Sound Research

Page by Peter Elsea (UCLA ELECTRONIC MUSIC STUDIOS) "The notion of sound is rather remarkable. Something happens there and we know it here, even if we are looking the other way, not paying attention, or even asleep. The fact that some sounds can produce physical and emotional effects is just short of astounding. These notes will perhaps remove some of the mystery associated with sound and hearing, but probably none of the wonder. "

"Reporter Larry Massett tells us about a man who offers a tongue-in-cheek Language Removal Service. It advertises a "laboratory that is the only one of its kind in the world - facilities include our state-of-the-art vocal observation chamber and a special storage facility for our archives, including the world-famous Raymond Chronic Static Language library." What you get after the language is gone are breaths, sighs and mouth sounds . The service is a joke - but when applied to famous voices, it's still possible to determine who you're listening to."

"This documentary was made in 2009 by the film maker Nora Meyer, and follows Jem Finer's realisation, in 2005 and 2006, of Score for a Hole in the Ground, a sculptural musical composition sited in a forest in Kent. SFAHITG was made with a grant from the PRSF and the collaboration and support of Stour Valley Arts."

Noise for Airports a blog about culture, sound, music, and technology.

"My background is in sound design where I freelanced as a sound effects recordist and editor, location recordist and sound designer on commercials, feature films and documentaries. I also give workshops in sound design and interactive programming. I am founder of Social Sound Design, a Q&A site for sound designers. Please come and visit, we have a superb community."

"Sound Waves And Their Sources (1933) - Educational film that covers the basics of acoustics. How sound propagates through a medium, pitch, timbre, loudness etc. Dated but accurate."

Noise measurements at 37 restaurants, bars, stores and gyms showed, according to experts, potentially dangerous conditions at many of them.

Salomé Voegelin is a Swiss artist and writer based in London. She is the author of Listening to Noise and Silence: towards a Philosophy of Sound Art, Continuum, NY, 2010. The book engages with the emerging practice of sound art and the concurrent development of a discourse and theory of sound. It seeks to immerse the reader in concepts of listening to sound artwork and the everyday acoustic environment, to establish an aesthetics and philosophy of sound and to promote the notion of a sonic sensibility. Other recent writings include an article on Morton Feldman in the Wire 324, February 2011 issue, and an essay on durational radio for Kunstradio ORF Austria. Her blog soundwords.tumblr.com writes the experience of listening to the everyday.

Christopher Cerf, an award-winning composer for the American children's television series Sesame Street, was so disturbed by the use of his songs as psychological torture by the US during interrogation operations in Guantanamo in 2003, that he embarked on a journey with Al Jazeera World to interview a number of scientists, US Army personnel, and ex-detainees, to learn more about the psychological effects of music, and to uncover the history and use of music in torture. Among the people Cerf interviews are a US Army interrogator, a former Guantanamo prison guard, an ex-Guantanamo and Bagram detainee who recounts the use of Metallica and Marilyn Manson in torture during his time in prison, and the heavy metal band Drowning Pool, whose song "Bodies" was dubbed an unofficial soundtrack of the US military, and whose music was also used to torture prisoners.

Artificial Memory Trace is Czech artist Slavek K w i "Since April 1999 I have been involved in experimental sound_workshops with autistic children and children with learning disabilities (between 3 - 10 years of physical age) in La Chanterelle School in Brussels in Belgium. My research / practice are focused on perception as the main factor determining our relationship with reality. Our perception of the surrounding world consequently influences our behavior."

sound and architecture. concrete sound mirrors, Cobusier & Vaerese and the Philips pavilion, Cornelius Cardew and his Scratch cottage

"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."

"today there are various sophisticated methods to locate sound (acoustic camera, methods of acoustic holography, microphone arrays), but known visualizations by spectrograms still strongly remind of thermographic images. acoustic shapes, unlike thermographic ones, differ from the contour of the measured object. image overlays make it even more difficult to read and compare the results."

"Made in 1924 by Viking Eggeling, "Symphonie Diagonale" is the best abstract film yet conceived. It is an experiment to discover the basic principles of the organization of time intervals in the film medium. This version was restored by Gösta Werner in 1994 in collaboration with The Swedish Filminstitute. Music by Olga Neuwirth, 2006."

"Seven years ago, composer Craig Shepard packed a pocket trumpet and a musician's composition notebook and set off for a month-long stroll across Switzerland. Along the way, Shepard traversed 250 miles, composing a piece of music every day and performing it precisely at 6:00 pm in the Swiss town squares, harbors, and mountaintops that he reached at the end of each daily trek. Now, every Sunday between February 26 and May 21, Shepard will be afoot on the sidewalks of Brooklyn, fanning out over 13 routes that intersect nearly every neighborhood in the borough for his follow-up project, On Foot: Brooklyn."

"Reporting on the aims of the Positive Soundscapes research project last week, news sources picked up on the apparent psychological importance of a varied and unlikely range of urban sounds, and about how we might benefit from the smart integration and manipulation of them within the built experience. Admittedly they phrased it rather more succinctly. "

""The Melody Road will allow a car passing above it to play a simple tune, which is made audible by ridges on the road's surface. The pitch of the note created is increased by increasing the frequency of the ridges, and the opposite is also true.""

""We found that ambient noise is an important antecedent for creative cognition," said Ravi Mehta, a professor of business administration at the University of Illinois. "A moderate level of noise not only enhances creative problem-solving but also leads to a greater adoption of innovative products in certain settings.""

"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."

The name of Walter Fähndrich is not likely to provoke many nods of recognition. This is unfortunate, given that the Swiss composer and violist has been a fervent artist for nearly four decades. A teacher of improvisation and designer of sound installations, Fähndrich seems to prefer the indeterminacy of real-time human interaction over recordable media and gives us this rare glimpse into his open reach.