Sound Research

"VoxAura; the River Sings suggests that we pay attention to these complex issues that ultimately control our destiny by listening to the chemical composition of the Baltic."

"The digital movies shown on this page are part of the research and production of a new permanent sound sculpture for the entrance hall of MAXXI in Rome called Sonic Mappings that opened on October 23, initially as part of a new exhibition called Open Museum, Open City. These Acoustical Visions were made at some of the sites in Rome where I was making audio recordings for Sonic Mappings and now part of the permanent collection of MAXXI."

"Within a grid of touch sensitive steel posts surrounded by profile spot lights, visitors compose shadow structures and ambient sound."

"Sound can be assumed by its transformative properties and processes, as a form of alchemy, a transmutation both tangible and intangible, psychic and physical, where every echo or object is processed in terms of its most primal roots, in terms of deep relationships within nature's elements. In that way, resonance and materiality configure universes, which no longer have to choose between fixed states, but rather stay open to the processes that arise in-between, as a poetic interstice of sonic existence. Directed by the artists Navid Navab, and Michael Montanaro, Aquaphoneia is an interesting installation debutant Ars Electronica 2016: Alchemists of our Time, in which those vibrant process get explored, allowing time and matter to converge in a transmutation of sonic signals; waves and corpuscles between the liquidity of sound and the sound through liquids."

"Imagine yourself at a concert hall looking at a symphonic orchestra on stage. Have you ever noticed that high-pitched strings sit left of low-pitched strings? Going from left to right, one usually sees violins, violas, cellos and double basses. That is, one moves from high pitches on the left to low pitches on the right. Why? The orchestra's arrangement is not a cultural oddity, like driving on the right side of the road. Rather, it is due to our own biological makeup."

"The ocean might seem like a quiet place, but listen carefully and you might just hear the sounds of the fish choir. Most of this underwater music comes from soloist fish, repeating the same calls over and over. But when the calls of different fish overlap, they form a chorus."

"Ready to hear some trippy stuff? Check out these audio illusions from Diana Deutsch (of Sometimes Behaves So Strangely fame). Explanations for each illusion are at the bottom the post. All the audio and explanations come from Diana Deutsch's Audio Illusions site, where you can check out her CDs for more brain-bending tracks. And let us know how it goes -- leave us a note in the comments section."

"A true state of listening cannot be acquired by force. The order to listen - LISTEN! we all have heard and experienced it - guarantees a closing off, a turning away, a non-listening, possibly even a permanent disturbance in our once open and trusting listening channels. It is perceived like any sound that annoys, disrupts, hurts, or injures: we cringe, we try to block it out, might fight it, may want to get rid of it, but we will not listen. "

"THE WORLD IS buzzing with activity that's invisible to us. Take slime mold. The fungus, also known as Physarum polycephalum, can be found hiding in dark, dank places like a pile of damp leaves or the belly of a log. Though it's not invisible-the mold has a mossy yellow color-to the naked eye and ear, it doesn't appear to move or make a sound. Of course that's not true. Slime mold is a living, ever-shifting organism."

"I sat down with Jad Abumrad and talked about sound, music and the function of music. Then I turned that conversation into a film."

"Can we access the plurality of our contemporary world through silence? And to what do the limits of our sonic imagination attest to? Artist and writer Salomé Voegelin re-listens to the body in silence, so as to grant a new agency, whereby she repositions the relationship between the self and others at the edge of the aesthetic and political."

"Listening - to loved ones, strangers, faraway places - is an act of generosity and a source of discovery. In this episode, TED speakers describe how we change when we listen deeply."

"Wayfindr, London's best shot at transport accessibility for the blind, was developed out of a couple's new year's resolution. Digital designer Umesh Pandya and his optometrist wife were looking at ways they could collaborate in 2014, while satisfying a deep-rooted desire to help blind people. "We wanted to help people living with sight loss," says Pandya, "My wife obviously deals with the diagnosis and prevention part of it, but I can't do the prevention because I'm not a scientist. I had an interest in accessibility work anyway, and I'm fascinated with the internet of things, connectivities, and exploring what happens when our interface disappears.""

"Instead of dealing with the aesthetic aspects of the acoustic environment, the evolution of listening habits or cultural representations of urban noise, sound will be considered as a means for action and social practice. This paper tries to develop a praxiological approach to sound. To do so, two major obstacles must be overcome. On the one hand, it is necessary to challenge the three main socially recognized categories of sounds: music, speech and noise. "

"The performative sensory environment Displace 2.0 takes place in the building of the recently dissolved platform TAG in the Hague for the 2012 TodaysArt festival. Displace 2.0 puts your sensory experience in the foreground. Groups of visitors progress through the three floors of the TAG building, encountering a series of environments and experience sensory-based actions that intermingle the senses of smell, taste, sight, sound and touch. At first, these sensory modalities are separated from each other, but then they grow over time to cause intense, almost hallucinatory sensations merging to the point of saturation."

Art sound radio

NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft has entered the planet's magnetosphere, where the movement of particles in space is controlled by what's going on inside Jupiter. "We've just crossed the boundary into Jupiter's home turf," said Juno Principal Investigator Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio. "We're closing in fast on the planet itself and already gaining valuable data."

"Vera Wyse Munro (1897-1966) was a pioneering New Zealand radio broadcaster, improviser, and experimental sound artist. As an artist, her primary media were amateur radio broadcasts, Morse poetry, and sono-topographical scores. Via her broadcasts, which were frequently received by amateur radio operators as far afield as the United States and Europe, Munro initiated some of the earliest telematic performances, in which she would perform prepared violin in structured improvisations with other musicians broadcasting from elsewhere in the world. Munro's work was often necessarily clandestine, as a result of legislation curbing amateur radio activity in New Zealand. As a result of this, as well as the absence of extant documentation of her live and ephemeral practice, Munro's work has been largely overlooked in New Zealand's cultural history."

"Sampling is a production tool that is fundamental to electronic music. A seemingly simple act - taking small bits of prerecorded sound, often from an existing composition, and incorporating them into a new piece of music - has in the past few decades proven to be a revolutionary cultural force. An essential element for the development of hip-hop in the 1980s, as well as for electronic music scenes concurrently taking shape around the world, sampling helped lower the barrier of entry for potential music makers: No longer did a producer need studio access or a group of musicians to make full and rich productions. Instead, they could dig for loops and breaks from a wealth of existing material and use the pieces they found to create new compositions. The process also allowed the artists to insert themselves into a different type of musical timeline, traversing and connecting decades of sounds in a way that would have been impossible before the dawn of sampling."