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"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? "

"For Landscape / Soundscape at the University of Pennsylvania's Arthur Ross Gallery, 10 sound artists were commissioned to create soundscapes responding to ten landscape photographs in the university's art collection. "I spent a lot of time just meditating on the photographic images, and I began yearning to hear some sort of sonic interpretation of the imagery," co-curator Heather Gibson Moqtaderi, who is associate curator and collections manager at Penn's University Art Collection, told Hyperallergic. "I felt that a balanced experience between sight and sound would most effectively convey this idea.""

"Listening Desk is an interactive sound sculpture that invites people to access and create soundscapes with sound archives. It is installed at 10 locations around the UK: Archives+ in Manchester Central Library; Cumbria Archives in Carlisle Archive Center; Discovery Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne; Norfolk Record Office; The British Library outside the King's Library; The National Library of Scotland at Kelvin Hall, Glasgow;  Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru/The National Library of Wales; The Wellbeing Collection at University of Sussex Library; Ulster Transport Museum, Cultra, County Down, Ireland; and University of Leicester in Sir Bob Burgess Building."

"I wondered why an artist like Brian would be interested in matters of spacetime and relativity. The more I got to know Brian, I knew it wasn't a time filler, or for his health. What I was about to discover during my two years in London was that Brian was something I've come to call a "sound cosmologist." He was investigating the structure of the universe, not inspired by music, but with music."

""It is less about music being scientific and more about the universe being musical.""

"The research project Sound and Materialism in the 19th century, based at the University of Cambridge, investigates a scientific and a materialist perspective on music and sound in the 19th century to enlarge and enrich our understanding of the dialogue between 19th-century music and natural science. "

"It's an exciting time to be a composer or sound artist. Innovations in and new connections between methodology, technology and creative practice are creating a host of new possibilities for the sonic exploration of experience. NOVARS, the Research Centre for Electro Acoustic Composition and Sound Art at the University of Manchester work at the cutting edge of this new territory. So what are these developments? To keep it simple here we will talk about two, both of which relate to space."

"When did you last use radio technology? If you're straining to remember when you last turned on the AM/FM radio broadcast receiver in your car, you've probably gone too far back. Although it might not come to mind when we think about radio in the digital media era, things like GPS, wireless computer networks, and even our mobile phones use radio waves.  Far from being outdated, this century-old technology is still integral to much of what we do. "On the one hand, it's very ambient. We don't notice it," says Rick Prelinger, an archivist and professor emerit of film and digital media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "But radio is also deeply engaged with the world." "

"David Hendy has a good idea. He is a professor of media and communication at the University of Sussex, and he's in love with noise-but not in the way you might think. Hendy is not interested in noise as mere meaningless din, but noise as a form of media conveying the meaning of a time, like when the world entered the industrial age. When listening farther back in time, one can see that the sound of bells ringing was a tool for the church of the Middle Ages to exert its power over daily life."

"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)."

"Scientists have recently made some remarkable discoveries about non-human sounds. With the aid of digital bioacoustics - tiny, portable digital recorders similar to those found in your smartphone - researchers are documenting the universal importance of sound to life on Earth. By placing these digital microphones all over Earth, from the depths of the ocean to the Arctic and the Amazon, scientists are discovering the hidden sounds of nature, many of which occur at ultrasonic or infrasonic frequencies, above or below human hearing range. Non-humans are in continuous conversation, much of which the naked human ear cannot hear. But digital bioacoustics helps us hear these sounds, by functioning as a planetary-scale hearing aid and enabling humans to record nature's sounds beyond the limits of our sensory capacities. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), researchers are now decoding complex communication in other species."

""The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind.""

"Soundwalking Interactions is a research-creation project led by Dr. Andra McCartney, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University. This project is financially supported by the FQRSC. The objective of the project is to explore the use of soundwalks and interactive installations to engage audiences and raise issues about various locations and their histories. "

"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)."

"This issue of Interference asked authors to consider sound as the means to which we can explain the sonic. Contributions to the study of sound, apart from practice-based works, are often disseminated through language and text. This is the case for most analysis or research into sensory based and phenomenological studies. There is of course a strong case to be made for text; it is the universal way in which contemporary knowledge is transmitted. But perhaps there is an argument to be made for new ways to not only explore sound but to disseminate ideas around the sonic. For example, in what way can 'sonic papers' represent ideas about the experience of space and place, local and community knowledge? How can emerging technologies engage with both the everyday soundscape and how we 'curate this experience'? What is the potential of listening methods as a tool to engage community with 'soundscape preservation' and as a tool to critique and challenge urban planning projects?"

"David Hendy, media historian at the University of Sussex, host of the thirty-part BBC Radio series, Noise: A Human History, and the author of Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening, talks about the social history of noise and kicks off the call-in on the question of sound and creativity. What sounds sparks your creativity or do you need absolute quiet?"

"Emily Thompson, historian at Princeton University and the author of Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933, talks about her study of sound and her website featuring sounds of New York City in the 1920's."

Andra McCartney is a multimedia soundscape artist, composer, performer and poet. Currently she is working on 'Soundwalking Home', a series of soundwalks through neighborhoods in which she has lived, and a soundscape documenting the Lachine Canal region, near Montreal. McCartney's installations have been shown at Maid in Cyberspace Encore (Montreal), KAAI Modern Fuel Gallery (Kingston, Ontario), miXing Women In Sound Art Festival (Chicago), The Kitchen ... Her writings have been published in Leonardo Music Journal, MusicWorks ... She has collaborated with visual artist P.S. Moore, championed the work of soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp, and she is actively involved with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. She lives in Montreal and is teaches at Concordia University, Montreal.

The Highline is an elevated park, extending, at the time of this recording, from 13th Street to around 30th Street on the west side of Manhattan. I had chosen the Highline for recording because of the multi-dimensional sonic perspective it provides, with sound coming at you from below, from front and back, and above. My plan was to use the sounds in a composition called 'Elevated City', set to premiere as part of a World Listening Day event at New York University, July 18th.

Kathryn Walter is a Canadian artist who maintains a studio practice that intersects visual art, design and material culture. She operates the FELT studio as a laboratory to explore modern industrial felt through exhibitions, historical research, architectural commissions and a product line. Influenced by her background in sculpture, Walter has created a body of work ranging from intimate artworks to large-scale installations. She has collaborated with architects and created felt walls for residential, institutional and commercial sites including Google (Montreal), Red Bull (Toronto), The Museum of Tolerance (Los Angeles); and CUNY Law School and The New School (New York). Walter has shown her work in exhibitions at the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) and the Cooper Hewitt Nation Design Museum (New York). She received a BFA from Emily Carr College of Art and Design (Vancouver) and an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal). She lives and works in Toronto. www.feltstudio.com