Group items tagged

"Based merely on a technological approach, one might think that Surround sound is just the technique of reproducing audio signals in a particular array of speakers that distribute sound around space in order to give a three-dimensional illusion for the ears… Surround is not visual really, is not something we can see. Surround is not just a technique of distributing sound, but the consequences of it. It's a characteristic of sound itself, natural to the sonic phenomenon and responsible of the entire notion of the "auditory field" which is more than simply one dimension of space, but a multi-layered, multi-dimensional representation of sound."

"'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces' is part of the project Reconfiguring the Landscape, which aims to establish a new awareness of our environment. This outdoor versions plays over a specially designed loudspeaker that bounces beams of sound off the surrounding buildings. The documentation was recorded with an EM32 microphone and then transcoded to binaural. Please listen on headphones. About 'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces': Using a high-definition 3D microphone, I capture the sound field of the public space in Graz and break it down analytically. I then amplify the unheard sounds, transform and compose with them, and create an enhanced sound picture. The inaudible becomes audible; putatively ambient sounds become an exciting, dynamic event."

"'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces' is part of the project Reconfiguring the Landscape, which aims to establish a new awareness of our environment. This outdoor versions plays over a specially designed loudspeaker that bounces beams of sound off the surrounding buildings. The documentation was recorded with an EM32 microphone and then transcoded to binaural. Please listen on headphones. About 'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces': Using a high-definition 3D microphone, I capture the sound field of the public space in Graz and break it down analytically. I then amplify the unheard sounds, transform and compose with them, and create an enhanced sound picture. The inaudible becomes audible; putatively ambient sounds become an exciting, dynamic event."

"Over the past 40 years "sound art" has been hailed as a new artistic category in numerous writings, yet one of its first significant exhibitions is mentioned only in passing, if at all. The first instance of the hybrid term sound art used as the title of an exhibition at a major museum was Sound Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), shown from 25 June to 5 August 1979. Although this was not marketed as a feminist exhibition, curator Barbara London selected three women to exemplify the new form. Maggi Payne created multi-speaker works that utilized space in a sculptural fashion; Connie Beckley combined language and sounding sculptural objects, showing sound in both a conceptual and physical manifestation; and Julia Heyward's work used aspects of feminist performance art including music, narrative, and the voice in order to buck abstract aesthetics of the time. This paper uses archival research, interviews, and analysis of work presented to reconstruct the exhibition and describe the obstacles both the artists and the curator encountered. The paper further provides context in the lives of the artists and the curator as well as the surrounding artistic scene, and ultimately exposes the discriminatory reasons this important exhibition has been marginalized in the current discourse."

"magine a wide, twisting column of bass in the center of a room with percussive moons spinning around in its orbit. A beat would smash in one corner, and then echo away in a spiral around the room before the pattern continues with the next beat in the following corner. That was a portion of Zemi 17's recent surround sound installation in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Listeners lay strewn about the carpeted, dark room taking in the aural tale through a multi-channel sound system that he built."

"ELECTROCHROMA is a 58ʼ30" audiovisual work that emerged from the manipulation of light to generate imagery as well as using a combination of extended techniques applied to sonic-material sources, including translation of image to sound to create the 5.1 surround audio composition. The work utilizes various analog and digital procedures and a variety of software processes to manipulate the moving image and sound. The workʼs imagery ranges from dark to light monochromatic spheres, shifting dynamics and intensity, including flickering and pulsating patterns, retinal impact, and sensory overloads. The sound composition focuses on timbre, low ends, modulated frequencies, textures, static noises, and electronic sounds moving through space. Other sonic layers were created through the use of electromagnetism, custom electronic sounds, and voices scored for the work and performed in a recording studio by artist Marylea Martha Quintana."

A work by Bill Fontana. "Notre Dame has been described as the soul of Paris. As a result of the tragic fire in 2019, its bells have fallen silent. However, these bells were not damaged in the fire and are silently waiting and secretly "listening" to the sounds of Paris around Notre Dame. This is a continuous live streaming sound sculpture that makes audible the simple physical fact that these bells are secretly ringing all the time. I think of this secret ringing as being the heartbeat of Notre Dame. The sounds that the bells produce are created by their harmonic response to the ambient sounds of Paris that surround Notre Dame, as revealed by a live network of accelerometers mounted and live streaming from all ten of the bells. The physical fact that these bells are harmonically excited by the ambient sounds of Paris is a phenomenon that this artwork makes public in a way that will not only be beautiful to hear but will have a healing relevance to Notre Dame's fire, a healing relevance to the suspended sense of time created by the Corona Virus, the tragic war in the Ukraine and the ongoing environmental threat of climate change."

"Sound journeys is an experiment into how sound shapes the way we understand the world, created by The Principals in collaboration with sound recordist Chris Watson (sound recordist for David Attenborough and formerly of the band Cabaret Voltaire). Shot and edited by Samuel Russell, title design by Olivier Lebrun, sound and lighting technicians Pablo Gnecco and Nate Turley. Sponsored by Ford and B&O Play."

"The format of 'Path of Awareness_Elephant and Castle' explores an individual's personal experience of space through walking, particularly the interplay between sound event (footsteps) and surrounding architecture, influenced by the constantly changing interactions in the environment. A route created around the college of communication offers numerous opportunities to engage with the city's dynamics. Walking itself, the sonic character of footwear, the walkability of this urban habitat, as well as its architectural and atmospheric qualities are all major features of this soundwalk. My soundful shoes become instruments, soloists in the space, creating a dialogue with the surroundings and situating us sonically in the places we walk."

