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A presentation of artists exploring sound and materiality: "Materiality of Sound: In this chapter, we will present projects that get closer to the sonic phenomenon directly presented on stage in front of our eyes and hears as a form of scientific and artistic experiment. The materiality of sound, intended as a specific focus on using principles of the physical world to initiate a new listening into the matter, reveals the vibrational fundaments constituting our universe and unfolds the state of inter-connectivity in nature performing forces pervading multiple domains at the same time in the same space."

"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)."

"Conceptualizing sound in geologic terms is a daunting task. Both the geologic and the sonic are time-based media, defined by duration. Yet sound speaks in milliseconds, the geologic in eons. They exist in different time zones. So, given this conundrum, instead of considering how to measure sound within a geologic scale, perhaps we are better served to ask: What do geologic materials sound like or, more precisely, what do geologic materials hear? This latter question might seem ridiculously anthropomorphic, given that we are talking about material objects. So let us first consider what exactly sound and hearing are."

"The research project Sound and Materialism in the 19th century, based at the University of Cambridge, investigates a scientific and a materialist perspective on music and sound in the 19th century to enlarge and enrich our understanding of the dialogue between 19th-century music and natural science. "

By examining the materials that produce sound within contemporary art, we can approach sounding works not only from the perspective of "sound as sound" or "sound in itself" but rather as "sound as more than sound." Sound can never be without a history, culture, or political situation, and by approaching sounding practices in the same manner as we critically approach contemporary art practices, we allow matter to matter.

"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."

"Four years after the invention of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell caused flurries of excitement with another invention, which he described in a series of essays and lectures in the US and Britain during the autumn of 1880. The device was what he called the 'photophone'. It depended upon the discovery made by Willoughby Smith in 1873, during the course of work on the Atlantic undersea telephone cable, that the resistance of the material selenium, which was ordinarily extremely high, in fact varied with the action of light, exposure to light lowering the resistance of the material."

RICHARD LERMAN, works in Music, Film, Installations, Performance, and Video. He often constructs functional microphones from diverse materials, and then composes using these transducers to amplify and pick-up sounds of the environment, and allow the sonic flavor of each material to be heard. Recent works combine sounds from his self-built microphones with computer and MIDI techniques. bio from http://www.artifact.com/bio.php?name=Lerman

"As museums continue to search for new ways to attract visitors, recent trends within museum practice have focused on providing audiences with multisensory experiences. Books such as 2014's The Multisensory Museum present preliminary strategies by which museums might help visitors engage with collections using senses beyond the visual. In this article, an overview of the multisensory roots of museum display and an exploration of the shifting definition of 'object' leads to a discussion of Pierre Schaeffer's musical term objet sonore - the 'sound object', which has traditionally stood for recorded sounds on magnetic tape used as source material for electroacoustic musical composition. A problematic term within sound studies, this article proposes a revised definition of 'sound object', shifting it from experimental music into the realm of the author's own experimental curatorial practice of establishing The Museum of Portable Sound, an institution dedicated to the collection and display of sounds as cultural objects. Utilising Brian Kane's critique of Schaeffer, Christoph Cox and Casey O'Callaghan's thoughts on sonic materialism, Dan Novak and Matt Sakakeeny's anthropological approach to sound theory, and art historian Alexander Nagel's thoughts on the origins of art forgery, this article presents a new working definition of the sound object as a museological (rather than a musical) concept."

"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."

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.

