Sound Research

"Open Space 2014" is an exhibition introducing works of media art and other forms of artistic expression born out of today's media environments, to a broad audience. Literally a beginner's guide to media art, the exhibition features leading works from the realm of media art, artworks incorporating cutting-edge technologies, works with a critical standpoint, and in addition, projects that are currently in progress at various research institutions. All of them are being displayed along with explanatory notes designed to help the visitor gain a better understanding, according to our aim to present media art in a fun and easily accessible way. Also on the schedule during the exhibition period are a number of related programs including talk sessions, lectures, symposia and workshops with artists and experts, as well as guided tours around the exhibits with explanations by the curatorial staff. A space that combines ICC's diverse functions, Open Space integrates galleries, a mini theater, and the video archive "HIVE." Since its launch in 2006, the exhibition has been held as an admission-free event with changing contents each year. Based on the mission of ICC, it aims to function as an open platform where possibilities of communication culture and art created with the help of advanced technologies can be presented to a large number of people.

S.T.R.H. Smoleński's installation fills the main exhibition hall of the Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk entirely, denying viewers a safe distance and pulling them towards its interior. The visual elements consist of massive, static, 3-dimensional objects which generate low-frequency sound at specific intervals. The sound unfolds from a nearly inaudible acoustic pressure into powerful rumblings that shake everything in their path - including the walls of the space and the body of the viewer - and eventually dissipate into complete silence. This way, contact with the work of art becomes a total sensory experience that involves not only the viewer's vision and hearing but their whole body; it is an entirely physical sensation. Though not devoid of a visual presence, the piece makes its impact mainly with sound, which, generated in specific ways, creates the impression of an all-encompassing experience - a synthesis of the senses that combines cues perceived by spatial receptors (eyes and ears) and contact receptors (skin and muscle).

"My research is also experimenting with new immersive technology in the areas of vibrotactile experiences, gesture recognition devices and sensor technology that translates body movement into digitally generated sound and image. Each of these technologies has initially been developed to enhance the sensory experiences of those with sensory loss, mental illness or individuals with disabilities."

"Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio: 980-1980" is a book/CD set produced by Patrick Feaster http://www.dust-digital.com/feaster/ This video is derived from a slideshow that was presented by Patrick Feaster at the 2011 ARSC Conference: http://www.arsc-audio.org/"

"In this dual performance-lecture, "In Search of Queer Sound," Tcherepnin proposed that sound, and the process of listening, exists beyond pure materiality: listening as a social process, one that is not only natural, but also cultural. He suggested that much like linguistic comprehension, our perception of sound is socially coded. "

"First Sounds strives to make humanity's earliest sound recordings available to all people for all time. Humanity's earliest sound recordings constitute a rich sonic heritage of inestimable value to historians of technology, media, and expressive culture. They are among the rarest and least accessible recordings in our audio legacy. When held by institutions for which they are not the primary focus, many go unrecognized by their curators as sound recordings. And even when correctly catalogued, they commonly remain unpreserved and inaccessible due to a lack of funding or expertise."

Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, the phonautograph was conceived as a " ... investigating the development of a cluster of practices called "sonification,"

"How can art (in all its forms), exhibits, installations and provocations be a better catalyst to raise awareness, support and momentum for urban nature and green spaces? "

""The Smallest of Wings" juxtaposed the beating of moth wings recorded in upstate New York with the buzzing sound of hummingbirds' wings from the Amazon to create an immersive environmental experience. Vitiello and engineers from Arup Acoustics designed an open, dome-like configuration over an inviting grass circle for the installation. Eighteen loudspeakers were attached to the configuration with four, very large subwoofers on the ground."

