Sound Research

"When I visited Ameland this summer I was surprised by the sounds I heard on the beach. Wind was blowing hard and played the ropes of the sailboats' masts. I love to encounter those sounds, it's like the elements are playing rhythms too complex for me to understand. But you can also help the wind a little by building some instruments. That's what Pierre Sauvageot did with his Harmonic Fields sound installation. Wouldn't it be magical to suddenly hear these wonderful sounds while walking in the dunes?"

This site documents my work as a mixed-media artist. I've worked primarily with sound and video since the early 1990s and performed and worked on projects throughout Europe and North America. In recent years I have also concentrated on giving workshops on various aspects of sound that encourage collaboration through social communication, performance, mapping, recording and editing. - ohn grzinich

Andra McCartney is a multimedia soundscape artist, composer, performer and poet. Currently she is working on 'Soundwalking Home', a series of soundwalks through neighborhoods in which she has lived, and a soundscape documenting the Lachine Canal region, near Montreal. McCartney's installations have been shown at Maid in Cyberspace Encore (Montreal), KAAI Modern Fuel Gallery (Kingston, Ontario), miXing Women In Sound Art Festival (Chicago), The Kitchen ... Her writings have been published in Leonardo Music Journal, MusicWorks ... She has collaborated with visual artist P.S. Moore, championed the work of soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp, and she is actively involved with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. She lives in Montreal and is teaches at Concordia University, Montreal.

Tuned City is a platform which proposes an examination of the relations between architecture and sound. This ongoing project draws the traditions of critical discussion about urban space within architecture and urban planning discourse - as well as its strategies and working methods - into the context of sound art. This expanded discussion reinforces the potential of the spatial and communicative properties of sound as a tool and means of urban practice. Tuned City continues as a platform, exploring other cities and locations with their own cultural and social settings, working theoretically and practically on the question how sound and architecture are related.

"Acousticians have been designing concert halls for more than a century, but Dr. Kyriakakis does something different. He shapes the sound of music to conform to the space in which it is played. The goal is what Dr. Kyriakakis calls the "ground truth" - to replicate the original in every respect. "We remove the room," he said, "so the ground truth can be delivered." "

"SonicMemorial.org is an open archive and an online audio installation of the history of The World Trade Center. We are continuing to collect stories, ambient sounds, voicemails, and archival recordings to tell the rich history of the twin towers, the neighborhood and the events of 9/11."

What does sound look like? It's a question we have seen answered by quite some artists, creating sculptures of sounds, frozen at one moment in time. Like Yes/No by Carsten Nicolai or the Rolex Tower soundwave sculpture. Never have I seen something like this Orproject design though.

"Yes/No visualizes sound waves traveling through air, in a very detailed sculpture made of steel. CarstenNicolai used recordings of Laurie Anderson saying "yes" and "no" as input while creating this sculpture. You can clearly see the difference between vowels and consonants."

"We can't see sound. We can only judge the beauty of it by listening. Sometimes it seems like people who work with sound don't really know or care about visual aesthetics. Look at a website like this, for instance. On the other hand I think the opposite is also true."

The Highline is an elevated park, extending, at the time of this recording, from 13th Street to around 30th Street on the west side of Manhattan. I had chosen the Highline for recording because of the multi-dimensional sonic perspective it provides, with sound coming at you from below, from front and back, and above. My plan was to use the sounds in a composition called 'Elevated City', set to premiere as part of a World Listening Day event at New York University, July 18th.

"Neuhaus builds what he calls "sound works," more than 30 so far, that transform physical "places," most of which exist for other reasons. The premise is that we perceive space with our ears as well as our eyes: We hear a room as well as see it. The change is basic but subtle. A total of five - including two opened this spring on a bridge and in a corridor in Bern - are still running. Having toyed with such terms as "installation" and "sound environment," and trying to determine whether he can be called a sculptor or not, he still has trouble defining what he does. Ask Neuhaus what he is, however, and he answers without delay: "I'm an artist." "

Lying minutes off the coast of the Bronx mainland is City Island. Spanning only 1.5 miles in length and occupying space off the coasts of both New York City and Nassau County, its singular location and history make the island a living laboratory for exploring New York City's history and future. The entire length of City Island can be easily traversed by foot and the surrounding water can be seen and heard from virtually all points. This proximity to the water lends City Island residents a unique perspective, as they enjoy many of the conveniences of an urban life, yet still maintain a close relationship with the water. This walk will incorporate anthropological 'field study' techniques. The participants will be engaged in exercises designed to observe the environment and decipher its visual and aural 'cues'. The group will uncover the relatively unknown wonders of this "island existence" that thrive within the confines of an urban environment.

"The design, for a house on a generic suburban lot, mixes sound on two levels. First, "sonic windows," embedded with microphones and tiny cameras, capture images and sounds from outside the house and broadcast them inside. Second, the house encourages family members to mix, layer, and juxtapose pre-recorded sounds with those collected from outside. Think bluebirds chirping along with Beyonce, or the postman slamming the mailbox shut at a climactic moment in a Beethoven symphony."

""we tend to be indifferent to acoustics" in contemporary residences, and think only of "competing with traffic outside". Normally, he continues, "architecture is about being quiet", whereas there's a rich history of sound and architecture - especially in pre-literate societies. He talks of the clarity of sound in the Greek amphitheatre, of the intentional use of sound spaces in Medieval and Gothic cathedrals, which were "designed by acoustics as much as visual principles - they were considered 'sacred resonators'"."

"This short film is actually an advertisement for Japanese mobile phone company Docomo, but it's nonetheless hard to resist: a linear musical instrument designed by Drill Inc. is played by the descent of a wooden ball as it slowly rolls down track, sending xylophonic plinks and plonks out into the forest. "

"I'm quite late hearing this for the first time, but I was thrilled to discover composer Pierre Sauvageot's Harmonic Fields project, a participatory landscape of wind-activated musical instruments temporarily installed on the beach near Birkrigg Common, Cumbria, England. The haphazard plinks, drum rolls, whistles and drones is often mesmerizingly beautiful, as the following video makes clear. It's a kind of weather plug-in, constructed as a sequence of very different movements in space."

On the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, sound artist Mark Bain has released the full audio file of the sound of the Twin Towers collapsing, a melancholic howl terrestrially amplified by the region's geology. You can listen to it here:

"20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception"

"In the MASS MoCA portion of this multi-part project, Harmonic Bridge, low sounds roll and drone under the Route 2 overpass half a block from MASS MoCA. Entering the space under the bridge, one becomes aware of a turning eddy of sound in the midst of intersecting streams of traffic. Cars pass by heading north or south on Marshall Street and east or west on the Route 2 bridge, but this linear motion is counterpoised by a rolling, humming C as calming as the rhythm of ocean waves. Although cars stream by, pedestrians lose the impetus to move forward, derailed by this cool pool of sound with its mysterious, chant-like hum. Harmonic Bridge presents an aural cross-section of North Adams, a slice of the city in the key of C, comprised of the fundamental note and its overtone series."

"Conceptualizing sound in geologic terms is a daunting task. Both the geologic and the sonic are time-based media, defined by duration. Yet sound speaks in milliseconds, the geologic in eons. They exist in different time zones. So, given this conundrum, instead of considering how to measure sound within a geologic scale, perhaps we are better served to ask: What do geologic materials sound like or, more precisely, what do geologic materials hear? This latter question might seem ridiculously anthropomorphic, given that we are talking about material objects. So let us first consider what exactly sound and hearing are."