Kathryn Walter is a Canadian artist who maintains a studio practice that intersects visual art, design and material culture. She operates the FELT studio as a laboratory to explore modern industrial felt through exhibitions, historical research, architectural commissions and a product line. Influenced by her background in sculpture, Walter has created a body of work ranging from intimate artworks to large-scale installations. She has collaborated with architects and created felt walls for residential, institutional and commercial sites including Google (Montreal), Red Bull (Toronto), The Museum of Tolerance (Los Angeles); and CUNY Law School and The New School (New York). Walter has shown her work in exhibitions at the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) and the Cooper Hewitt Nation Design Museum (New York). She received a BFA from Emily Carr College of Art and Design (Vancouver) and an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal). She lives and works in Toronto. www.feltstudio.com

"Sound can be assumed by its transformative properties and processes, as a form of alchemy, a transmutation both tangible and intangible, psychic and physical, where every echo or object is processed in terms of its most primal roots, in terms of deep relationships within nature's elements. In that way, resonance and materiality configure universes, which no longer have to choose between fixed states, but rather stay open to the processes that arise in-between, as a poetic interstice of sonic existence. Directed by the artists Navid Navab, and Michael Montanaro, Aquaphoneia is an interesting installation debutant Ars Electronica 2016: Alchemists of our Time, in which those vibrant process get explored, allowing time and matter to converge in a transmutation of sonic signals; waves and corpuscles between the liquidity of sound and the sound through liquids."

"An ongoing project that started life during a one week residency at the Soundfjord Gallery. My proposal was as follows: A letter written to the journal IEEE in 1969 suggests the curious possibility of clay sound recordings from antiquity. Claiming to have evidence, an enigmatic scholar named Richard G. Woodbridge III outlines a hypothesis: sound, by causing a shimmering of airwaves, leaves traces on materials the waves break upon; wet paint, for example, or the soft, wet clay spun by a potter. Using suitable technology a contemporary listener might hear these traces, so allowing a rehearing of whatever sonic activity was occurring in that original impact of sound wave and substance."

"Toussaint-Baptiste's current exhibition, Set It Off, addresses affective and relational possibilities of sound through the perspectives of minimalism and a resistance to predetermined representations of Black American experiences by favoring instead abstract visual and sonic expressions of Blackness."

"There is a parallel city beneath our feet, connected by pipes and caverns, carrying rainwater, electricity, (un-)sanitary waste, and utilities. In St. Paul, It has been carved into the limestone rock for over a hundred years and extends for many miles. Above-ground pedestrians rarely notice the openings--manholes, gratings, and outfalls--and can barely imagine the subterranean spaces. That is where sound comes in: ears can judge volume,materials, shapes, and space better than eyes, in this case."

"The act of listening and recording sound effects or capturing potential material for working on sound design is actually a process where the artist finds its activity as that one of the illusionist of sound, a harlequin of time, storyteller of the unknown. There are tons and tons of examples of that, and the creativity of a sound designer is actually found in that way of giving new contexts, meanings and aspects to any sound present in the world. But, as always, the best examples are those that you can identify, so all this comes to the point of inviting you to the process."

"Viennese artist Bernhard Leitner talks about how he uses sound as a building material to create new worlds, and as a tool of design itself. He has worked for the New York Department of City Planning and researched how three-dimensional movements of sounds shape new architectural spaces, with physical-acoustic analyses of spaces."

"Thousands of species of fireflies all blink in different patterns, not only blinking in rhythms but simultaneously performing specific flight choreographies. The timing and pattern of their flashes are unique to each species. In Bioluminescence, I translated firefly behavior data from Prof. James E. Lloyd's Studies on the Flash Communication Systems of Photinus Fireflies into an orchestral piece. Rhythmic patterns of light and insect movement provide the material for both melodic and rhythmic figures. In biology, bioluminescence is the ability of living things to produce light through biochemical processes. Most bioluminescent organisms are found in the sea. The group of marine bioluminescent organisms includes fish, bacteria, and jellyfish. Some bioluminescent organisms, including fireflies and fungi, are found on land. Bioluminescence is used by creatures to make prey, defend themselves against predators, find mates, as well as for other vital activities. Recent studies show that the number of fireflies is declining. Light pollution from human-generated light disrupts insect courtship behavior because it can only occur in the dark. The artificial extension of daylight into the night disrupts the fireflies' dark-light cycles and thus their biological behavior."