Sound Research

"Imagine hearing the colours you perceive. SOUND of LIGHT is a synesthetic sculpture which interprets and dynamically transforms sunlight into audio frequencies. It is a site specific installation designed for the former music pavilion in Hamm, Germany, which was built in 1912. A high-quality digital camera mounted on the top of the structure films the sky and divides it into six colours - RGB and CMY. The six hanging, coloured columns of the pneumatic structure - which stand for the primary RGB (red/green/blue) and secondary CMY (cyan/magenta/yellow) colour models - are designed to receive different frequencies and convert them from visible to audible sensory input. A series of woofers is fixed directly on the bottom of each column and convert the whole architecture into a giant vibrating loudspeak"

"When musician and naturalist Bernie Krause drops his microphones into the pristine coral reef waters of Fiji, he picks up a raucous mix of sighs, beats, glissandos, cries, groans, tones, grunts, beats and clicks. The water pulsates with the sound of creatures vying for acoustic bandwidth. He hears crustaceans, parrot fish, anemones, wrasses, sharks, shrimps, puffers and surgeonfish. Some gnash their teeth, others use their bladders or tails to make sound. Sea anemones grunt and belch. Every creature on the reef makes its own sound. But half a mile away, where the same reef is badly damaged, he can only pick up the sound of waves and a few snapping shrimp. It is, he says, the desolate sound of extinction."

"The tranquil chorus of the natural world is in danger of being lost to today's generation as people screen out the noises that surround them, a senior US researcher warns. Rising levels of background noise in some areas threaten to make people oblivious to the uplifting sounds of birdsong, trickling water, and trees rustling in the wind, which can often be heard even in urban centres, said Kurt Fristrup, a senior scientist at the US National Park Service"

"this immersive audiovisual installation combines the actual sounds of iconic New York interiors, such as Grand Central Terminal and the Seagram Building lobby, with visual animations projected on a panoramic screen. Grand Central Terminal's soundscape, for example, features an oceanic-style animation with clangs, echoes, and quick crescendos of intensity, transporting the listener to the midst of the station's daily bustle, and amplifying its status as a primary transportation portal to and from New York City. Visitors can also experience the soundscapes of Rockefeller Center, the New York Public Library Reading Room, and the Guggenheim Museum."

"Two Trains: Sonification of Income Inequality on the NYC Subway by Data-Driven DJ aka Brian Foo: The goal of this song is to emulate a ride on the New York City Subway's 2 Train through three boroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx. At any given time, the quantity and dynamics of the song's instruments correspond to the median household income of that area. For example, as you pass through a wealthier area such as the Financial District, the instruments you hear in the song will increase in quantity, volume, and force. Stylistically, I want the song to exhibit the energy and orderly chaos of the NYC subway system itself. "

"I would like to begin by talking about something I feel is quite astonishing - this built-in sound analyzer and source that we all have. One of the most astonishing things about it is that we are largely unaware of it. "

"This episode features a conversation with Tucson-based sound artist, Glenn Weyant. I first learned of Glenn's work when I discovered The Anta Project, a series of recordings he made by playing the border walls, fences, and assorted ephemera along the U.S./Mexico border. Glenn also talks about building instruments and his explorations at the intersection of journalism and sound art."

"Peter Vogel - The Sound of Shadows (2011)"

"Howled on Their Knees was Turner's Senior Composition Thesis and funded by Ohio University's 2013-14 Provost's Undergraduate Research Fund. He built and invented all of the instruments used in the recital. The instruments include a four-octave steel plate marimba, a four-octave EMT pipe marimba, a two-and-a-half-octave copper glockenspiel, multiple whirly tubes on three separate ceiling fans controlled by dimmer switches, and three string instruments called the "Turner Winch.""

"Walter has created for Transom a new essay called Womb Tone as a companion to his lecture, Dense Clarity - Clear Density, now illustrated here with sound and film clips, detailing Walter's process. "

john grzinich interviewed about the idea of sound art

"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."

"In the spring of 2011, Wanda L. Diaz Merced spent time at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, doing research for her doctoral dissertation at Glasgow University, Scotland. Wanda, who is blind, has been interested in sonification as a data analysis tool: how sonification might help scientists, even those who can see, detect patterns in large amounts of seemingly random astrophysical data. She used sonified x-ray data from EX Hydrae that have been collected by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. One day Gerhard Sonnert gave Wanda some advice on her research and, on the way out of her office, he noticed a ream of sheets on which sonified x-ray data were printed out in musical notation. Being a bass player, he immediately recognized that the data showed a particular Afro-Cuban rhythm called clave. It occurred to him that, in addition to being a scientific tool, sonification might have an artistic application. Gerhard asked his cousin Volkmar Studtrucker, a musician and composer, to write songs from the EX Hydrae material. Volkmar created nine musical pieces, in a variety of musical styles, which they played and recorded in a trio (Volkmar Studtrucker, piano; Gerhard Sonnert, bass; and Hans-Peter Albrecht, drums)."

"This summer 2010--11, to mark the end of the first decade of this millennium, the Gallery presents '21st Century: Art in the First Decade' at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia from 18 December 2010 -- 26 April 2011"

"From Here to Ear (v. 13) is the thirteenth iteration of an installation by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. Primarily a sensory experience, the exhibit is meant to engage both visually and audibly as 40 finches hop delicately through a dense matrix created from hundreds of metal hangers causing vibrations and clinks that mix with the birds natural songs"

"What It Really Takes to Be an Artist: MacArthur Genius Teresita Fernández's Magnificent Commencement Address"

ipad app to sample sounds (and video) and use the ipad as a visual triggering device.

It's one thing to record audio of a drummer and then digitally synthesize the reverberation to mimic various environments, but it's another thing entirely to film a drummer actually playing in all of those environments and then stitch it together into a single track. That's exactly what Audio Zero and Wikidrummers did with drummer Julien Audigier who played the same drum pattern in a variety of indoor and outdoor locations to show the effects of natural reverb, sometimes even blending multiple tracks into a single shot. Amazing. "

"If you asked me when the history of bootleg music began, I would have assumed it arrived with the invention of the cassette tape, something small, inexpensive and portable that was easily duplicated in any garage from deck A to deck B. In reality, widespread bootlegging dates back even further, to the 1950s in the Soviet Union where music lovers, desperate for banned Western tunes, devised an ingenious way to print their own records. The only problem was the scarcity of vinyl."

"Sudhu Tewari is an electro-acoustic composer, improvisor, and tinkerer in sound, kinetic and interactive art. He has been called a professional bricoleur, junkyard maven and young audio-gadgeteer. "