"Good Life Taylor's idea was to create a vibrant, creative, musical space within the City of Taylor parks system where people of all ages can gather, create music, and enjoy the outdoors. Good Life Taylor offered to pay for the development of a concept plan for the playground and to fund construction costs not covered by other sources, and they have been hard at work raising funds for the past several years. The playground, created in the shape of a musical treble clef, is located in Murphy Park between a lake and a swimming pool in an area previously a sand volleyball court. The playground includes native landscaping, a shade structure, and site furnishings."
"Videogrep is a command line tool written by Sam Lavigne that searches through dialog in video files and makes "supercuts" based on what it finds. It will recognize .srt or .vtt subtitle tracks, and transcriptions that can be generated with vosk. It's like grep, but for video."
"The dream of creating a visual music comparable to auditory music found its fulfillment in animated abstract films by artists such as Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye and Norman McLaren; but long before them, many people built instruments, usually called "color organs," that would display modulated colored light in some kind of fluid fashion comparable to music."
"Step inside the world of Bioni Samp, an urban beekeeper who makes honey - and music - from his bees. This immersive 360 profile takes you deep inside the beehive. Peter Boyd Maclean's film uses cinematic narrative conventions with immersive sound and vision in order to intensify the experience of becoming fully immersed in the story."
"In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records with a self-proclaimed mandate to record the sounds of the entire world. From the Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy-five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized these recordings on their new album Return to Archive, which was assembled entirely from the so-called non-musical sounds released on Folkways. On just the album's first track, dolphins, beetles, telephones, humans stretching the limits of their vocal cords, a shortwave radio, and metal balers co-mingle in a fantasia of sound both everyday and extraordinary. Each track on Return to Archive morphs its source material into something completely unexpected, honoring and expanding on Folkways' legacy of sonic exploration. Featuring Evicshen and Aaron Dilloway."
"In 1983, the Brooklyn Bridge made continuous sounds created from the oscillating drones of cars moving over a steel grid roadway, which later was silenced in the late 80's by being paved over by blacktop."
"Organ of Corti is an experimental instrument that recycles noise from the environment. It does not make any sound of its own, but rather it attempts to draw our attention to the sounds already present by framing them in a new way. Named after the organ of hearing in the inner ear, it uses the acoustic technology of sonic crystals to accentuate and attenuate frequencies within the broad range of sound present in road traffic or falling water. By recycling surplus sounds from our environment, we hope to challenge expectations of what might constitute a piece of music by adding nothing to the existing soundscape but rather offering new ways of listening to what is already there. This instrument is a device that, for us, rematerializes our experience of sound, inviting us to "listen to ourselves listen"."
"There is a parallel city beneath our feet, connected by pipes and caverns, carrying rainwater, electricity, (un-)sanitary waste, and utilities. In St. Paul, It has been carved into the limestone rock for over a hundred years and extends for many miles. Above-ground pedestrians rarely notice the openings--manholes, gratings, and outfalls--and can barely imagine the subterranean spaces. That is where sound comes in: ears can judge volume,materials, shapes, and space better than eyes, in this case."
"Julianne Swartz's work is rooted in emotion, vulnerability, and the provocation to recognize and connect to one another as feeling human beings. Over the years Swartz has returned again and again to using the human voice, recording singers both professional and amateur to create moving works that embrace visitors with sound and emotion."
Chapter One: An Acoustics Primer
Sound waves reflect off of harder surfaces the same way billiard balls bounce off the bumpers of a pool table-the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. A sound wave hitting a flat wall at 45° will reflect off it at 45°. These bounces will continue until the sound has been completely attenuated by the inefficient reflection (called damping) of the surfaces along with the normal falloff of the sound waves themselves."
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.
"Sound is everywhere in tropical forests. Rain drips from water-slicked leaves, birds screech, monkeys titter and bellow, branches crack, wind moans, and insects chirp and buzz. Vibrations pierce the humid understory and echo through the airy canopy, creating a symphony of sounds that speaks to both artist and scientist.
Monacchi is harvesting artistic inspiration as well as data. The chirps and rattles contain information about how species interact with the environment and each other, as well as the health of the habitat. Sometimes Monacchi uses his recordings to inspire the public, sometimes to inform ecological research. "I'm trying to be at the edge of both worlds," he says."
"Recent years have seen a worsening in the decline of honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) colonies. This phenomenon has sparked a great amount of attention regarding the need for intense bee hive monitoring, in order to identify possible causes, and design corresponding countermeasures. Honey bees have a key role in pollination services of both cultivated and spontaneous flora, and the increase in bee mortality could lead to an ecological and economical damage. Despite many smart monitoring systems for honey bees and bee hives, relying on different sensors and measured quantities, have been proposed over the years, the most promising ones are based on sound analysis. Sounds are used by the bees to communicate within the hive, and their analysis can reveal useful information to understand the colony health status and to detect sudden variations, just by using a simple microphone and an acquisition system. The work here presented aims to provide a review of the most interesting approaches proposed over the years for honey bees sound analysis and the type of knowledge about bees that can be extracted from sounds."
