Sound Research

"The world of "field recordings" is cinéma vérité for the ear: the sounds of natural phenomenon, occasionally from far-flung places, documenting the unreachable, the unexpected and the heretofore inaudible. Listening to these recordings of chattering animals, bustling ecosystems and roaring weather systems can be an experience that blurs the boundaries of music and chance, documentary and art, new age and noise, the real and the imaginary."

"For over 30 years, artist/musician team, Bill and Mary Buchen, have designed public art installations and interactive sound sculptures for parks, schools, science centers, transit stations, children's museums and playgrounds around the world. Their artworks invite active play and group participation; whether tapping rhythms on percussion instruments inspired by global music cultures or investigating environmental phenomena."

"Voice Yard is an online space created to encourage people to listen and be heard. Used to perceiving our world mostly visually, we sometimes forget that sound is another important means of perception and communication. Every object reveals itself not only through its shapes and colors, but also through sounds, sometimes even more telling about its essence. We, humans, have always used our voices as an important means of self-expression and communication. There are familiar metaphors revealing its existential importance, such as "inner voice" and "voice of the heart," referring to an intimate "true nature" inherent in this human ability."

"How we listen to the city is as important as what we are listening for."

"In an attempt to understand this new pathogen better, musician and engineer Markus Buehler and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have assigned each protein and structural form a musical equivalent."

"Intro from Jeff Towne: A common dilemma for independent producers is how to record professional-sounding narration outside of a studio. Building a sound booth means major construction: It's expensive, takes up space, and can be impractical for renters and those in a small homes. Are there affordable alternatives? Independent producer Yowei Shaw has tried a few options, and she's found a good solution for recording her voice tracks at home."

"A bi-weekly podcast on radio storytelling produced by Rob Rosenthal for PRX and Transom."

"A music critic's soundscape has been reshaped by the wail of ambulances. But she's learning to hear in unexpected ways."

"What are the political potentials of listening? How does sound define the crossing of the territories of contemporaneity, of the differences in race, gender, social belonging? How can we, in the invisible depth of sound, define our belonging to the contemporary world, taking an active position in issues that concern ethics, subjectivity, the principles of collective and individual living?"

"Foundsoundscape was inspired by the very first Digital Radio station in the UK, that simply played a recording of a rural location. Radio you could just leave running to add a peaceful ambience to your environment indoors. It heralded a new media paradigm, as digital broadcasting offered more capacity than requred for the first time, and that space needed filling. At the same time on TV, Channel 4 was broadcasting Big Brother live 24hours, and at night I loved to tune-in my analogue TV sets all over the house, and the shed, so I could hear the housemates gently sleeping as I worked through the night. Since then infomercials, and gambling TV have taken over, and I greatly miss that sense of real-time space, that does not demand your attention. Foundsoundscape quietly underscores your environment, by creating new ones from others."

"Unity-Gain is a collaborative sound art project led by artist-musicians Mendi + Keith Obadike. The project collects sounds from artists and musicians and makes them available to other artists-contributors for creative use for Unity-Gain projects. We hope the sounds will be used for sound art, music, radio works, and media art projects. We only ask that you make the make the projects freely available, give us notice (Contribute@unity-gain.net) and credit the source artists and Unity-Gain. All derived projects are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC 4.0)"

"Bodyscape is inspired by the body of a dancer as sonic source. The information is taken via biosensors and microphones, which record movements and events generated by the body. In this ecosystem, the dancer produces sounds, mainly inaudible, which are then amplified and send back to the performance space, where the dancer interact with them as biofeedback. The site-specificity of the work relates to the spatial considerations and resonances. Field recordings were collected at the border of Botswana and South Africa. L'épidemie virale en Afrique du Sud, a text from the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt, informed the journey. The text describes a virus transforming white persons into black persons. A text about privileges."

Angela de Weijer, a Dutch sound artist creates a work for decommissioned emergency warning sirens.

"Manual for Acoustic Planning and Urban Sound Design (MAP) is a public artwork based on working for one year within the city council in the experimental role of Dublin City Acoustic Planner & Urban Sound Designer, negotiating the projects' agenda and workflow in response to how this concept is received internally within the council. This project emphasizes a dematerialized practice through which practical outputs (in the form of public sound installations) emerge as residual artifacts that are encountered as design prototypes executed within (or even by) the council itself. This approach opens new channels for the city - as an institution - to engender a sense of responsibility and possibility regarding this mode of working with sound in the urban context as an extension of existing planning and design processes."

"Acoustic communication is crucial to humans and many other tetrapods, including birds, frogs, crocodilians, and mammals. However, large-scale patterns in its evolution are largely unstudied. Here, we address several fundamental questions about the origins of acoustic communication in terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods), using phylogenetic methods."

"During our recent Points of Listening public event held at the De La Warr Pavilion we conducted participatory experiments in care-ful listening. Through the workshop process we created collaborative manifestos, guidelines, protocols and imaginations of listening that help us to tune in and take care, to hear the inaudible and that which does not fit within expectations of language and recognisable sounds."

"Fermentophone is a multi-sensory installation in which an algorithmically generated musical composition is performed by living cultures of bacteria and yeast."