Sound Research

"4DSOUND's John Connell reflectes on the potential of working with spatial sound technologies to encourage new states of awareness and reciprocity"

"Watching people, talking with them, and actively engaging in social practices are the participatory techniques through which the ethnographer learns to see the world as his or her participants do, rich with socially constructed and historically situated meaning. Yet the focus on seeing the world as your participants do sometimes eclipses the other sensory modes that people employ to make sense of social and material interactions."

"An immersive marvel of sonic ethnography, Expedition Content draws on audio recordings made by recent college graduate and Standard Oil heir Michael Rockefeller as part of the 1961 Harvard-Peabody Expedition to Netherlands New Guinea that set up tents among the indigenous Hubula (also known as Dani) people. "

"PhD student Kate Carr has started an new podcast series 'Interiorities' playing sonic experiments and documents from this Covid-19 time of 'lockdown'. Episodes are being released each Sunday through April on Mixcloud and fortnightly from May. Sound works so far include contributions by Angus Carlyle, Leo Okagawa, Mark Peter Wright,  Salomé Voegelin, Stephanie Merchak, Margaret Harmer, Paula Garcia Stone, Iris Garrelfs, Martin Kay, Francois Houle & Scant Intone and many many more."

Circuit-bending is an electronic art which implements creative audio short-circuiting. This renegade path of electrons represents a catalytic force capable of exploding new experimental musical forms forward at a velocity previously unknown. Anyone at all can do it; no prior knowledge of electronics is needed. The technique is, without a doubt, the easiest electronic audio design process in existence.

"Evolving out of experimental art series The Hibernation Project, EARS HAVE EYES is an auditory exhibition space for sound art on the radio. Local, national, and international artists and musicians are welcome to submit their work, sharing spatial soundscapes, auditory aesthetics, spoken word, noise, poetry, experimental compositions, thematic interviews, and other recorded media on the radio waves across Treaty 7 Territory in Southern Alberta - and beyond."

Chapter by Mack Hagood about the idea of using podcasting and audio as a form of scholarship.

"Audio papers resemble the regular essay or the academic text in that they deal with a certain topic of interest, but presented in the form of an audio production. The audio paper is an extension of the written paper through its specific use of media, a sonic awareness of aesthetics and materiality, and creative approach towards communication. The audio paper is a performative format working together with an affective and elaborate understanding of language. It is an experiment embracing intellectual arguments and creative work, papers and performances, written scholarship and sonic aesthetics."

"The artists who contributed to this final chapter of YCTM examine the sonic response-ability of the world that struggles to free itself of humanity. Starting with memories and dreams intercepted by sound in film and moving towards the felt effects of climate change and extinction, the chapter holds space for an empathic future where human-centred civilities become holistic code. This chapter is co-presented with Infrasonica and with Kunsthall Trondheim."

"CAMPBIENT is an annual sound art residency that brings together 22 people for 44 hours to conceptualize, produce, and record two sound art compositions in a natural setting. Participants are randomly split into two groups, each responsible for one side of the record, with the only caveat being that a contiguous field recording base track is audible throughout the piece. "

"ESC is a work of experimental audio-based scholarship combining sound studies, radio history, and environmental criticism. This unique project is a fully open access, fully digital suite of audiographic essays, presented as a ten-part podcast series, combining spoken commentary, clips from classic radio dramas, excerpts from films and television shows, news reports, and the work of contemporary sound artists. A brief written essay on the ESC website provides a helpful introduction and context for this project."

"The result was "Sound Wounds," performed at the Asian Art Museum late August, in which Kahraman invoked the war through sound and archival imagery. While conducting research for the project, she found a recording of the air raid siren. Although it made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, she listened to it over and over in her studio so that she could access her memories."

