Sound Research

"The ground is in motion. GROUND acts as a LOOKING GLASS, as an AMPLIFIER for what we normally can´t perceive - tectonic plates are continously shifting … the permutations of landscapes constitute an infinite process of becoming… geosphere is a complex system that interferes with biosphere but also with anthroposphere, that part of the environment, that is made and modified by humans."

"Radio can be a familiar friend, source of knowledge, a marker of time and place. But as a cultural institution, what constitutes a "good voice" in radio reflects and transmits cultural norms and structures. When I started my Community Storytelling Radio Fellowship at Making Contact, I prepared by reading articles from Transom and AIR media about interviewing, storytelling, and production. I felt more intimidated as I read about advice on 'how to do radio,' especially since some parts were very physical (e.g., holding a microphone close to a person for a significant length of time). I wondered, "Where do disabled people like me fit in the radio community? Why don't articles about diversity in radio ever mention people with disabilities?" Al Letson's 2015 Transom manifesto explores the the default straight white male voice. It resonated with me immediately and I'd also add that the "default human being" on radio is able-bodied as well."

"In Hampi's Vijaya Vithala Temple, 500-year-old stone pillars miraculously produce the sounds of bells and percussion. Whether that's intentional or by chance remains a mystery."

"We use diffusion models to generate spectrograms that look like images but can also be played as sound."

David Tudor and John Driscoll demonstrating the performance installation, Rainforest IV (1973)

"Composer-Techie Charlie Morrow & colleagues explore the immersive world"

" OUR LIBRARY - A COLLECTION OF STORIES IN SOUND DEDICATED TO NATURE PASSIONATE ABOUT SOUND"

"This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth."

"The "Sonògraf" is an electronic audiovisual instrument. Thought as a music learning tool for primary schools, it allows the drawing to be transformed into music, turning gestural strokes and geometric figures into electronic sounds. A set of buttons and potentiometers allow live manipulation of the "sonification" characteristics of the drawing, making it possible to speed up, slow down or pause the resulting music, as well as decide its scales and tonalities."

"The Listening Room was ABC Radio's premier acoustic art program, broadcast each Monday on Classic FM at 9 pm from 1989 to 2003. The main presenter was Andrew McLennan. Its producers worked with Australian and international composers, writers, performance artists, electronic media artists, environmental sound recordists and sound designers. It won an array of national and international prizes.  "

"I gave a talk on my Masters Thesis Project in Architecture focusing on Altering Soundscapes in Exterior Environments using Helmholtz Resonators in Ceramic Bricks to absorb Low Frequency Traffic Noise."

Remember Forests? People around the world recorded the sounds of their forests, so you can escape into nature, and unwind wherever you are. Take a breath and soak in the forest sounds as they breathe with life and beauty! And while you are here, why not help to grow what keeps us alive? Climate change and governments are destroying our forests. Let's leave some trees for our grandchildren to climb and make the steps to restore our planet.

"Walking in nature has long been associated with creativity. Yet walking's associated research and artistic practices remain dogged by representationalism. Concomitantly, intersectional concerns of race, gender, and dis/ability determine what kinds of bodies are allowed to walk where (and in this case, the where is Brexit-era Britain). This article attempts to navigate the complexity of these tensions, contextualizing a five-day walking research-creation project along St. Cuthbert's Way that we called Queer Sonic Cultures. As academics and artists interested in the relationship between walking and composition, our initial propositions are to become affected as we walked and to create sonic cultures (songs) using whatever affected us along the way. In using research-creation as a research methodology, we understand our artistic compositional practice of co-creating lyrics-melody-harmony-production-arrangement as the research. Unlike some forms of arts-based research that use an artistic form to disseminate research findings, in research-creation the artistic practice is the research and the theory. In the interests of continuing to make this apparent, we shall prefer to describe this contextualizing article as Academic Liner Notes. The Academic Liner Notes begin with a brief description of the location of the walk, contextualized within the tradition of walking and composing in the British landscape, and the use of sound-based methods and literature to represent such landscapes. In this section we will trouble the whiteness and cis-hetero heritage of walking and art in rural Britain. Following this, we will introduce research-creation as a methodology contextualized within affect studies. We argue that the resultant sonic cultures (nine in total) rather than representing the walk, in fact, more-than-representationally intensify the affective dimensions of the relations we were part of along the way."

"This thesis is an exploration of some of the discourses arising out of the current ecological crises (Haraway 2016; Horton 2017) and argues that radio art is a constructive method for opening out practices of listening, for helping move beyond anthropocentric dialogues, and simultaneously beyond the constraints of dominant modes of storytelling. Ecological Thinking (Code 2006) and concepts of Planetary Time (Dimock 2003) are a useful framework from which to view contemporary radio art practices because they accentuate long and complex networks of interconnectivity, not only within nature, but, more recently, between living beings, technology and the environment. By identifying the interconnectedness of radio and transmission, and the possibility for immersion not only in the content but the process of the medium itself, it is hoped that recognition will be given to the necessity to think ecologically (holistically) in order to create sustainable symbioses between humans, technology and the living and 'non-living' entities of the planet. I begin by providing an outline of anthropocene discourses intertwined with radio and radio art practice. Then I describe and contextualize the radio art work 'chorus duet for radio' (Donovan 2016), positioning it as an example of a collective, trans-scalar listening encounter. I move on to posit radio as a valuable medium from which to critique and disrupt masculinised and westernised (radio) histories, and as an outlet for feminist, queer, and speculative re-tellings of the past. History is viewed here in the same way as electromagnetic radiation: as matter to be untangled. Finally I use the garden radio art project Datscha Radio17 (Schaffner 2017) to give an overview of how radio can be implemented in an expanded way to examine many of the interconnected themes of this thesis: the anthropocene, radio art, ecology, human and more-than-human networks, listening, speculative storytelling, and disruption. This thesis is an explor

"Our guide to the month's best field recordings."

"After translating the slithering, sliding ways snakes move into robots for more than a decade, Hatton became fascinated by how spiders use silk to swing, make safety lines and interpret vibrations in their webs."

"Denmark is building new and improved super hospitals, based on a vision of improving overall quality by switching the focus from hospitals for treatment to hospitals for healing, guided by research in the field of evidence-based design and healing architecture. Users mention noise as one of the main stressors and research has discovered that noise levels in hospitals continue to rise. Noise has therefore become a central point of concern, recommending strategies to reduce measurable and perceived noise levels."