Sound Research

"Urbanization has exposed people to extreme sound levels. Although researchers have investigated the ability of people to listen, analyze, and distinguish sound, the concept of noise has not been clearly articulated from a human perspective. The lack of knowledge on how people perceive noise limits our capacity to control it in a targeted manner. This study aimed to interpret the definition of noise from the public perspective based on a grounded theory approach. Seventy-eight participants were interviewed about noise, and four categories of perceived understanding of noise were identified: challenges, definitions of noise, opportunities, and action. As one of the challenges, urbanization is associated with increased noise levels around the human environment. In terms of definition, perceiving sound as noise is considered to be a result of the complex and dynamic process that includes sound, the environment, and humans. Sound and humans interact with the environment. In terms of opportunities, noise may have positive roles on certain occasions, dispelling the misconception that noise is exclusively negative. In addition, we found that noise perception has gradually shifted from noise control to noise utilization. In terms of action, noise can be controlled at the sound sources, susceptible target groups, susceptible behaviors and states, locations, and times where noise is perceived with high frequency. In this study, we investigated several aspects of noise, ranging from noise control, soundscape definition, and 'soundscape indices' (SSID) integration and application. Our findings provide an additional basis for developing better definitions, control, and utilization strategies of noise in the future, thereby improving the quality of the sound environment."

"Vivid images used by scientists capture sounds that soothe and nurture us - and some that jar the natural soundscape"

"When species disappear, so do their sounds. But scientists are exploring new techniques to use recordings of these very sounds to bring nature back"

"The following entries describe and illustrate some of Deutsch's illusions of music and speech. Many of them show that people can differ strikingly in the way they hear very simple musical patterns. These disagreements do not reflect variations in musical ability or training. Even the finest musicians, on listening to the stereo illusions described here, may disagree completely as to whether a high tone is being played to their right ear or to their left. And the most expert musicians, on listening to the tritone paradox, can engage in long arguments as to whether a pattern of two tones is moving up or down in pitch. "

"New Yorkers gathered on the shores of the East River to hear musicians - aboard a barge and canoe - taking advantage of the unique acoustics of a drainage tunnel."

"This 9-channel sound, light & smoke installation was created in collaboration with the independent sonic arts collective Call & Response, Sep 2015 London Subterraneous takes the work of seventeenth century alchemist and scientist Athanasius Kircher as inspiration. Kircher was a polymath and inventor, who researched fields as diverse as medicine and Egyptology, and designed and constructed wondrous sound and vision automatons. These included a collection of so called speaking statues whose spiral mouths would lead out into the streets of Rome like giant trumpets. In this way the speaking trumpets or 'hearing lens' would reveal the cacophony of Rome to the listener. London Subterraneous aims to link Kircher's 'speaking trumpets' with his fascination of geology and underground reverberations and find a way to explore London's mundus subterraneous For this project, special microphones have been used to access sounds from a series of "stink pipes" that connect the city's familiar terrestrial environment to a lesser-known complex network of sewers and rivers below. The towering, hollow pipes, now rusting fixtures dotted across London erected as safety valves to vent excess toxic gases along a newly built Victorian sewer network in the 1860's allow us to connect through our past and eavesdrop on the capital's underground world. The resultant exhibition is a portrait of some of the sounds created below ground and through the pipes themselves "Although these stink pipes are nowadays "useless" this work aims to reveal them as poles of sound, or as singing flutes. In a way these are tones from the past." Jacob Kirkegaard"

"Good Life Taylor's idea was to create a vibrant, creative, musical space within the City of Taylor parks system where people of all ages can gather, create music, and enjoy the outdoors. Good Life Taylor offered to pay for the development of a concept plan for the playground and to fund construction costs not covered by other sources, and they have been hard at work raising funds for the past several years. The playground, created in the shape of a musical treble clef, is located in Murphy Park between a lake and a swimming pool in an area previously a sand volleyball court. The playground includes native landscaping, a shade structure, and site furnishings."

"Videogrep is a command line tool written by Sam Lavigne that searches through dialog in video files and makes "supercuts" based on what it finds. It will recognize .srt or .vtt subtitle tracks, and transcriptions that can be generated with vosk. It's like grep, but for video."

"The dream of creating a visual music comparable to auditory music found its fulfillment in animated abstract films by artists such as Oskar Fischinger, Len Lye and Norman McLaren; but long before them, many people built instruments, usually called "color organs," that would display modulated colored light in some kind of fluid fashion comparable to music."

"Step inside the world of Bioni Samp, an urban beekeeper who makes honey - and music - from his bees. This immersive 360 profile takes you deep inside the beehive. Peter Boyd Maclean's film uses cinematic narrative conventions with immersive sound and vision in order to intensify the experience of becoming fully immersed in the story."

"Acoustic Simulation and Visualization - VR Architectural Design to understand acoustic influence on design "

"First of four documentaries on the science of Cymatics "

"Some conduct musicians - Pierre Sauvageot conducts the wind. He explains why his startling land art is as carefully composed as any symphony"

"Roman Jakobson (1942)"

"In 1948, Moses Asch founded Folkways Records with a self-proclaimed mandate to record the sounds of the entire world. From the Sounds of North American Frogs to Speech After the Removal of the Larynx, Folkways documented the audible nooks and crannies of existence on hundreds of LPs produced by field recordists, scientists, and experimentalists probing the margins of the human soundscape. Seventy-five years later, electronic music duo Matmos have diced, looped, stretched, and recontextualized these recordings on their new album Return to Archive, which was assembled entirely from the so-called non-musical sounds released on Folkways. On just the album's first track, dolphins, beetles, telephones, humans stretching the limits of their vocal cords, a shortwave radio, and metal balers co-mingle in a fantasia of sound both everyday and extraordinary. Each track on Return to Archive morphs its source material into something completely unexpected, honoring and expanding on Folkways' legacy of sonic exploration. Featuring Evicshen and Aaron Dilloway."

"In 1983, the Brooklyn Bridge made continuous sounds created from the oscillating drones of cars moving over a steel grid roadway, which later was silenced in the late 80's by being paved over by blacktop."

"Organ of Corti is an experimental instrument that recycles noise from the environment. It does not make any sound of its own, but rather it attempts to draw our attention to the sounds already present by framing them in a new way. Named after the organ of hearing in the inner ear, it uses the acoustic technology of sonic crystals to accentuate and attenuate frequencies within the broad range of sound present in road traffic or falling water. By recycling surplus sounds from our environment, we hope to challenge expectations of what might constitute a piece of music by adding nothing to the existing soundscape but rather offering new ways of listening to what is already there. This instrument is a device that, for us, rematerializes our experience of sound, inviting us to "listen to ourselves listen"."