"Audible Inaudible is a term keyed by ethnomusicologist Martin J Daughtry where the violent sounds of war become muted by its auditors as a mechanism for survival. I have multiple memories that involve the terrifying sound of the air raid siren so I started the research in how to translate a sonic memory into object. This lead me to Martin's a book titled "Listening to War, Sound, Music and Survival in Wartime Iraq" where he describes an interview with a mother shielding her children from the violent sounds of war by holding them tight and pressing her arms against their ears. Her body, her flesh then acted as a perfect, natural micro environment to protect her children. I wanted to mimic this concept of "flesh as defense" so I introduced pyramid acoustic foam in the paintings; a material that "detains" sound. I started surgically cutting my linen and pushing the foam through it from the back. As it was penetrating the surface I felt as if I was conducting an operation of resistance. These calculated cuts and wounds were enabling the painting to breathe. Inhaling and exhaling it was reacting, resisting, defending and accepting these sonic wounds."

"Frames and variations, an experiential exhibition, encompassing sound, film and performance, by Hong Kong-based artist Samson Young. The show marks Young's debut solo exhibition with the gallery and will be on view from January 20th to March 4th, 2023, at Petzel's new Chelsea location at 520 W 25th Street. Inspired by the perception of sound and how it is distorted and concealed in cinema, this exhibition is comprised of two new immersive installations that center on the effects of situated listening. Young examines the spatial relationships between the aural source and the viewer's vision, adding to an illusion of sound that encircles the viewer sonically and visually."

"Resemble AI is among a new cohort of generative AI startups aiming to use finely tuned speech models to produce dubs, audiobooks, and other media ordinarily produced by regular human voices. But if such models, perhaps trained on hours of audio provided by actors, were to fall into malicious hands, these companies may find themselves at the center of a PR disaster and perhaps serious liability. So it's very much in their interest to find a way to make their recordings both as realistic as possible and easily verifiable as being generated by AI."

"The music of Prélude Au Sommeil was intended as sleep-inducing and tranquilizing for use in mental hospitals. It is unclear if the copies pressed actually had been distributed to mental hospitals or if the whole story was just a fantastical joke on the part of Mr. Perrey. This album is known as a precursor of what would later became known as "ambient music", 20 years before Brian Eno, the Kosmic Courier and the American minimalists."

"Exclusively composed with/from recordings of bees in the Olivier Darné's hives, located in Saint-Denis, suburb of Paris Going over bee, ears in the wind, we feel the density of real and also throw ourself into this dance of oscillations. From the site specific installation, commissioned by Les Instants Chavirès (France) for La Brasserie Bouchoule during Lieux Communs festival 2007"

"An Inquiry Concerning the Possibilities and Vagaries of Listening to Music while Sleeping - with Testimonial Consideration by Composers and Practitioners in the Field"

"They feature slime, crackling plastic, whispering, scratching, brushing and the thrumming of exquisitely groomed fingernails. They are, depending on whom you talk to, either the antidote to anxiety or a wellspring of annoyance. But might they also be art?"

"Blind walk (the denied city) is a sound walk that tells the story of Santo and Peppino, two friends blind from birth and therefore lacking a visual memory of the world. Guiding us on a journey through darkness, Santo and Peppino offer us two special points of view that help us reflect on the knowledge of the world and the awareness of ourselves. Talking about their lives, their way of dreaming, remembering and perceiving, Santo and Peppino reveal a personal and unconventional Palermo, where memories of university life and political struggle overlap with everyday experience; where the perception of art mixes with that of the night and where, above all, the problem of the absence of sight is resolves in the presence of a wealth of signals and codes through which it is possible to understand the world surrounding us. A dear and old blind friend has since many years very good guide dog, who also has lost his sight, so now they guide each other is the title of the second part of the project which consists of a series of guided tours to Manifesta held by blinds.The intent is both to provide a better usability of the exhibition to other blind people (who generally do not find an appropriate reception in exhibitions like this) and to offer to all visitors a non-canonical reading of the exhibited works. The visits will take place on pre-established days."