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"In the spring of 2011, Wanda L. Diaz Merced spent time at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, doing research for her doctoral dissertation at Glasgow University, Scotland. Wanda, who is blind, has been interested in sonification as a data analysis tool: how sonification might help scientists, even those who can see, detect patterns in large amounts of seemingly random astrophysical data. She used sonified x-ray data from EX Hydrae that have been collected by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. One day Gerhard Sonnert gave Wanda some advice on her research and, on the way out of her office, he noticed a ream of sheets on which sonified x-ray data were printed out in musical notation. Being a bass player, he immediately recognized that the data showed a particular Afro-Cuban rhythm called clave. It occurred to him that, in addition to being a scientific tool, sonification might have an artistic application. Gerhard asked his cousin Volkmar Studtrucker, a musician and composer, to write songs from the EX Hydrae material. Volkmar created nine musical pieces, in a variety of musical styles, which they played and recorded in a trio (Volkmar Studtrucker, piano; Gerhard Sonnert, bass; and Hans-Peter Albrecht, drums)."

"The music on Quartz Locked, Deep City Wandering, was sourced from non-musical, professional electronic appliances recorded back in 1987 and preserved on a C-90 cassette until this day. The original sounds were mainly derived from two electronic devices: a hacked, roadside traffic signal data logger, on the one hand, and a physician's pager, on the other. Wires were soldered to various parts of the data logger's motherboard and connected to a tape recorder's audio inputs, emitting a rich assortment of glitch sounds, static noises and buzzing a-plenty. A physician's pager, smuggled from the local hospital, was similarly hacked and manipulated in order to produce high frequency buzzing noises with striking modulation/demodulation effects. Both devices were eventually plugged together to create additional random interference patterns, while occasional tape manipulation and varispeed effect were also applied during the recording process."

"In the spring of 2011, Wanda L. Diaz Merced spent time at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, doing research for her doctoral dissertation at Glasgow University, Scotland. Wanda, who is blind, has been interested in sonification as a data analysis tool: how sonification might help scientists, even those who can see, detect patterns in large amounts of seemingly random astrophysical data. She used sonified x-ray data from EX Hydrae that have been collected by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. One day Gerhard Sonnert gave Wanda some advice on her research and, on the way out of her office, he noticed a ream of sheets on which sonified x-ray data were printed out in musical notation. Being a bass player, he immediately recognized that the data showed a particular Afro-Cuban rhythm called clave. It occurred to him that, in addition to being a scientific tool, sonification might have an artistic application. Gerhard asked his cousin Volkmar Studtrucker, a musician and composer, to write songs from the EX Hydrae material. Volkmar created nine musical pieces, in a variety of musical styles, which they played and recorded in a trio (Volkmar Studtrucker, piano; Gerhard Sonnert, bass; and Hans-Peter Albrecht, drums)."

"For Hong Kong artist Samson Young, however, war sounds less obviously martial; indeed, it's pretty random. It's calm, somewhat foreboding - human, organic, often silent but with bursts of technological noise. And most importantly for Young, war sounds musical. Visitors to the artist's current exhibition at Team Gallery, Pastoral Music, see him sitting in the center of the room wearing fatigues, staring into an obsolete television monitor, surrounded by a surfeit of sound-making devices, some traditionally musical, like a contact mic hooked to a bass drum, and some definitely not, like soil, a room fan, Corn Flakes. What's going on exactly? The unconventional musical scores hanging - or, in some cases, drawn directly - on the walls suggest that Young's restrained movement amid the mess of sound-producing gadgets must constitute a musical performance."

"I came across the work of Chris Watson when first introduced to his glacier recordings (1). I was immediately fascinated. These peculiar sounds had obsessed me since watching an episode of the 90s TV series "A Northern Exposure". Every spring, a whole Alaskan town almost goes insane because of having to hear the sounds of melting snows and glaciers for several weeks. Such a powerful and strange phenomenon. Few years later, a random event brought me to similar thoughts: the compacted ice after a day of heavy snow, melting on the terrace above the small flat in Newington Green I was living in at that time. We heard the squeaky, screechy and creaking sounds for days. Day after day we kept wondering whether those noises we had never heard before were actually coming from the ice."

"The artist Phil Collins has created a fraught, evocative listening experience that both isolates and connects."

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.

"Foundsoundscape was inspired by the very first Digital Radio station in the UK, that simply played a recording of a rural location. Radio you could just leave running to add a peaceful ambience to your environment indoors. It heralded a new media paradigm, as digital broadcasting offered more capacity than requred for the first time, and that space needed filling. At the same time on TV, Channel 4 was broadcasting Big Brother live 24hours, and at night I loved to tune-in my analogue TV sets all over the house, and the shed, so I could hear the housemates gently sleeping as I worked through the night. Since then infomercials, and gambling TV have taken over, and I greatly miss that sense of real-time space, that does not demand your attention. Foundsoundscape quietly underscores your environment, by creating new ones from others."