"When Canadian astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield was as far from home as a human can get, he used SoundCloud to share the sounds of the International Space Station and connect with everyone back on Earth."
"As I started exploring, I began noticing the sounds around me. I began to think that maybe instead of focusing my attention only on the "Kodak moments" - and don't get me wrong, I take a lot of photos - perhaps using the SoundCloud mobile app to isolate and feature my "sonic experiences" would be another really cool way to map and document my Toronto travels. And thus, the Sounds of My City project was born!"
"Sub Pop Records has signed some of the most famous and influential indie bands of the last 30 years, including Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, The Postal Service, and Beach House. Over time, the stars and hits have changed and the formats have evolved as well, from vinyl to CDs to MP3s. In recent years, however, the label has started releasing new albums on a medium few thought would ever see a comeback: the cassette.
But there's one big user group that never entirely stopped using the old school technology. The United States prison system has the largest prison population in the world and many of its inmates listen to their music on tape. For this group, cassettes aren't necessarily the cheapest or hippest way to listen to music; in some cases, it's the only way."
"The acoustics of a building are a big concern for architects. But for designers at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, it's the absence of sound that defines the approach to architecture.
Gallaudet is a university dedicated to educating the deaf and hard of hearing, and for the last 3 years, they've re-thought principles of architecture with one question at the forefront: how do deaf people communicate in space? "
"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)."
There's a secret jazz seeping from Washington's aging Metro escalators - those anemic metal walkways that fill our transit system…they honk and bleat and squawk…why are you still wearing those earbuds?
"Those of you sonically inclined might be interested in the latest weekend challenge from Marc Weidenbaum's Disquiet Junto project: "Read a map of the San Andreas Fault as if it were a graphic notation score," and then post the acoustic results to Soundcloud."
"Artist Jules Gimbrone contemplates what a world would look like if we didn't privilege the sense of sight.
This audio excerpt is presented in association with the exhibition The World Is Sound."
"Space is the place. Again.
And SoundCloud is now a place you can find sounds from the US government space agency, NASA. In addition to the requisite vocal clips ("Houston, we've had a problem" and "The Eagle has landed"), you get a lot more. There are rocket sounds, the chirps of satellites and equipment, lightning on Jupiter, interstellar plasma and radio emissions. And in one nod to humanity, and not just American humanity, there's the Soviet satellite Sputnik (among many projects that are international in nature)."
"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)."
"Philadelphia's Franklin Institute will soon unveil a new exhibit called Your Brain: www.newsworks.org/index.php/thepul…ur-of-your-brain. The Pulse's Zack Seward got a sneak peek from chief bioscientist Jayatri Das.
The exhibit features about 80 interactive installations exploring how your brain works. And this one ... will blow your mind."
"Music for a Changing Tide was written for the Mediate Art Group new media biennale: Soundwave. This event will take place at Ocean Beach on July 27th as part of this festival. More info here: me-di-ate.net/
For this event, the audience will download this piece of music and put it on their iPod or other portable listening device and gather at Ocean Beach, San Francisco. Evans will then give the cue for everyone to press play and participants will sit back and observe while listening. The music is written to trace the changing of water movement and changing of light in the evening as the tidal change is observed. Intermingled with the music is a series of field recordings - the roar of Ocean Beach from a distance, airplanes combined with discreet sounds of barnacles, mussels and other intertidal creatures shifting and clicking at low tide, and water bumping rocks around as the tide slowly arises. In all - a site-specific sound and music event designed to allow participants to feel a greater sense of place and awareness of the moment and of our ever-shifting landscape."
""We bombard ourselves with sound and music… it's everywhere." So says musician, artist and nature recordist Chris Watson who has captured sounds for numerous wildlife TV shows, including Sir David Attenborough's Planet Earth series on the BBC among many others. In this episode our ever-intrepid host Tim Hinman points his microphone at, well… microphones, speaking with Watson and sound artist Jana Winderen about our ever-fascinating natural world and the jungle of sounds it makes."