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Described as an electro-acoustic sound installation, Shawn Decker's Prairie recalls the sights and sounds of its namesake via a field of speakers and thin, swaying metal rods. Thin, tall brass rods glisten in the light as individual motors, with small speakers mounted to the top, cause them to vibrate and sway. Each brass stem operates independently, and the entire installation--including hundreds of these rods--is programmed to operate in randomized patterns of sound and movement. "It is much more fun as a creator to compose a piece that is continuously surprising you," Decker noted. "I will often laugh out loud when it does something I don't expect. The element of change and indeterminacy allows you to become a much more active listener." Prairie is more than a soundscape. It is an environment that will entrance both eye and ear. The concepts presented in the installation--nature and technology, sound and movement, sculpture and performance--come together to enchant the viewer and invite a reconsideration of the elements that make the prairie unique.

"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."

"Double Mouth Feedback is a multi-channel sound installation. The source material for this project is generated from vocal recordings from participants. The recordings were created in response to a series of prompts asking the participants to manifest their experience of gender through vocal sound. The vocal composition was created with electronic composer Bruno Coviello. The installation incorporates the material aspects of sound, using wave patterns, interference phenomena, and vocal superposition to structure the composition. Multiple Frequencies, pitch shifts, and expressions are woven together to collectively imagine a more inclusive and expansive gender system."

"Given light, space, electricity, and a stack of discarded electronics, Thessia Machado will make music. For more than a decade, the sound artist has been building her own instruments with found and modified parts-old speakers, circuit boards, fax machines-intent on broadening the dimensions of sound and sound-making. Unlike traditional instruments, Machado's creations and installations generate sounds triggered by atmospheric factors such as light, movement, and electromagnetic waves. They harness and marshal the ambience, audibly expressing their environments. "These sounds that [were] not there, are now there," she says. And sound, she adds, is "basically air that's organized.""

"Visualizing Sound - Representations of Sound in Contemporary Creation stems directly from the LEV (Laboratorio de electrónica visual - Visual Electronics Lab) Festival. Launched at LABoral in 2007, the festival focuses on the convergence of electronic sound creation and visual arts. Visualizar el sonido [Visualizing Sound] brings the same line of enquiry into the white walls of the art center. The result is an exhibition where sound and image perfectly balance each other. Some works give a graphic, architectural and physical presence to sound, others reveal the sound produced by physical objects we'd otherwise regard as perfectly mute."

"Jesper Norda created the sound installation The Centre of Silence for the Kalmar Konstmuseum. The installation consists of an empty room and sound, nothing else. A voice describes the space and the movement of air molecules in the room. In between the pieces of text the listener is treated to silence, a sine wave and white noise. "

"IDEA: Bring to debate an important and often neglected variable in the planning of public space: sound. WHAT: The second edition of Lisboa Soa: a multiple day event which presents sound art installations and performances which discuss urbanism and auditory culture, this time at a beautiful botanic greenhouse in the centre of Lisbon. WHY: Imagine a place that celebrates the world of sound, which leads you through labyrinthine paths that communicate acoustically with you. Imagine a garden populated by sounds that call attention to all the other sounds around, an imaginary soundscape that seeks to stimulate hearing and make you think about what you are listening to. BY: Lisboa Soa, at Estufa Fria, Lisbon. Curated by Raquel Castro."

"'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."

"Museum of Sound is a project held in National Museum in Krakow consisting of various actions using sound. We are used to watching art in museums, perceiving it though sight. We forget how important it is to listen to it. Sound can extract unusual stories and revive objects. The first element of the project is Sound Microscope - an interactive sound installation open from March 2013 in the Gallery of Decorative Art in the Main Building of National Museum in Krakow, 1st floor. National Museum's Gallery of Decorative Art is the biggest exposition in Poland - it shows everyday life in Poland and Western Europe from the early Middle Ages up until Art Nouveau. Exhibits that so far have been locked in cabinets have now gained new life thanks to Museum of Sound project. Now, visiting a museum consists of not only watching objects from the past, but also listening to their story."

"Here's an interesting lecture philosopher Christoph Cox gave recently (January 18) in connection with a sound intervention by Andrea Hornick in the Collection Gallery of Barnes Foundation. The lecture, entitled "A brief history of sound art" explores pretty much what its name suggests, going from historical works and artists to relations between sound and other art forms. The philosopher "traces the history of sound art from the invention of audio recording in the late 19th century to the genre-bending compositions of John Cage to the explosion of sound installation in the 1960s. Cox surveys a range of sonic practices, revealing how they resemble and resist approaches in the visual arts.""

