Sound Research

"There is a lot of noise in this city of ours, what with sirens screaming, buses screeching and LOUD music blaring out of headphones on already rackety subway cars. No escaping it. Not in libraries, not in the sanctity of your apartment, not even in yoga class. (What exactly is the point of Savasana? After you quiet the voices screaming in your head, all you can hear is bleeping cars and police sirens.) "

"WV is an ongoing investigation into the politics of human sensuality, by way of commentary, reviews, field recordings, and artwork. Most posts include both text and media. Our emphasis is sonic, but we're not deaf to pictures, tastes, or feelings. The site was created out of a belief that how we sense the world is a crucial political problem. Sense is at the heart of consumption - of media, food, art, material objects - as well as engagements between individuals. Influencing sensual preferences en masse is a key to political and economic power. Consider flavor, cadence, leather interiors. "

Like the landscape, each city has a unique soundscape. In addition to the typical sounds of traffic and people, San Francisco has some identifiably unique sounds like cable cars, fog horns, trolleys and on occasion, the Blue Angels performing overhead. Almost all of us delight in these sounds because they help define the sense of place. They heighten our everyday experience. Sounds are an integral part of our experience, as you know if you've ever been to a carnival, sporting event or marketplace. And recalling sounds often brings back vivid visual memories of a place or time.

An extension of Peter Cusack's Favourite Sounds project.

""stadt:klang - urban:sound" is an interdisciplinary art project at the threshold of architecture, music, video and performance art. It focuses on our existing interactions with various public spaces, and provokes a temporary shift in the perception of how we utilise them, particularly with relation to music creation, film production and peripheral related arts. "

"Artificial synesthesia (syn = together, and aisthesis = perception in Greek) is a deliberately evoked or induced sensory joining in which the real information of one sense is accompanied by a perception in another sense through the use of a cross-modal mapping device. It is also known as virtual synesthesia or synthetic synesthesia. The additional perception is regarded by the trained synesthete as real, often outside the body, instead of imagined in the mind's eye. Its reality and vividness are what makes artificial synesthesia so interesting in its violation of conventional perception. Synesthesia in general is also fascinating because logically it should have been a product of the human brain, where the evolutionary trend has been for increasing coordination, mutual consistency and perceptual robustness in the processing of different sensory inputs."

Blog accompaniment (with media) to "Searching for Silence John Cage's art of noise." by Alex Ross from the New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_ross

Electronic Musical Resources: Articles

RICHARD LERMAN, works in Music, Film, Installations, Performance, and Video. He often constructs functional microphones from diverse materials, and then composes using these transducers to amplify and pick-up sounds of the environment, and allow the sonic flavor of each material to be heard. Recent works combine sounds from his self-built microphones with computer and MIDI techniques. bio from http://www.artifact.com/bio.php?name=Lerman

"Take a Closer Listen is a project by the talented Dutch graphic designer Rutger Zuydervelt in which a variety of people have been asked to describe their favorite sound. The results-which range from quick, five-word responses to entire short narratives about found sounds-were collected into an eponymous booklet, Take a Closer Listen, this past winter. "

The book The Hidden City, People and Places in Gothenburg is an exploration of the open and hidden perspectives of this north European harbour town by journalist and writer Magnus Haglund and photographer Stefan Schneider. The cd "The Hidden City" consists of some 15 sound portraits from the city, by artists that are featured in the book or have an interesting relationship with certain places or addresses in Gothenburg.

"As I started exploring, I began noticing the sounds around me. I began to think that maybe instead of focusing my attention only on the "Kodak moments" - and don't get me wrong, I take a lot of photos - perhaps using the SoundCloud mobile app to isolate and feature my "sonic experiences" would be another really cool way to map and document my Toronto travels. And thus, the Sounds of My City project was born!"

"We have no ear lids. We are condemned to listen. But this does not mean our ears are always open. "

With an international campaign, people in need of hearing aids are demonstrated what wearing Phonak products can bring: the restoration of their full hearing potential. This was emphasized by real costumes that symbolize the colorful range of life sounds - each costume symbolizing a special delicate sound.

"Sonic Terrain is dedicated to field recording: Audio and sound recording not inside the studio environment, but in the outside world around us. We encourage not just hearing the world around you, but to listening to it, and recording it, for reflection, relaxation, art, science, or entertainment."

"In Ceará, Brazil, Narcelio Grud has created one of the more impressive alternate uses for street signs the Urban Guide for Alternate Use has seen, and we've seen plenty. Narcelio transforms street signs around the city in to public instruments as part of his Musica Livre project. "

"Composer R. Murray Schafer will inspire you to listen to the music of sound. His 1977 book "The Tuning of the World" is full of original, evocative observations and insights about the roles music and sound play in human lives. Schafer, considered by some to be Canada's pre-eminent composer, makes a rare visit to New York, and talks with host David Garland about the ideas behind "The Tuning of the World," and about his music, which includes Patria, a cycle of music and theater pieces on an extraordinarily grand scale."

«Using simple and functional components, Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound. Exploring mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects. In an obsessive display of curiously collected material, these works articulate a tension between the orderly patterns of Modernism and the chaotic forces of life. Carrying an emotional depth, the acoustic hum of natural phenomena blends effortlessly with electric reverberation in Zimoun's minimalist constructions.» bitforms nyc

"Becoming an attentive and critical listener is a learned skill toward which soundscape studies can contribute. Such study focuses on purposeful listening to all types of acoustical environments --from those of daily life, the world of nature, other cultures and places, to those audio soundscapes constructed for media, museums or virtual spaces. It also encourages action in the preservation, modification, or creation of acoustic environments when needed. "

Meet Tyler and Tara, who have spent the last year (and a bit) traveling around the world, uploading field recordings to Soundcloud as they go.