydney Opera House, followed by its work on the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Arup has since grown into a truly multidisciplinary organisation. Most recently, its work for the 2008 Olympics…Continue Reading Arup Sound Lab
Henri Chopin on the radio
Coincidentally, there was a nice segment of Henri Chopin on the radio on Friday. Other highlights include some classic NYC traffic noise behind the Dion McGregor spoken piece and works by Michael Pisaro. I’m not familiar with Mr. Pisaro, but the phrase “score for field recordings” jumped out at me from his bio. See the…Continue Reading Henri Chopin on the radio
Why Your Voice Sounds Weird…to you.
(It’s not really the earwax.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/03/voice-sounds-different-weird-recordings_n_5928492.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063…Continue Reading Why Your Voice Sounds Weird…to you.
Historical Soundscape of NYC
An interactive site I stumbled upon that maps out noise complaints from 1920s NYC:…Continue Reading Historical Soundscape of NYC
5 Reasons Why Musicians Succeed in Business
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
Instruments of the world (just a few)
Here are a few examples of extraordinary musical Instruments from Tibet, Central Africa and New Guinea…Continue Reading Instruments of the world (just a few)
La Gatta Cenerentola – di Roberto De Simone + OOIOO
This is a phenomenal incorporation of the body, routine, common actions into a performance. Like the blues this performance takes as its root the relationship between WORK and SONG, of course the ecstatic fervor that emerges is another story entirely and leads up to the final words: Oh sun, come out, rise over this land,…Continue Reading La Gatta Cenerentola – di Roberto De Simone + OOIOO
Hailuoto Sound Choir
One of my favorite discoveries of the past couple of years, a project that brings people together to connect vocally to the sounds in the small and remote island of Hailuoto in northern Finland. “The Hailuoto Sound Choir recreates the sounds of the island with vocal tools and learns a program of pieces composed or…Continue Reading Hailuoto Sound Choir
Janette Sadik-Khan – Honk, Honk, Aaah
Janette Sadik-Khan, the former Commissioner of Transportation under Mayor Bloomburg, was instrumental in creating pedestrian plazas throughout the city. Besides becoming places where one might stop and rest or eat lunch, they have an impact on the movement of traffic — and therefore, NOISE. here’s how an article from New York Magazine (available online) describes…Continue Reading Janette Sadik-Khan – Honk, Honk, Aaah
Nature, Sound Art and The Sacred
http://davidddunn.com/~david/writings/terrnova.pdf Fascinating article on creating and recognizing relationships in soundscapes….Continue Reading Nature, Sound Art and The Sacred
Bird Sounds Visualized
Australian artist Andy Thomas specializes in creating ‘audio life forms’: beautiful abstract shapes that react to sounds. In this animated short, he visualizes two recorded bird sounds from the archives of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision [beeldengeluid.nl] in Hilversum….Continue Reading Bird Sounds Visualized
Acoustic Mirrors
“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
The McGurk Effect
“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
Quiet! This noise is hurting my feet
http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/quiet-noise-hurting-feet/…Continue Reading Quiet! This noise is hurting my feet
Data Garden : Bio-feedback Art
Data Garden recently finished a Kickstarter for there new revolutionary product Midi Sprout! An awesome new device that generates synthesized sounds from the biorhythms of our plants (and even your own body!) Check out their first music video completely controlled by the impulses of living plants. …Continue Reading Data Garden : Bio-feedback Art