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"Based merely on a technological approach, one might think that Surround sound is just the technique of reproducing audio signals in a particular array of speakers that distribute sound around space in order to give a three-dimensional illusion for the ears… Surround is not visual really, is not something we can see. Surround is not just a technique of distributing sound, but the consequences of it. It's a characteristic of sound itself, natural to the sonic phenomenon and responsible of the entire notion of the "auditory field" which is more than simply one dimension of space, but a multi-layered, multi-dimensional representation of sound."

"magine a wide, twisting column of bass in the center of a room with percussive moons spinning around in its orbit. A beat would smash in one corner, and then echo away in a spiral around the room before the pattern continues with the next beat in the following corner. That was a portion of Zemi 17's recent surround sound installation in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Listeners lay strewn about the carpeted, dark room taking in the aural tale through a multi-channel sound system that he built."

"The format of 'Path of Awareness_Elephant and Castle' explores an individual's personal experience of space through walking, particularly the interplay between sound event (footsteps) and surrounding architecture, influenced by the constantly changing interactions in the environment. A route created around the college of communication offers numerous opportunities to engage with the city's dynamics. Walking itself, the sonic character of footwear, the walkability of this urban habitat, as well as its architectural and atmospheric qualities are all major features of this soundwalk. My soundful shoes become instruments, soloists in the space, creating a dialogue with the surroundings and situating us sonically in the places we walk."

"BIG revealed the design for a treetop hotel room wrapped in 350 bird houses created for the Treehotel in Lapland, Sweden. Designed in collaboration with ornithologist Ulf Ohman, the 34 square-metre Biosphere room seeks to enhance the surrounding biosphere by providing a habitat for local birds while allowing guests to be immersed in the surrounding forest. The project is the latest addition to the hotel's series of individually designed rooms created by some of Scandinavia's most renowned architects, such as Snøhetta, Rintala Eggerstsson, and Tham & Videgard."

"'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces' is part of the project Reconfiguring the Landscape, which aims to establish a new awareness of our environment. This outdoor versions plays over a specially designed loudspeaker that bounces beams of sound off the surrounding buildings. The documentation was recorded with an EM32 microphone and then transcoded to binaural. Please listen on headphones. About 'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces': Using a high-definition 3D microphone, I capture the sound field of the public space in Graz and break it down analytically. I then amplify the unheard sounds, transform and compose with them, and create an enhanced sound picture. The inaudible becomes audible; putatively ambient sounds become an exciting, dynamic event."

"'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces' is part of the project Reconfiguring the Landscape, which aims to establish a new awareness of our environment. This outdoor versions plays over a specially designed loudspeaker that bounces beams of sound off the surrounding buildings. The documentation was recorded with an EM32 microphone and then transcoded to binaural. Please listen on headphones. About 'Inversion 3: Speaking Surfaces': Using a high-definition 3D microphone, I capture the sound field of the public space in Graz and break it down analytically. I then amplify the unheard sounds, transform and compose with them, and create an enhanced sound picture. The inaudible becomes audible; putatively ambient sounds become an exciting, dynamic event."

"Recorded in its entirety using just a laptop, a pair of headphones and a midi sampler, Indentations is the debut full length album from New York based percussionist and producer Grant Chapman. Indentations draws deeply on Chapman's personal experiences surrounding loss and betrayal. An intimate work reflecting the struggle of dealing with traumatic experiences, the album makes the case for equilibrium following life-altering experiences. ''The album is a meditation on the sheer weight a broken relationship can have on two people. A personification of the stages of grief one feels when growing apart from someone they love, for reasons they can't seem to reckon with or comprehend.'' Working from his East Village apartment, Indentations is a rich amalgam of intricately layered found sounds, almost all of which were found on YouTube, taking in influences that range from ASMR to acapella choral performance. The effect is dizzying in its depth and scope. Chapman has created a boundless emotional musical journey that can feel both deeply intimate and cosmically vast."

"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."

"Ed Yong's book urges readers to break outside their "sensory bubble" to consider the unique ways that dogs, dolphins, mice and other animals experience their surroundings."

