Group items tagged

"Reporter Larry Massett tells us about a man who offers a tongue-in-cheek Language Removal Service. It advertises a "laboratory that is the only one of its kind in the world - facilities include our state-of-the-art vocal observation chamber and a special storage facility for our archives, including the world-famous Raymond Chronic Static Language library." What you get after the language is gone are breaths, sighs and mouth sounds . The service is a joke - but when applied to famous voices, it's still possible to determine who you're listening to."

"Language can be a site of loss, a wholeness with which one, due to migration, has never really known. In the above passage, artist, Jesse Chun, reflects on how her grandmother spoke words in a language she did not understand, but yearned to hear and feel those sounds after her passing. There is a sonic residue that sticks to diasporic experiences. There are sounds that can stir up a blend of affect and ideation that is comforting when whiteness is unsettling."

"For three centuries, farmers living in the remote mountains of northern Turkey have communicated great distances by whistling. It's a language called kuş dili that is still used to this day, though fewer people are learning it in the age of the cell phone. It's also known as bird language, for obvious reasons. Muazzez Köçek lives in Kuşköy, and she is the best whistler in her village. Muazzez shows us how she uses varied pitch frequencies and melodies to translate Turkish vocabulary into whistles with meaning. "

video realization of the idea of Language Removal that some might know from the project "Language Removal Services" http://languageremoval.com/world_peace.php

"Christine Sun Kim on Sound, Listening and the Importance of Sign Language"

"The goal of this project is to understand the language of birds -- of course not ALL species of birds, but at least a few, starting with those that have languages that seem complex, and yet manageable.While this has long been a desire, up to now it has not been possible, but with modern advances in computing, in linguistic analysis, and a new-found appreciation of how sophisticated other creatures can be, the grammar (and perhaps meaning) of bird song seems attainable."

"As Mendi + Keith describe, "For Baldwin sound, music, and the blues in particular were sources of inspiration. The multichannel sound art work meditates on a politics of listening found at the intersection of Baldwinʼs language and the sound worlds invoked in his work. It uses the glass façade of The New School's University Center as delivery system for the sound, turning the building itself into a speaker. The 12-hour piece is created using slow moving harmonies, melodicized language from Baldwinʼs writings, ambient recordings from the streets of Harlem, and an inventory of sounds contained in Baldwin's story 'Sonnyʼs Blues.'""

"People don't generally speak in a monotone. Even someone who couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle on it uses a different melody to ask a question than to make a statement, and in a sentence like "It was the first time I had even been there," says "been" on a higher pitch than the rest of the words."

For centuries, residents of Kuşköy have communicated over rural Turkey's vast distances with kuş dili, which literally means "bird language."

"While exploring language and its political, social and cultural roots in many of her artworks, artist Inmi Lee became fascinated with the question, What does the pure form of sound look like? For her piece, Mother, she attempted to answer this question: a collaboration with code artist Kyle McDonald, Mother translates sounds into objects. Claims Lee, "It's one thing to hear a sound- it goes into your ear and dissipates." Representations of sound, however, "Reveal certain relationships between sound and shape.""

"You know that split-second lag when translating between two languages (however you define them), when meaning starts to slide into a string of unintelligible symbols? That's the space that Christine Sun Kim's artworks occupy. Her drawings use systems of information - from musical scores to infographics to emojis - to question systemic dissonances between Hearing and Deaf cultures. The results straddle the line between semantic wordplay and semiotic breakdown, evidenced in the artist's current solo exhibition titled Trauma, LOL at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles."

"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."

"That color and smell have a sensory connection is long-established, but there's debate about whether associating the smell of strawberries with red or smoke with black is something structured in our brains, based in language, or resulting from experience. A study published this week in the peer-reviewed, open-access PLoS One called "Cross-Cultural Color-Odor Associations" suggests it may be cultural."

"Talking Popcorn is a sound sculpture that evolved out of my interest in language, translation, and Morse Code. A microphone in the cabinet of the popcorn machine picks up sound of popping corn, and a computer hidden in the pedestal runs a custom-written program that translates the popping sounds according to the patterns and dictates of Morse Code. A computer-generated voice provides a simultaneous spoken translation."

Artificial Memory Trace is Czech artist Slavek K w i "Since April 1999 I have been involved in experimental sound_workshops with autistic children and children with learning disabilities (between 3 - 10 years of physical age) in La Chanterelle School in Brussels in Belgium. My research / practice are focused on perception as the main factor determining our relationship with reality. Our perception of the surrounding world consequently influences our behavior."

"Audio papers resemble the regular essay or the academic text in that they deal with a certain topic of interest, but presented in the form of an audio production. The audio paper is an extension of the written paper through its specific use of media, a sonic awareness of aesthetics and materiality, and creative approach towards communication. The audio paper is a performative format working together with an affective and elaborate understanding of language. It is an experiment embracing intellectual arguments and creative work, papers and performances, written scholarship and sonic aesthetics."

"This issue of Interference asked authors to consider sound as the means to which we can explain the sonic. Contributions to the study of sound, apart from practice-based works, are often disseminated through language and text. This is the case for most analysis or research into sensory based and phenomenological studies. There is of course a strong case to be made for text; it is the universal way in which contemporary knowledge is transmitted. But perhaps there is an argument to be made for new ways to not only explore sound but to disseminate ideas around the sonic. For example, in what way can 'sonic papers' represent ideas about the experience of space and place, local and community knowledge? How can emerging technologies engage with both the everyday soundscape and how we 'curate this experience'? What is the potential of listening methods as a tool to engage community with 'soundscape preservation' and as a tool to critique and challenge urban planning projects?"

"Digital Acoustic Cartography‹ is an interactive data visualization that transforms sonic events into a readable visual language. "

"Soundwalk Editions features artists and composers who use environmental field recordings as a point of departure in their work. By recording sounds outside of the conventional studio you are in the act field recording, audibly engaged with ears that gradually refine a sonic experience, like the eye looking through a camera lens. Field recording is often synonymous with phonography, in which sound takes the place of image in documenting a location, physical act, or a natural occurrence. Drawing attention to the quality and experiential nature that can exist in the soundscapes of our environment, these works allow the viewer to have an intimate experience with the various compositional approaches practiced by each individual artist. Through listening to these recordings we have the opportunity to become aware of the various dialects that can exist in the language of field recording compositions."

"Using examples from birdsong, the natural lilt of emphatic language and even a cooking pan lid, singer-songwriter and TED Fellow Meklit Hadero shows how the everyday soundscape, even silence, makes music. "The world is alive with musical expression," she says. "We are already immersed." "