Listen to Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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