Sound Research

""We bombard ourselves with sound and music… it's everywhere." So says musician, artist and nature recordist Chris Watson who has captured sounds for numerous wildlife TV shows, including Sir David Attenborough's Planet Earth series on the BBC among many others. In this episode our ever-intrepid host Tim Hinman points his microphone at, well… microphones, speaking with Watson and sound artist Jana Winderen about our ever-fascinating natural world and the jungle of sounds it makes."

The Binghamton Historical Soundwalk Project is a multi-year civic engagement project using the theories and methods of the field of sound studies to identify and intervene in community issues and concerns."

"The table is made of steel rods and filled it with beach rocks, then it was lowered into the ocean near Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, where over the course of two months it accumulated living accretions from the ocean. Atop the table is an oversize sound-amplifying funnel reminiscent of the hailing horns used on whaling ships, which is constructed of laser-cut panels of polycarbonate lashed together with nylon zip ties. The horn amplifies and concentrates a sound recording made by a hydrophone close to where the table was submerged."

"Artist Jules Gimbrone contemplates what a world would look like if we didn't privilege the sense of sight. This audio excerpt is presented in association with the exhibition The World Is Sound."

"As Brian Eno's seminal ambient classic Music For Airports turns 40 this year, Lawrence English examines the genre's impact, its initial manifesto and where it can go as it struggles past its mid-life crisis."

"HUMAN ROOMS™ is an immersive experiential concept that can assist participants to reduce stress, induce relaxation and meditative states within a peaceful and harmonious environment that is self directed. "

The London Sound Survey collects the sounds of everyday public life throughout London and compiles past accounts to show how the sound environment has changed.

"Although the transformation of the functional state of the living organism into sound was an important dimension of the work, the artists and designers were also interested in looking at the processes and authoritative gestures that legitimise the collection of personal information and how informed consent is attained and defined. In the age of the quantified self, what does it mean to donate biological data? How much does it (or should it) matter to us that we can keep control over it? Does this biological data have more value for us than other types of data?"

"Dean Shostak is one of last true masters capable of playing the glass armonica - an enchanting instrument lost to time. First devised in 1761 by Benjamin Franklin, the art of "playing glass" began to fade in popularity as musical fashions changed. Today, there are only eight glass armonica players left in the world. Along with the revival of the armonica, Shostak is also reintroducing an entire family of glass instruments, including the glass violin, the crystal hand bells and the French Cristal baschet."

"Cornelius Cardew was a fascinating figure. Both in his life, and through his music, he posed questions with which I find myself in equal sympathy and conflict. He is undeniably one of the most important figures in the Post-War British avant-garde. Cardew, by all accounts, was a prodigy. During his early twenties he worked at the highest levels of performance. In 1958 (age 22) he won a scholarship to study at the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, and was promptly asked by Karlheinz Stockhausen to serve as his assistant. Stockhausen's recollections of Cardew are drenched in respect. He was one of the few people whom he allowed to work on his scores unsupervised. During the late 50's, influenced by John Cage and other members of his generation, Cardew abandoned Serialism and began to compose scores utilizing indeterminacy and experiment. It was this period of his work for which he is most remembered, and from which Treatise (our subject) comes. In 1967 he joined the iconic free-improvisation collective AMM with Lou Gare, Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe and Christopher Hobbs, which advanced his sense of compositional possibility. The following year with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons he formed the equally important Scratch Orchestra, which grew into a large ensemble, preforming over the following four years."

"For those familiar with modern media, there are a number of short musical phrases that immediately trigger a particular emotional response. Think, for example, of the two-note theme that denotes the shark in Jaws, and see if you become just a little more tense or nervous. So too with the stabbing shriek of the violins from Psycho, or even the whirling four-note theme from The Twilight Zone. In each of these cases, the musical theme is short, memorable, and unalterably linked to one specific feeling: fear. The first few notes of the "Dies Irae" chant, perhaps as recognizable as any of the other themes I mentioned already, are often used to provoke that same emotion."

"With just a bit of attention, one can enjoy radically spatialized music, with voice and sounds experienced in ways far different to stereo listening."

"arrangements of performative objects, Acoustic Sound Blankets, are embroidered with patterns that have been in Khan's family for generations. Women archive and embroider these artifacts when one is born, married, or passing. Holes are cut out to appear like the patterns on holy books. In previous performances for the camera, Khan has invited people to share intimacies, seek safety underneath these blankets concealing, like the veil. Since recent protests, it has become a common activity to meet in groups to make protest banners and, in many instances, holes are cut out of fabric to allow protesters to wear messages in lieu of holding signs. Khan has since received emails from activists requesting acoustic blankets to protect themselves from sound waves from military shock bombs used to break up crowds."

"But can you actually hear something that does not emit a sound? Certainly, said Chris Plack, a professor of audiology at the Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness, who researches acoustic reflexes and auditory processing. "Hearing," as he defines it, does not require external noise; rather, it is "having the experience of a sound.""

Mark Peter Wright is an artist, researcher and lecturer working at the intersection of critical theory and contemporary art. His practice explores the relationship between humans, animals, environments and their associated technologies of capture: critically and playfully generating debate through exhibitions, performance and collaborative events.

"   "Blissful positive energy," "Full chakra healing," "Extremely powerful third eye opening" - such are the benefits of binaural beat listening as promised in the titles of a few popular YouTube videos.[1] Throughout the wide distribution network of binaural beat audio, discourses abound that purport effects such as heightened sexual arousal; improved performance at job interviews; psychedelic-like drug experiences; enhancements in creativity, IQ, and lucid dreaming; and assistance in the fight against cancer. More than a panacea, binaural beats and the meditative auditory experience the associated rhetoric claims they provide, do not just heal or prevent defect and injury; they heighten the overall quality of life. Or, so is the promise.  "

Italian interdisciplinary artist working in Amsterdam

"An online journal exploring process in sound art practice from artists' perspectives."

"As museums continue to search for new ways to attract visitors, recent trends within museum practice have focused on providing audiences with multisensory experiences. Books such as 2014's The Multisensory Museum present preliminary strategies by which museums might help visitors engage with collections using senses beyond the visual. In this article, an overview of the multisensory roots of museum display and an exploration of the shifting definition of 'object' leads to a discussion of Pierre Schaeffer's musical term objet sonore - the 'sound object', which has traditionally stood for recorded sounds on magnetic tape used as source material for electroacoustic musical composition. A problematic term within sound studies, this article proposes a revised definition of 'sound object', shifting it from experimental music into the realm of the author's own experimental curatorial practice of establishing The Museum of Portable Sound, an institution dedicated to the collection and display of sounds as cultural objects. Utilising Brian Kane's critique of Schaeffer, Christoph Cox and Casey O'Callaghan's thoughts on sonic materialism, Dan Novak and Matt Sakakeeny's anthropological approach to sound theory, and art historian Alexander Nagel's thoughts on the origins of art forgery, this article presents a new working definition of the sound object as a museological (rather than a musical) concept."

"The artist Phil Collins has created a fraught, evocative listening experience that both isolates and connects."