Sound Research

If you live in New York, I can understand how this kind of racket might drive you bats sometimes, but to me it was a revelation.

"The International Ambiances Network aims at structuring and developing the research field of architectural and urban ambiances. It wishes to promote the sensory domain in the questioning and design of lived space. This sensitive approach of the built environment involves all the senses (sound, light, odors, touch, heat,…). Such a network favors multisensoriality and pluridisciplinarity (human and social sciences ; architecture and urban planning ; engineering and applied physics). It is open to a wide variety of profiles and includes research activities as well as design, teaching or artistic ones."

"Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin works on the AlloSphere, one of the largest scientific and artistic instruments in the world. Based at UC Santa Barbara, the AlloSphere maps complex data in time and space. Dr. Kuchera-Morin, a composer, demoed the AlloSphere at TED2009 in February, showing five films of scientific data mapped visually and sonically into compelling art."

"Playing sound effects both pleasant and awful, Julian Treasure shows how sound affects us in four significant ways. Listen carefully for a shocking fact about noisy open-plan offices."

Sound map by Peter Cusack

CRiSAP is a research centre dedicated to the exploration of the rich complexities of sound as an artistic practice. Our main aim is to to extend the development of the emerging disciplinary field of sound arts and to encourage the broadening and deepening of the discursive context in which sound arts is practised.

"Think of your favorite place and you're likely to conjure a picture in your mind -- a landscape not a soundscape. That's because you're not Peter Cusack, a sound artist keenly interested in the intersection of environment and sound. On a recent visit to Duke I asked him about pleasant versus positive sounds, a topic that got him riffing on sonic monoculture and why it's such a negative part of our modern culture."

"A sound artist and musician, Cusack explores the relationship between the sound in an environment, its geography or physical features, and the people living and working there. Peter Cusack ImageHe travels the world to study and collect sounds that uniquely define cultures and ecosystems, from the crack of spring ice breakup on Siberia's Lake Baikal to the sounds of Chernobyl and other sites that have sustained major environmental damage. He is senior lecturer in Sound Arts & Design, London College of Communication, University of Arts London."

It was the anthropologist's desire to understand the many ways that sound can be meaningful, coupled with the artist's ability to 'think outside the box', - leading to talk of thunderstorms harmonizing with jazz concerts and 'contrapuntal conversations' - which gave us the theme of the conference - 'The Body, the Environment, and Human Sound-making'. This conference, with its many complementary papers and presentations, you see and hear here now. Steven Feld suggested that a new form of media might help give the papers the voice they needed. We took this advice, and hope that the possibility to hear the sounds and see the visuals of many of the papers as you read them gives an important new dimension to the conference proceedings.

"Howard Gardner's work around multiple intelligences has had a profound impact on thinking and practice in education - especially in the United States. Here we explore the theory of multiple intelligences; why it has found a ready audience amongst educationalists; and some of the issues around its conceptualization and realization. "

"Acoustic Engineer Trevor Cox takes us on a two-part journey into the world of acoustics research, starting with the sounds we love to hate."

Coney Island is a place like none other, known around the world for its iconic amusements and the role its had throughout history as America's first playground. At the same time the community that lives, works and struggles to support Coney Island's survival has gone unknown and unseen, until now.

"At www.mta.me, Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA's actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli's 1972 diagram."

How do they make those sounds in the movies?

Great introduction to field recording by the amazing organization Sound and Music in London.

"Regular one-to-one interviews with artists, curators, writers, publishers and academics who engage broadly with sound and its use in contemporary and historical arts practice."

"A collaborative sound map of one of the cleanest rivers in Europe: the Paiva river which runs in northern Portugal and has its mouth in the Douro river. The sound map was developed by Portuguese sound art organization Binaural/Nodar together with students from primary and secondary schools of the areas where the river passes."

"UrbanRemix is a collaborative and locative sound project. Our goal in developing UrbanRemix was to design a platform and series of public workshops that would enable participants to develop and express the acoustic identity of their communities, and enable users of the website to explore and experience the soundscapes of the city in a novel fashion."

"Audio Explorers is a brand new sound art bursary scheme that invites primary schools in South Cumbria to explore the creative use of sound through a pupil-led project for Years 5 and 6."

"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. "