"In Neerpelt, a small town in the very north of Belgium on the border with the Netherlands, there's the very unique Klankenbos (or Sound Forest). A public forest filled with sound art installations hidden between the trees, accessible to anyone for free any moment of the day. Something so unique, it's strange we've never written an article about it here on Everyday Listening. Time to make up for that."

"'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."

"ernoudt Jacobs is an artist fascinated with sound in all its forms and possible expressions. He collects fields recordings around the world but he also creates installations based on Bell's photoacoustic effect that reveals the sonority of any material hit with a strong beam of light, builds sound microscope that magnifies the freezing and melting process of water or suspends coils, magnets and 1000 tin cans into the air to play with the laws of electromagnetic induction and generate tiny vibrations that produce sounds. It is as if everything in the visible and the invisible world provides him with endless opportunities for sound exploration. "

"Two recent exhibitions by Icelander Jónsi and a current one by Oslo-based American Camille Norment reveal how innovative and impactful these two sound-based artists really are. While they certainly differ, they also have much in common. Both utilize sound - melodic and dissonant, subtle and emphatic - in immersive installations that respond to and also transform architectural spaces. Both are acclaimed musicians and composers; their experience as live performers no doubt influences their artworks. For both, sound in their work is music, or song, and also a primary material - they sculpt with sound. Both artists' works are also palpably soulful: they affect visitors sonically, visually, emotionally, and - very likely - spiritually too."

The life and work of Umashankar Manthravadi is a history of sound and technology through the second half of the 20th century. As a self-taught acoustic archaeologist, he has been building ambisonic microphones since the 1990s to measure the acoustic properties of premodern performance spaces. This exhibition responds to his practice and proposes possibilities for listening to the past and its absence which remains. Centred around an audio play and a video installation, A Slightly Curving Place brings together writers, choreographers, composers, actors, dancers, musicians, field recordists, and sound, light, and graphic designers who engage and transform each other's work. Elements from Umashankar's biography serve as a compass amid the material in vitrines, as a dancing body positions the endlessness of time in relation to a series of ruptures that is history. Under a dome of speakers an assembly of listeners gathers to sense a past they cannot hear. The sound that arrives is only a record of sound as it might have been.

This site explores and archives the many questions, compositions and ramblings of sound that listeners and creators experience. From abstraction to music, all forms of sound art and experimental recordings will be presented here. Every entry has a playable audio clip with relevant photography and notes. It is my goal for this site to capture the interests of audiophiles, artists and the merely curious. Sound is Art showcases recordings from around the world and submissions for sharing work on this site is open to all. Please note that I am not a critic or an agent. I am a sound artist. I run this site to give back to the artist community and to honor the beautiful sound work that often goes unheard.

guitars, motors "Video documentation of the sound installation "minigit" by Trobollowitsch Andreas @ Werkstatt XV (Vienna) December 2011 Spatial Sound Installation for four acoustic guitars on the wall. Four converted ventilators which use cello-bow hair instead of propellers set the strings into oscillation. Soundscapes arise through the soft, smooth picking of the guitar strings by the circling cellobow hair, the permanently modifying overtone layers are reminiscent of an electronically generated sound aesthetic. www.klangmanifeste.at "

"SOUNDIAL is the latest brainchild of sound installation team Jonathon Kirk and Lee Weisert (aka PAML; the Portable Acoustic Modification Laboratory). The installation aims to engage the public community with an arresting new manifestation of a public timepiece. Using ultrasonic, hyper-directional speakers, three rotating "beams" of newly-composed electronic music are transmitted in an outdoor public space. Due to the unique sound-transmitting mechanism of the ultrasonic speakers, these narrowly focused sound-beams are only audible to people directly in the path of the speaker."

"A sound art installation exploring the infamous Latin 'Lorem Ipsum' text, used in publishing and editorial contexts, which allows focusing only on the visual and graphical aspects of the product. If the human ear can be compared to a radio receiver that is able to decode electromagnetic waves and recode them as sound, the human voice may be compared to the radio transmitter in being able to translate sound into electromagnetic waves.  The characteristic role of language with respect to thought is not to create a material phonic means for expressing ideas, but to serve as a link between thought and sound."

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."