"Acknowledging a lack of solutions to help visually impaired children to apprehend their movements and surroundings, a team lead by IIT-researcher Monica Gori created the ABBI project. Built with young children in mind, this bracelet is generating audio based on body movement and spatial localisation and, therefore, helping them interacting with other and their surroundings."

"In 1999, composer/sound artist Steve Peters undertook a project at The Land, a venue for site-specific environmental art in the high desert of central New Mexico. Wishing to develop an intimate relationship with the site rather than impose his own noise upon it, he devoted himself to the act of listening to the sounds that were there during each hour of the day and night over the course of one year. Spanning the disciplines of acoustic ecology, environmental and performance art, poetry, sculpture, installation, and contemplative practice, Here*ings documents that experience of immersion in a particular landscape, examining the gradual process of becoming connected with Place. In sharing his findings, Peters encourages us to offer our own attention to the subtle poetry that surrounds us. His work reminds us that, beneath the surface of the commonplace, the extraordinary lies waiting to be revealed."

Lying minutes off the coast of the Bronx mainland is City Island. Spanning only 1.5 miles in length and occupying space off the coasts of both New York City and Nassau County, its singular location and history make the island a living laboratory for exploring New York City's history and future. The entire length of City Island can be easily traversed by foot and the surrounding water can be seen and heard from virtually all points. This proximity to the water lends City Island residents a unique perspective, as they enjoy many of the conveniences of an urban life, yet still maintain a close relationship with the water. This walk will incorporate anthropological 'field study' techniques. The participants will be engaged in exercises designed to observe the environment and decipher its visual and aural 'cues'. The group will uncover the relatively unknown wonders of this "island existence" that thrive within the confines of an urban environment.

"Interface: Echolocation Headphones. 10/12 Echolocation Headphones is a project that studies new applications for parametric sound technologies. This study emphasizes on augmentation of the auditory sense by enhancing our current ability of processing omnidirectional sound by providing a focal point to audition, similar to a visual focal point. Currently, human echolocation is being explored by the blind who have reached an increased understanding of sound and spatial relationships. In other species echolocation is facilitated by different evolutionary traits that differ from the current human senses. These headphones provide the opportunity for focal audition similar to a focal point in vision, depicting a more detailed spatial image of the parameters of the space surrounding the subject. "

students at Codman Academy Charter Public School in Dorchester, Massachusetts, did a project where they wrote and narrated an audio guide about the sounds of birds in Boston and the surrounding vicinity. They used bird sound recordings from The Cornell La

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?"

"Writer Frank Swain has been able to hear Wi-Fi signals for the past week, and no, it's not "the result of a sudden mutation or years of transcendental meditation," he says. Swain wears a special hearing device that gives him the ability to translate wireless frequencies into sounds. Alongside sound artist Daniel Jones, Swain created Phantom Terrains in order to give those invisible data fields that surround us a bit more presence. "

"The artist Doug Aitken's house, a block away from the Pacific Ocean, is in tune with its surroundings in more ways than one. In an exclusive video, Aitken, with the help of his girlfriend Gemma Ponsa and a few of their friends, activate its more hidden charms, revealing that it's a house that sounds as cool as it looks."

"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."

"Artistic innovations spurred by curiosity rather than by intellectual principles arguably produce more compelling and enduring breakthroughs. And Pauline Oliveros was undeniably curious when it came to music. By the time she was 9, she picked up the accordion; soon, she learned to play the tuba and the French horn. She quickly proved to be a highly versatile and accomplished instrumentalist. The capacity that really shaped Oliveros's career as an experimental composer and electronic-music pioneer, however, was not her skill as a musician per se but her awareness of the broader sonic field that surrounded her as she played."

"This sculptural installation invites people to use acoustic glasses to discover musical tones in the sound of their environment. Listening Glasses are hollow spheres with a funnel on one side (inserted into the ear) and an opening on the other. Each glass is calibrated to a particular musical tone. If this tone sounds in the surrounding air, the glass resonates and amplifies it."