Group items tagged

"During our recent Points of Listening public event held at the De La Warr Pavilion we conducted participatory experiments in care-ful listening. Through the workshop process we created collaborative manifestos, guidelines, protocols and imaginations of listening that help us to tune in and take care, to hear the inaudible and that which does not fit within expectations of language and recognisable sounds."

Craig Smith, has digitized and shared a 27GB collection of vintage sound effects. The sounds form three collections. They consist of high-quality, first generation copies of original nitrate optical sound effects from the 1930s & '40s created for Hollywood studios. They were collected by a prominent sound editor who worked in the industry for 44 years. The fragile optical elements were donated to USC, and transferred to tape by USC Cinema students in the early 1970s. There are three collections: The Gold and Red Libraries (Gold effects start with "G", Red with "R") consist of high-quality, first generation copies of original nitrate optical sound effects from the 1930s & '40s created for Hollywood studios. They were collected by a prominent sound editor who worked in the industry for 44 years. The fragile optical elements were donated to USC, and transferred to tape by USC Cinema students in the early 1970s. The Sunset Editorial (SSE) Library was also donated to USC around 1990. It includes classic effects from the 1930s into the '80s. These effects are from 35mm magnetic film. They were often several generations removed from the originals, and not as clean, so some careful restoration was done to make them more useful. SSE effects start with "S" About Craig Smith: "I have been recording, editing, & mixing sound since 1964, and teaching sound design and technology at California Institute of the Arts since 1986. In my spare time, I experiment with implied narrative and accidental sound design -- putting together sounds & images that have nothing to do with each other to create unexpected stories."

At a time when technological progress is bringing city sounds to the threshold of bedlam it is no longer sufficient to design environments that satisfy the eye alone. Today's city dweller is bombarded by a continuous stream of invisible but highly attention-demanding sounds, smells, and microclimates. His experience of the city is a crazy quilt of sense impressions, each of which contributes to the total picture. It is important to explore the consequences of this invasion of nonvisual sensations on the quality of city life and to ask how manipulation of them might improve that quality. This study explores two aspects of the problem: What is the perceived variety and character of city sounds? How do sounds influence perception of the visible city? Our research is not a scientific experiment, but an exploratory study in which we have attempted to identify those issues that deserve more careful attention in later experimental research and city design.

At a time when technological progress is bringing city sounds to the threshold of bedlam it is no longer sufficient to design environments that satisfy the eye alone. Today's city dweller is bombarded by a continuous stream of invisible but highly attention-demanding sounds, smells, and microclimates. His experience of the city is a crazy quilt of sense impressions, each of which contributes to the total picture. It is important to explore the consequences of this invasion of nonvisual sensations on the quality of city life and to ask how manipulation of them might improve that quality. This study explores two aspects of the problem: What is the perceived variety and character of city sounds? How do sounds influence perception of the visible city? Our research is not a scientific experiment, but an exploratory study in which we have attempted to identify those issues that deserve more careful attention in later experimental research and city design.

"Professor Paul Jennings is leading a team researching how sound affects the perception of environments including urban and hospital intensive care units. People have generally seen noise as being unwanted, but the right sound has many positive aspects."

The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE), founded in 1993, is an international association of affiliated organizations that share a common concern with the state of the world's soundscapes. Our members represent a multi-disciplinary spectrum of individuals engaged in the study of the social, cultural and ecological aspects of the sonic environment. Within this framework of care for the sonic environment WFAE works in collaboration with it's Affiliated and Associated Organizations to promote:

"We can't see sound. We can only judge the beauty of it by listening. Sometimes it seems like people who work with sound don't really know or care about visual aesthetics. Look at a website like this, for instance. On the other hand I think the opposite is also true."

"Harvest Works gallery in New York exhibited an installation by audiovisual artist, Claudia Robles, that gets under your skin... literally. SKIN is a project that measures gallery visitors' skin moisture using a GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) interface and transforms that data into sound and images. Psychological states such as stress, nervousness, and even arousal become observable, external information. Be careful who you test it out around. "

"Recomposing the soundscape of the intensive care unit"

"A modern-day zen garden opened this past Friday, October 1st, at the Fort York Historic Site in Toronto, Canada. Contemporary artist Krista Kim brings her vision of wellness to the world via CONTINUUM: a meditative 20-minute generated animation aimed at improving mental health through active self-care participation. "

"Recomposing the soundscape of the intensive care unit"

We are pleased to announce the launch of SoundEffects, a new international peer-reviewed journal on sound and sound experience operating on the Open Journal System. SoundEffects brings together a plurality of theories, methodologies, and historical approaches applicable to sound as both mediated and unmediated experience. The journal primarily addresses disciplines within media and communication studies, aesthetics, musicology, comparative literature, cultural studies, psychology and sociology. In order to push the boundary of interdisciplinary sound studies into new areas, we also encourage contributions from disciplines such as health care, architecture, and sound design. As the only international journal to take a humanities-based interdisciplinary approach to sound, SoundEffects is responding to the increasing global interest in sound studies.

"Julian Treasure, chairman of The Sound Agency and author of the book 'Sound Business,' proposes we design health care facilities with acoustic healing in mind. "

"Bureau for Listening is an attempt to foster, engage with, and care for listening…We do not wish to set up limits or boundaries for the possibilities and potentials of listening, and likewise do we not wish to set them up for this bureau. We will as a bureau evolve as we entangle ourself with listening through practice, research, projects, failure, friendship etc… We hope to get lost. At our core, for the moment, is a chance to experiment and research - what can listening be (?) and what can we as a bureau for listening do for this phenomena?