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"As the plaintive wail of an ambulance drifted up 2nd Avenue last Friday night, a group of about 30 people at the corner of East 10th Street paused to listen to the siren as it passed by. I had joined a nocturnal urban hunt, an aural field trip through New York City, listening for the sounds of sirens and what they signify. The event was one of a three part series called Sirens Taken for Wonders, a joint program of Performa 09 and the Van Alen Institute. "

"Who raises the alarm, and in whose interest? What might a siren sound like for the entangled human, non-human, and more-than-human? This collection emerges from and expands upon a three-day program at Tate Modern, held alongside the premiere screening of Aura Satz's film Preemptive Listening. The programme brought together musicians, artists, historians, sociologists, and activists (several featured in the film), to think through the siren-not simply as an emergency signal, but as a tool for listening, remembering, sensing, and reimagining. Speaking to the sirens that are and those that could be, from sonic warfare to ecological disaster, the conversations circled back to recurring questions of how we might rewrite the scripts of urgency, survival, and resistance. "

"In 2020 the national warning system (air raid siren) is scheduled to be decommissioned. Before this happens, I am hoping to create a special composition as a swan song for the system which fits the technical specs and acoustic qualities of the hardware. This piece is to be performed/deployed simultaneously through all 4300 sirens of the Netherlands at a set time in the future - its sound enveloping everybody. Potentially, this will also be the largest sound installation of the country; in any case it is the biggest instrument available. "

Angela de Weijer, a Dutch sound artist creates a work for decommissioned emergency warning sirens.

"Neuhaus sees his role in the siren project as basically that of an eminently qualified and imaginative sound technician; he looks outside the art context for the project's ramifications. It is the mandatory localization and identification of the alarm sound by the hearer, rather than any emotional representation of it, that he feels must be emphasized."

"There is a lot of noise in this city of ours, what with sirens screaming, buses screeching and LOUD music blaring out of headphones on already rackety subway cars. No escaping it. Not in libraries, not in the sanctity of your apartment, not even in yoga class. (What exactly is the point of Savasana? After you quiet the voices screaming in your head, all you can hear is bleeping cars and police sirens.) "

"an exploration of the sonic landscape of civil defense featuring the sounds of the rsh-10, asc t-135, thunderbolt t-1000, aca allertor 125 and more…"

"During the Occupy Wall Street protests, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste was hit with a high-frequency sound beam from a long-range acoustic device (LRAD). The sensation is singular: a pain that rips through your ears and into your head. It's "the feeling of irreparable damage being done to your hearing," as the artist writes in "Siren Mode," an essay on the use (and legal misrepresentation) of sonic weapons. "

Natural Car Alarms is a project consisting of three cars rigged with modified car alarms whose typical six-tone siren has been replaced with a similar one made only of bird calls. Some of the bird sounds are shockingly electronic in character; others are

"The result was "Sound Wounds," performed at the Asian Art Museum late August, in which Kahraman invoked the war through sound and archival imagery. While conducting research for the project, she found a recording of the air raid siren. Although it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, she listened to it over and over in her studio so that she could access her memories."

"Audible Inaudible is a term keyed by ethnomusicologist Martin J Daughtry where the violent sounds of war become muted by its auditors as a mechanism for survival. I have multiple memories that involve the terrifying sound of the air raid siren so I started the research in how to translate a sonic memory into object. This lead me to Martin's a book titled "Listening to War, Sound, Music and Survival in Wartime Iraq" where he describes an interview with a mother shielding her children from the violent sounds of war by holding them tight and pressing her arms against their ears. Her body, her flesh then acted as a perfect, natural micro environment to protect her children. I wanted to mimic this concept of "flesh as defense" so I introduced pyramid acoustic foam in the paintings; a material that "detains" sound. I started surgically cutting my linen and pushing the foam through it from the back. As it was penetrating the surface I felt as if I was conducting an operation of resistance. These calculated cuts and wounds were enabling the painting to breathe. Inhaling and exhaling it was reacting, resisting, defending and accepting these sonic wounds."

Be it sirens, jackhammers, or your neighbor's too-loud TV, noise is everywhere in the urban landscape. Today, we'll talk about how to protect yourself from all that racket with guests Arline Bronzaft, Chair of the Noise Committee on the Mayor's Committee

"A music critic's soundscape has been reshaped by the wail of ambulances. But she's learning to hear in unexpected ways."

"TOKYO -- When an earthquake measuring a lower 5 or stronger on the 7-point Japanese seismic intensity scale is predicted, public broadcaster NHK airs an emergency earthquake alert chime on TV and radio, known for its distinctive melody. Even in noisy environments, this sound is clear and can evoke a sense of fear. But why is that?"