Sound Research

""I can hear with my knee better than with my calves." This statement made by Bernhard Leitner, which initially seems absurd, can be explained in light of an interest that he still pursues today with unbroken passion and meticulousness: the study of the relationship between sound, space, and body. Since the late 1960s, Bernhard Leitner has been working in the realm between architecture, sculpture, and music, conceiving of sounds as constructive material, as architectural elements that allow a space to emerge."

Very good blog collecting numerous examples of sound art, acoustic ecology, etc.

"Like a 3-D take on Jackson Pollock, the latest work by the artist Martin Klimas begins with splatters of paint in fuchsia, teal and lime green, positioned on a scrim over the diaphragm of a speaker."

"Welcome to the community webspace of The WIRED Lab, a project focusing on Alan Lamb's work with The Wires. This *beta* site complements the WIRED project with an additional (to be launched!) website documenting Lamb's practice & other lab projects. "

"Rabbit Travelogue was originally initiated by Rita Hui and Edwin Lo. This project is an on-going dialogues and travelogues between the two artist (Rita on visual; Edwin on sound) about the changes and happenings in Hong Kong. Through the fictional character in the project, Rabbit, witnessing happenings and locating different scenes in Hong Kong, this project tries to articulate the two artists' discussion about the changes in cityscape, soundscape as well as questioning and exploring the essence of memories about the environments that we have been. Past and present; absent and present; the artists are still in adventure among these."

"Soundwalk Editions features artists and composers who use environmental field recordings as a point of departure in their work. By recording sounds outside of the conventional studio you are in the act field recording, audibly engaged with ears that gradually refine a sonic experience, like the eye looking through a camera lens. Field recording is often synonymous with phonography, in which sound takes the place of image in documenting a location, physical act, or a natural occurrence. Drawing attention to the quality and experiential nature that can exist in the soundscapes of our environment, these works allow the viewer to have an intimate experience with the various compositional approaches practiced by each individual artist. Through listening to these recordings we have the opportunity to become aware of the various dialects that can exist in the language of field recording compositions."

"Listen to the eerie sounds of "The Wandering Soul" - also known as "Ghost Tape Number 10" - that was broadcast by loudspeakers installed on Swifts and other units during "Chieu Hoi" and Psychological Warfare missions to "taunt" the enemy. { "So Moui" or "Numbah Ten" was a common slang term used by both Vietnamese and Americans, meaning it was "Really Bad" } "

"Did you know there are audio recordings that predate Thomas Edison's phonograph by almost 20 years? The phonautogram was invented by a Frenchman named Éduoard Léon-Scott and patented in 1857, translating sound waves (shakily) onto sheets of paper. But for the last century, no one had been able to decode the information on Léon-Scott's sheets and listen, until a team of scientists and historians figured it out."

The urban and the sound are very much one and the same. Noises and tweets, squeaks and bangs, whispers and rattle are constantly present and play an important part in the shaping of the environment. consciously or unconsciously we are attracted or repulsed by certain sounds in specific configurations. But how is it interlinked with time and space, how does it tie in with time and certainly space, the much talked focus in the urban discussion.

"I just came back from New York City, a place with an overwhelming sound, everywhere you go. And each location in a city like that has its own resonance, its own sonic identity. That's hard to hear though if there is so much noise around it becomes a cacophony. But what if we could isolate this resonance and listen to the astonishing differences in the sound of urban spaces? Davide Tidoni did just that with A Balloon for Linz. Luckily Linz is not NYC, and he was able to find spots which were quiet enough to make a clear recording (using his nice helmet mount microphone). You might recognize the concept as Davide did something similar before."

"The phonography scene is small and fragmented, yet ambitious and international - all factors which make it simultaneously hard and easy to keep up with developments. Ever since it was founded, Gruenrekorder has attempted to be more than just a label and turned into a hub for field recording-related issues and projects. They therefore seemed like an obvious choice for Angus Carlyle as curators for the audio part of his „Autumn Leaves" compendium."

Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University is hoping to start a new research discipline that he calls soundscape ecology; it will "use sound as a way to understand the ecological characteristics of a landscape," as ScienceDaily reports.

"This webpage contains earthquake "sounds" created from seismic recordings around the world generated by the 2011/03/11 Mw9.0 Tohoku, Japan earthquake. They provide a unique way for us to listen to the vibration of the Earth that is otherwise inaudible to us, and to decipher the complicated earthquake physics and triggering processes. "

""The Music Box," the project of which this tower is a part, is one of those things that requires a hyphen or a compound word to describe; Delaney Martin, its curator, calls it "a shantytown-sound laboratory." "

"For most fans attending a baseball game is a summer diversion, an addiction, an act of devotion. I'm a music critic, so for me it's something else too: an immersion in bustling, jumbled, enveloping sound. And if you think of the Yankees as an athletic orchestra, the team has a comfortable and acoustically lively new concert hall. What if I treated a game as a kind of outdoor musical piece? "

"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."

"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."

"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"

Sound artist Rutger Zuydervelt and designer Gerco Hiddink have teamed up to organize a new audio project called Bridges. The project asked a group of eight well-known improvisational musicians to "react" to four Dutch bridges (or, more accurately, to field recordings made on, under, and near those bridges). The project is thus as much about musical improv as it is about infrastructural acoustics-a structural ecology of sound vibrantly humming in the spaces around us. "

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: