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"Three inverted metal trashcans, with microphones hidden inside. Strategically placed beneath a steady stream of rain drops, from a cracked porch roof. Who composed this? Ask the rain."

"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."

"Cornelius Cardew was a fascinating figure. Both in his life, and through his music, he posed questions with which I find myself in equal sympathy and conflict. He is undeniably one of the most important figures in the Post-War British avant-garde. Cardew, by all accounts, was a prodigy. During his early twenties he worked at the highest levels of performance. In 1958 (age 22) he won a scholarship to study at the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, and was promptly asked by Karlheinz Stockhausen to serve as his assistant. Stockhausen's recollections of Cardew are drenched in respect. He was one of the few people whom he allowed to work on his scores unsupervised. During the late 50's, influenced by John Cage and other members of his generation, Cardew abandoned Serialism and began to compose scores utilizing indeterminacy and experiment. It was this period of his work for which he is most remembered, and from which Treatise (our subject) comes. In 1967 he joined the iconic free-improvisation collective AMM with Lou Gare, Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe and Christopher Hobbs, which advanced his sense of compositional possibility. The following year with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons he formed the equally important Scratch Orchestra, which grew into a large ensemble, preforming over the following four years."

"Echoic memory is a part of sensory memory and refers to auditory memories. The sensory memory that takes into account sounds that you've just encountered is a form of this memory type. Memories and sound are important aspects of your hearing and your ears, so we wanted to take an in-depth look at echoic memory, what it is and how it can affect us."

"I've experienced a number of works by Ryoji Ikeda over the years, from gallery installations to live concerts to a screening at Kyoto Experiment a few years ago… While his oeuvre is well defined, and often includes extremes (volume, frequency, minimalism) the idea of experiencing his first works written for percussion intrigued me enough to book my tickets for Japan - what form could such work take? "

"A complete set of nineteen brass spheres with tapered openings at opposite ends. One opening is funnel shaped to allow to be inserted into the ear. "

Alec Wilkinson writes about Carl Haber, an experimental physicist who discovered a way to use the same ultra-sensitive detectors found in the CERN particle collider to resurrect previously unplayable recordings from the earliest days of recorded sound.

"I first encountered Guidonian hands as an extension of my interest in graphic scores from the 20th century avant-garde. Beyond their shared use of drawing, and inherent beauty, the two have few conceptual links. Guidonian hands were a medieval mnemonic device (a system of learning aiding retention) designed to assist singers sight-sing (the sung realization of prima vista, or sight-reading). Their development is generally credited to an 11th centruy Italian music theorist named Guido of Arezzo, though the graphic use of the hand as a musical guide long predates the development of his technique. Within a Guidonian hand, each section of the hand indicated a specific note within the hexachord system (six-notes), over three octaves. In the absence of a score, once the graphic hand was memorized by a singer, a conductor would need only point to a series of notes on their hand. They are a fascinating fragment from the development of Western theory, as well as being objects of sublime beauty."

"After his friend Toru Takemitsu, Toshi Ichiyanagi is one of the most famous Japanese composers of the 20th century. He was an early member of Fluxus and a student of both Aaron Copeland and John Cage, but unlike most of his contemporaries with similar pedigrees, he is largely unknown outside of the country of birth. His important contributions to Fluxus have been largely lost within the long shadow of historical revisionism. Like the efforts of many of his peers, they are somewhat obscured by the success of his first wife Yoko Ono."

"During the Covid-19 pandemic, comparisons have often been drawn between lockdown measures and prison, yet people with lived experience of prison have countered that such domestic confinement bears little resemblance to the pains of imprisonment. These different viewpoints suggest that the general public has little understanding of what happens behind prison walls. This blogpost considers how prisoner writing can describe prison to the non-prisoner reader (i.e. a reader who does not have lived experience of prison), bearing witness to the carceral experience. Drawing on examples of short stories about prison, written by current or former prisoners, I examine how these writers recreate sensory aspects of prison in their writing. Carceral texts commonly recount the sights, sounds, touches, tastes and smells of prison; but, in my experience of reading and analysing prisoner writing, it is the depiction of prison sound that is most powerful and affecting. In this blogpost, I examine how prisoner-writers translate the speech and sounds of prison into written form, to convey the carceral experience to those outside prison walls."

Making a Windshield for a Telinga Parabolic Microphone

"In his discussion of the association between sound and visuals, Michel Chion, a prominent film theorist and the author of Film, A Sound Art claims there are three categories of sound that can be coupled, blended, and traversed in a multitude of different ways as opposed to the simplistic categories of only "offscreen" and "onscreen" audio. "