Sound Research

"Silence has become a luxury in New York that only a scant few can truly afford, and cultural, technological and economic changes in recent years have added to the din everyone else must endure, creating not just one culprit, but many. "

"When Canadian astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield was as far from home as a human can get, he used SoundCloud to share the sounds of the International Space Station and connect with everyone back on Earth."

What did neolithic folk get up to in caves? Imitate animals? Iegor Reznikoff is an expert on acoustics of caves. Here he is in Arcy-sur-Cure, France

The historian and radio broadcaster talks about the power of eavesdropping and the roar of the crowd, as heard in Noise: A Human History, his new 30 part series for BBC Radio 4. By Nathan Budzinski.

"Welcome to Sound Diaries, a project set up in 2008 by Paul Whitty and Felicity Ford to explore methods and strategies for recording everyday life in sound. "

Björk and Sir David Attenborough have long admired each other's work. In this remarkable documentary they explore our relationship with music and how it exists in the natural world. First broadcast in July 2013 on Channel 4.

A description of the way that hearing changes as a person ages.

"The links below contain animations illustrating acoustics and vibration, waves and oscillation concepts. "

"Historical overview of experiments with record players / records - or Scratches from Second-Hand Technology"

"This paper would like to draw your attention to a matter that regards us all, every day: the sound of the urban environment. We are used to looking around us, we are less used to listening to what happens around us. And yet, the noises we produce reveal our way of life, and learning to master them is a necessity."

"This essay was written for the catalog of the exhibition "John Cage and Experimental Art: The Anarchy of Silence" at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. "

"In the spring of 2011, Wanda L. Diaz Merced spent time at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, doing research for her doctoral dissertation at Glasgow University, Scotland. Wanda, who is blind, has been interested in sonification as a data analysis tool: how sonification might help scientists, even those who can see, detect patterns in large amounts of seemingly random astrophysical data. She used sonified x-ray data from EX Hydrae that have been collected by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. One day Gerhard Sonnert gave Wanda some advice on her research and, on the way out of her office, he noticed a ream of sheets on which sonified x-ray data were printed out in musical notation. Being a bass player, he immediately recognized that the data showed a particular Afro-Cuban rhythm called clave. It occurred to him that, in addition to being a scientific tool, sonification might have an artistic application. Gerhard asked his cousin Volkmar Studtrucker, a musician and composer, to write songs from the EX Hydrae material. Volkmar created nine musical pieces, in a variety of musical styles, which they played and recorded in a trio (Volkmar Studtrucker, piano; Gerhard Sonnert, bass; and Hans-Peter Albrecht, drums)."

"One of the most mysterious aspects of a fox is its voice. Based on a set of complex vocal patterns, foxes exhibit some of the most varied calls in the canine kingdom. Few studies have been able to explain them all, but the distinctive "fox scream" in the night is familiar to many. "

"Last Saturday afternoon, at Dia: Beacon, the art critic Christoph Cox, casual in a grey shirt and jeans, was leading a group through a gallery of hulking metal sculptures by John Chamberlain. It was a dramatic scene, but these people had assembled to hear Mr. Cox discuss something far subtler. "It's the most overlooked work in the entire museum," he told them. "It's invisible, so it's very easy to miss.""

"In 2006, the authors initiated the Landscape & Perception (L&P) project under the aegis of the Royal College of Art (RCA), London. The project is a pilot study of raw visual and acoustic elements mainly on and around the Carn Menyn ridge, Mynydd Preseli, south-west Wales, the source area of some of the Stonehenge bluestones, an area still relatively untouched by modern development. Sites in the surrounding Pembrokeshire countryside were also briefly visited. The project asked: "What might Stone Age eyes and ears have perceived in this landscape, and what aspects made it become important to the builders of Stonehenge?" The L&P project was primarily conceived to encourage a younger generation of audio-visual practitioners to use direct, natural sensory source material for their digital work, to offset the increasing overuse of disembodied digital sources. In the course of the fieldwork, it was felt that observations had been made that could perhaps be archaeologically relevant in a landscape that until very recently has been subjected to surprisingly little archaeological study. In July 2013, the fieldwork part of the project extended to acoustic tests of the bluestones in situ at Stonehenge. This paper is a preliminary report concerning selected, potential archaeology relevant aspects of the project's fieldwork to date."

"The 68,338 fans that packed into CenturyLink Field set the world record Sept. 15 for noise at an outdoor sports stadium at 136.6 decibels, propelling the Seahawks to a rousing 29-3 home-opening win over NFC West rival San Francisco. The previous record was 131.76, set at a Turkish soccer club game March 8, 2011, and the loudest CenturyLink had ever been before was 112 decibels."

"La Métaphone, a concert hall in Ognies, France, is a 1,980-sm facility with the unique characteristic of being a structural musical instrument. "

"Welcome to Sounds of Europe, a platform for field recording. The blog of the website will travel to a different European country every month where a local organisation or artist will be responsible for maintaining it. Each country´s particular context and practices with regards to field recording will be explored and presented in a personal way."

"Hai Art is an artist ran international art platform with focus on contemporary art forms such as new media, sound art, environmental, ecological and participatory arts with crossover to science and education to intertwine international and local programs in Hailuoto/ Finland. "

"Documentary about the work of Max Eastley, made in 1986, featuring sequences of sound sculptures in natural settings, plus Eastley accompanying them in the studio. Also includes extracts from performances of 'Whirled Music' (with Steve Beresford and David Holmes), a sequence composed jointly with David Toop and Kazuko Hohki, and a duo with Evan Parker in a cave in Devon."