"For Hong Kong artist Samson Young, however, war sounds less obviously martial; indeed, it's pretty random. It's calm, somewhat foreboding - human, organic, often silent but with bursts of technological noise. And most importantly for Young, war sounds musical. Visitors to the artist's current exhibition at Team Gallery, Pastoral Music, see him sitting in the center of the room wearing fatigues, staring into an obsolete television monitor, surrounded by a surfeit of sound-making devices, some traditionally musical, like a contact mic hooked to a bass drum, and some definitely not, like soil, a room fan, Corn Flakes. What's going on exactly? The unconventional musical scores hanging - or, in some cases, drawn directly - on the walls suggest that Young's restrained movement amid the mess of sound-producing gadgets must constitute a musical performance."

""But wait!" you might ask, "what do you mean by Spatial Audio? Are you talking about Immersive Audio, 3D Sound, Surround Sound, Binaural, Auro-3D, Dolby Atmos, 360-sound…?" Well, yes, sort of. In principle, we are talking about anything related to 'sound beyond stereo', which is not an entirely new thing on its own."

"Bells ring, but it's not your grandmother calling you to dinner from the backyard. Bells ring and people shout, but it's not in a train station. Bells ring, people shout and a motorcycle whizzes by. Cars honk. "Dolla dolla dolla," the hawkers call. Despite standing in an underground gallery at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., visitors are instantly transported to the Balogun Market in Lagos, Nigeria, through Emeka Ogboh's sound art installation, "Market Symphony." Open through Sept. 24, this is the museum's first sound-art installation, thanks to curator Karen Milbourne, who has a special interest in sound art. Ogboh appeals directly to only one of the five senses-hearing-to re-create the atmosphere of an open-air market. Upending the traditional museum visitor experience presents several opportunities."

"Psycho-Acoustics: Sound Control, Emotional Control, and Sonic Warfare" explores the work of former Stevens professor Harold Burris-Meyer whose research in the mid-twentieth century investigated the use of sound as a tool for emotional and physiological control and played a critical role in the emerging fields of sound design for theater, music for industry, and applied psychoacoustics for warfare."

"The inner sounds of objects and substances picked up with contact mics or hydrophones never cease to amaze. For Inner Out, Italian sound designer and artist Nicola Giannini uses contact mics frozen in ice, and performs a concert on them by playing the ice. Using different objects and techniques, such as grinding, tapping, hitting the ice, or pouring hot water, he creates the source material which he processes with live electronics to create a surround concert."

"Interface: Echolocation Headphones. 10/12 Echolocation Headphones is a project that studies new applications for parametric sound technologies. This study emphasizes on augmentation of the auditory sense by enhancing our current ability of processing omnidirectional sound by providing a focal point to audition, similar to a visual focal point. Currently, human echolocation is being explored by the blind who have reached an increased understanding of sound and spatial relationships. In other species echolocation is facilitated by different evolutionary traits that differ from the current human senses. These headphones provide the opportunity for focal audition similar to a focal point in vision, depicting a more detailed spatial image of the parameters of the space surrounding the subject. "

Trapped in darkness, you must use visualized sound to guide your way through threatening environments. The sounds you create will bounce off obstacles, revealing the shape of the surrounding world. It won't be long before your only way of sensing the world attracts a horrifying evil that devours both sound and souls.

"Jana Winderen. Ultrafield. 2013 Jana Winderen. Ultrafield. 2013. Sixteen-channel ambisonic sound installation. Dimensions variable. Surround sound audio softward and installation consultancy by Tony Myatt, Professor of Sound, University of Surrey. Collection the artist."

"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 all around. Sounds like a club, right? The aim of 3D, or "spatial", audio is to replicate these complete sonic environments-or to synthesize completely new ones. "

"In theoretical physics, 'Bosonic' refers to the original version of 'string theory', developed in the 1960s. Although the initial hypotheses behind Bosonic String Theory have since been expanded and modified, the underlying principle remains intact; that the various properties of matter and force can be a reflection of the ways in which a string vibrates. The oscillating properties of these hypothetical strings determine the properties of particles and all forms of energy. As such, the theory proposes that the entire world may be composed of these infinitely small vibrating 'strings'. Bosonica is a sonic exploration of the concepts behind this theory. The sound material which underpins the work is predominantly sourced from stringed instruments, in particular piano, guitar (acoustic and electric) and cello. At times the original properties of these vibrating strings are very present and recognisable, however the work explores increasing blurring and abstraction, creating new constructions from the original material and presenting to the listener dense and abstract dimensions. Despite this, the untreated instrumental material consistently returns as a reminder that it serves as the building block from which all other material is derived. The use of 5.1 spatialisation magnifies the perceived kinetic energy of material. Small gestural fragments are scattered over the 5.1 array to form accumulative trajectories of sound, and the listener becomes immersed in the dark abstract landscapes generated by the sounds of strings. The work was composed in 2009 in the Electroacoustic Music Studios of the University of Manchester, UK. With thanks to Emilie Girard-Charest (cello) and Camilo Salazar (guitar)."

students at Codman Academy Charter Public School in Dorchester, Massachusetts, did a project where they wrote and narrated an audio guide about the sounds of birds in Boston and the surrounding vicinity. They used bird sound recordings from The Cornell La