"In his 1967 address "The Eco-Logic of Muzak," for Muzak's Scientific Board of Advisers, Dr. James Keenan, an industrial psychologist from Stanford University, spoke of Muzak as being "synomorphic with the modern world and interrelated with all matters of time and place: Muzak helps human communities because it is a nonverbal symbolism for the common stuff of everyday living in the global village."1 Keenan characterizes Muzak not merely as background music, but as a "language" that builds utopias through sweet and soothing harmonies. "

"This paper will explore how the practice of soundwalking can be a tool for memory retrieval. I ask: How are memories created and remembered in the mind and felt within the body? What happens to our perception of self, home, and knowing as we move through spaces and places of significance? "

"The comparison of a city's clock to a person's heart, though it has been made countless times, remains evocative. When Christina Kubisch first visited MASS MoCA in 1996, she was moved by the fact that the century-old factory clock had not kept time, nor had its bells rung, since 1986, when the Sprague Electric Company vacated the 13-acre site. This 19th-century clock, located in an eighty-foot tower with a 750-pound and a 1,000-pound bell, had set the rhythm of the workday in North Adams since 1895, ringing every quarter hour. Now those bells and beautiful brass clockworks share the tower with components of The Clocktower Project: solar panels, electronic sound system, and a computer with Kubisch's unique program on its flash disc. "

Making a Windshield for a Telinga Parabolic Microphone

"Rosetta's Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious 'song' that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. RPC principal investigator Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, head of Space Physics and Space Sensorics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, tells us more."

"Music From Nowhere 1st exhibition: Generator Sound Art, New York, 1990 In the Music From Nowhere series a variety of loudspeaker cabinets are transformed into acoustic sound-producing devices. The actual speakers are removed from inside the speaker cabinets and the cabinet interiors are refitted with mechanical-acoustic sound-producing systems. All devices are automated so that they work independently for an unlimited length of time. These may be modified water fountains, mechanical vibrators, or logic and motor-driven systems that articulate acoustic sounds. Each system is designed with built-in mechanical variables to produce variation or indeterminacy within the sound, thus helping to create the illusion that one is listening to a recording being broadcast through the given speaker cabinet. Each speaker cabinet has a plexiglas backing so that the viewer can see inside the box. These fake loudspeakers are exhibited together in a room so that a form of 'real' musique concrete is achieved."

Positive soundscapes project In the acoustics community, sound in the environment - especially that made by other people - has overwhelmingly been considered in negative terms, as both intrusive and undesirable. The strong focus of traditional engineering acoustics on reducing noise level ignores the many possibilities for characterising positive aspects of the soundscapes around us. Desirable aspects of the soundscape have been investigated in the past, mainly by artists and social scientists. This work has had little impact on quantitative engineering acoustics, however, perhaps because of barriers to communication across different disciplines."

Cities and Memory is a global field recording & sound art work that records both the present reality of a place, but also its imagined, alternative counterpart - remixing the world, one sound at at time. very faithful field recording document on the sound map is accompanied by a reworking, a processing or an interpretation that imagines that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new. The listener can choose to explore locations through their actual sounds, or explore interpretations of what those places could be - or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.

"Why can't you see in outer space and why can't you hear in a rainforest? A conversation, with sound illustrations, with the composer and sound artist Francisco López in advance of his performance at EMPAC in Troy, New York on April 28, 29, 30, 2011. Touching on his past and future creations and experiments including a 2001 work for the now inaccessible Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage interior and even a recording of our Clocktower clockworks. Plus a a profile of his remarkable new project, SONM (Sound Archive of Experimental Music and Sound Art), in Murcia, Spain."

"New York is hosting its first retrospective of the Belgian-born artist Carsten Höller, at the city's New Museum. Over a twenty-year career Höller has explored themes such as childhood, love and safety by creating playful and disorientating pieces "

"Jana Winderen. Ultrafield. 2013 Jana Winderen. Ultrafield. 2013. Sixteen-channel ambisonic sound installation. Dimensions variable. Surround sound audio softward and installation consultancy by Tony Myatt, Professor of Sound, University of Surrey. Collection the artist."