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"Music From Nowhere 1st exhibition: Generator Sound Art, New York, 1990 In the Music From Nowhere series a variety of loudspeaker cabinets are transformed into acoustic sound-producing devices. The actual speakers are removed from inside the speaker cabinets and the cabinet interiors are refitted with mechanical-acoustic sound-producing systems. All devices are automated so that they work independently for an unlimited length of time. These may be modified water fountains, mechanical vibrators, or logic and motor-driven systems that articulate acoustic sounds. Each system is designed with built-in mechanical variables to produce variation or indeterminacy within the sound, thus helping to create the illusion that one is listening to a recording being broadcast through the given speaker cabinet. Each speaker cabinet has a plexiglas backing so that the viewer can see inside the box. These fake loudspeakers are exhibited together in a room so that a form of 'real' musique concrete is achieved."

Great visualization about how speakers work. "Speakers (also called loudspeakers) push and pull surrounding air molecules in waves that the human ear interprets as sound. You could even say that hearing is movement detection. So what makes a speaker travel back and forth at just the right rate and distance, and how does that make sound?"

"SOUNDIAL is the latest brainchild of sound installation team Jonathon Kirk and Lee Weisert (aka PAML; the Portable Acoustic Modification Laboratory). The installation aims to engage the public community with an arresting new manifestation of a public timepiece. Using ultrasonic, hyper-directional speakers, three rotating "beams" of newly-composed electronic music are transmitted in an outdoor public space. Due to the unique sound-transmitting mechanism of the ultrasonic speakers, these narrowly focused sound-beams are only audible to people directly in the path of the speaker."

"Untitled V is a sound sculpture that consists of miniature speakers acoustically activated by a motor driven mechanism. A nylon thread is fastened through a hole at the center of the membrane; the end of the nylon thread is loosely secured to a motor turned rosined wheel to produce friction. Sound is produced by the action of the rim of the rotating wheel rubbing the thread as the wheel is turned. The two surfaces alternating between sticking to each other and sliding over each other, with a corresponding change in the force of friction. The motor speed is reduced at the lowest speed. The slow turn of the wheel creates changes in the tension of the thread, resulting as sounds (crackling impulse) in the membrane of the speaker. Untitled V creates a very quiet listening experience. "

"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.'""

"Sound Garden is a 16 inch high, 15 foot square platform of wood squares that recreates a section of a gymnasium floor, or a high-finish dance floor. The parquet is framed by a three foot wide planter of white pansies in full bloom. Suspended above the platform, in the manner of a public address system, are four out-sized black speakers. The speakers emit a three-phase, four-track audio component of verbal instructions for dance routines, the bouncing of a basketball on the floor of the gymnasium, tap dancing and the swiping of an eraser on a blackboard. The work thus takes the form of a rather peculiar hybrid structure with visual, auditory and olfactory dimensions."

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.

"Layered Memories: Searching For Sound With Yosi Horikawa follows the 2011 Red Bull Music Academy grad as he does field recordings on the World Heritage island of Yakushima and, later, plays the resulting music on speakers he has built himself. It's a behind-the-scenes look at how one of electronic music's most exciting talents transforms the everyday into something extraordinary."

Article featuring Kevin Beasley, Nikita Gale and Christine Sun Kim. "SOUND DOES NOT EXIST IN A VACUUM-it requires a medium through which to propagate. Innovations in electroacoustics have worked to partition and privatize the sonic realm, separating voices and music from their host bodies and feeding them cleanly to the ear via high-fidelity speakers, noise-canceling headphones, and other means. But sound represents only one facet of a listening experience."

"The Listening Booth is a wooden structure that seats two and uses a directional speaker to play audio that only those within the booth can hear. It offers new and existing library goers, including visually impaired people, another way to engage with content in the library. "

"Variable 4 is an 8-speaker outdoor sound installation which translates weather conditions into musical patterns in real time. Using meteorological sensors connected to a custom software environment, the weather itself acts as conductor, navigating through a map of 24 specifically-written movements."

Oorwonde is an interactive aural installation in which the visitor becomes a willing 'patient' to hear, feel, influence and manipulate the soundtrack of a fictitious operation. Speakers, electro-magnets, vibrator motors and piezoelectric disks entwine with the human body, creating a unique composition and performance. Based on Bernhard Leitner's philosophy that "listening is understood to extend to all parts of the body and sound to touch a deep nerve", Oorwonde explores the concept of bodily hearing as multiple elements target different body parts. Hearing is no longer restricted to the ears.

"Like a 3-D take on Jackson Pollock, the latest work by the artist Martin Klimas begins with splatters of paint in fuchsia, teal and lime green, positioned on a scrim over the diaphragm of a speaker."

Interface: Listening to music through your teeth. 12/13/11 Play-A-Grill is the combination of a digital music player and the mouth piece jewelry usually associated with Hip Hop and Rap music genres known as a grill. Grills are almost always made of precious metal, most notably gold or platinum. They are completely removable, and almost used as a retainer. This piece of jewelry presents a perfect opportunity to merge an arbitrary music fashion object and reintroduce it as the music player itself. Because the grill is worn over the teeth, sound can be transmitted using bone conduction hearing instead of outside speakers or headphones. Play-A-Grill is an iteration of a music fashion object of that becomes the music player itself.

Feedback is a phenomenon which is not uncommon in sound art. Steve Reich's Pendulum Music used swinging microphones over speakers to create different tones in a certain rhythm, already back in 1968. There is something primeval about feedback, the way it can run out of control and become chaotic. Because of that, it's no wonder there are still a lot of artists working with it.

"Video recorded using direct audio out (rather than microphone and speaker/amp). The sounds are produced by an electrochemical reaction between Aluminium, Copper and Salt water (NaCl), fed through a pre-amp after basic filtering via a capacitor and resistor. The originally inspiration for the electrochemical synthesiser was the webpage "Peculiar Sounds of Aluminium" by Nyle Steiner. home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/alsounds.htm"

"The Enlightenment is described as a "hidden concert of pure light", performed by an uninhabited orchestra of lighting elements, including stagelights and high-powered bulbs. It reminds me somewhat of Francois Bayles "Acousmonium", but with a variety of lamps instead of speakers. Neon lights instead of violins, strobe lights instead of drums, etcetera."

"Depending on when one visits Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark, the current exhibition by the visual artist Gary Simmons at Southern Exposure, one will experience two very different, equally worthwhile shows. A visitor attending the show during regular gallery hours on any given day will face a work of installation art: An impressive tower of speakers sits, along with a boxy old television, on a low plywood stage."

"Last year, while i sat down listening to the speakers of the Open Fields conference in Riga, i learnt about the existence of the Kola Superdeep Borehole, the deepest man-made hole ever dug into the Earth crust. Lucas van der Velden, director of the fantastic Sonic Acts, was presenting Dark Ecology, a three-year art research and commissioning project which invited participants to re-evalute our definition and relationship to the environment. One of the works commissioned was Justin Bennett's Vilgiskoddeoayvinyarvi: Wolf Lake on the Mountains, a sound walk that takes us inside the now abandoned and very decrepit research station in the company of the last worker still living there."

"Given light, space, electricity, and a stack of discarded electronics, Thessia Machado will make music. For more than a decade, the sound artist has been building her own instruments with found and modified parts-old speakers, circuit boards, fax machines-intent on broadening the dimensions of sound and sound-making. Unlike traditional instruments, Machado's creations and installations generate sounds triggered by atmospheric factors such as light, movement, and electromagnetic waves. They harness and marshal the ambience, audibly expressing their environments. "These sounds that [were] not there, are now there," she says. And sound, she adds, is "basically air that's organized.""