Sound Research

"Museum of Sound is a project held in National Museum in Krakow consisting of various actions using sound. We are used to watching art in museums, perceiving it though sight. We forget how important it is to listen to it. Sound can extract unusual stories and revive objects. The first element of the project is Sound Microscope - an interactive sound installation open from March 2013 in the Gallery of Decorative Art in the Main Building of National Museum in Krakow, 1st floor. National Museum's Gallery of Decorative Art is the biggest exposition in Poland - it shows everyday life in Poland and Western Europe from the early Middle Ages up until Art Nouveau. Exhibits that so far have been locked in cabinets have now gained new life thanks to Museum of Sound project. Now, visiting a museum consists of not only watching objects from the past, but also listening to their story."

"The City Rings (TCR) is an international sound pedagogy project initiated by Aifoon, MTG/Sons de Barcelona and Sound&Music; and actually being developed in the frame of Sounds of Europe. The main goal of TCR is to encourage young people to exchange experiences about the place where they live through sound. Our main approach is a series of artist-led workshops that are held simultaneously in schools in various countries. "

Events and reading matter at the intersection of science and culture.

"They're actually hearing the wave that traveled through the rock all the way to the Earth's surface," says William Ellsworth, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "When a fault slips suddenly underground, it radiates two different kinds of seismic waves."

"Eric Smouha, associate professor of otolaryngology and director of otology and neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, answers questions about the inevitable effect of noise over time -- hearing loss."

"Arline Bronzaft, environmental psychologist on the board of GrowNYC, talks about the effects of noise and offers practical advice for dealing with it. Alan Fierstein, an acoustic consultant and the owner and founder of Acoustilog, joins her to share tales of noise mitigation from the 5,000+ jobs he's handled."

"Noise is the top quality-of-life complaint to 311, and those complaints are on the rise. But our relationship with noise is very complicated, with lots of advantages, too. What noises drive you crazy, calm you down, damage your hearing or peace of mind, help you create? Callers sound off on noise and we hear from guests, including environmental psychologist Arline Bronzaft, acoustics consultant Alan Fierstein, sound historians Emily Thompson and David Hendy, and hearing specialist Eric Smouha."

"Emily Thompson, historian at Princeton University and the author of Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933, talks about her study of sound and her website featuring sounds of New York City in the 1920's."

"A call-in segment: Tell us a story about sound in your life, any true story. Good or bad, describe a particular relationship with noise and sound. Call 212-433-9692, or post your story below."

"David Hendy, media historian at the University of Sussex, host of the thirty-part BBC Radio series, Noise: A Human History, and the author of Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening, talks about the social history of noise and kicks off the call-in on the question of sound and creativity. What sounds sparks your creativity or do you need absolute quiet?"

An audio work and installation based on the moment when an orchestra gets in tune, before a performance. An event that I wish could last forever, which is exactly what 'Stay Tuned' is about. For this installation piece consisting of a multiple speaker setup, Rutger Zuydervelt (better known under his Machinefabriek moniker) asked 150 artists to record an 'A', the note an orchestra normally tunes to. Each recorded note has it's own characteristics, and is part of the whole.

"Interface: Echolocation Headphones. 10/12 Echolocation Headphones is a project that studies new applications for parametric sound technologies. This study emphasizes on augmentation of the auditory sense by enhancing our current ability of processing omnidirectional sound by providing a focal point to audition, similar to a visual focal point. Currently, human echolocation is being explored by the blind who have reached an increased understanding of sound and spatial relationships. In other species echolocation is facilitated by different evolutionary traits that differ from the current human senses. These headphones provide the opportunity for focal audition similar to a focal point in vision, depicting a more detailed spatial image of the parameters of the space surrounding the subject. "

Interface: Listening to music through your teeth. 12/13/11 Play-A-Grill is the combination of a digital music player and the mouth piece jewelry usually associated with Hip Hop and Rap music genres known as a grill. Grills are almost always made of precious metal, most notably gold or platinum. They are completely removable, and almost used as a retainer. This piece of jewelry presents a perfect opportunity to merge an arbitrary music fashion object and reintroduce it as the music player itself. Because the grill is worn over the teeth, sound can be transmitted using bone conduction hearing instead of outside speakers or headphones. Play-A-Grill is an iteration of a music fashion object of that becomes the music player itself.

Ricardo Huisman - Super Sonic Sound Scape, 2008

Podcasts surveying the history of sound collage since the begining. The program mentions three types of sound collages. Sequential sound collage that uses an editing technique that is not dissimilar to film editing technique which later developed to Electroacoustic and Acousmatic music. (most Musique Concréte, cut ups, Negativland, Cassetteboy etc) Sound collage that augments a particular rhythm, musical and narrative theme (some hip hop, bastard pop, 2manyDJs, dancefloor mash ups, most music that has elements of sound collage) Simultaneous sound collage which superimposes layers of different musical sources over each other. The last category is the one this podcast focuses on for the latter half of the 20th Century until today. Warning:: PART ONE is a bit more of a difficult listen due to the experimental and conceptual nature of the sound collages in the early days."

"J Milo Taylor and Joel Cahen - A History of Sound Art (1:25:25), audio with accompanying PDF, 2009."

"Ever wonder why your voice sounds so much better when you sing in the shower? It has to do with an acoustic "blur" called reverberation. From classical to pop music, reverberation "makes music sound nicer," acoustic engineer Trevor Cox tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. It helps blend the sound, "but you don't want too much," he warns."

Using little more than a few perforated sheets of plastic and a staggering amount of number crunching, Duke engineers have demonstrated the world's first three-dimensional acoustic cloak. The new device reroutes sound waves to create the impression that both the cloak and anything beneath it are not there.

"URB is a soundscape storage and analysis system idealized by José Alberto Gomes and developed in partnership with Diogo Tudela. URB's goal is to keep record of the sonic profile of Porto, allowing researchers and artists to use the dataset freely within their own projects."

"For the first time an exhibition is dedicated to the fascinating combination of art, sound and motion, and generates a pulsating world of gentle tones and impressive sounds."