Sound Research

"Since 2006, the Art of Failure collective has been sending bass frequencies into remarkable architectural structures. These experiences establish a dialog between architecture, the structures' spatial components, and their geographic context - revealing building's specific acoustic and vibrating qualities."

"CalArts opens its Digital Arts and Technology Expo, and one project is continuing to pique our interest in bio-orchestras. "Cultivating Frequencies," a collaboration among music technologist Colin Honigman and designers Sean Chen, Marc Dubui, and Wen Han, is turning a garden into a generative music machine, including a interactive element that turns the individual plants into-touch sensitive instruments."

"Public artworks don't often include life-sized balloons- but that hasn't stopped UK artists Alison Ballard and Mike Blow from creating them. POD is an interactive sound installation that allows viewers to experience the physical life of sound waves through the skins of two, six-foot-tall inflatable spheres. The surfaces of POD pulsate in rhythm with a sound file that plays from deep within the sphere. Audience members are invited to drape their faces and bodies over these surface, free to enjoy POD's gentle massage. "

"Harvest Works gallery in New York exhibited an installation by audiovisual artist, Claudia Robles, that gets under your skin... literally. SKIN is a project that measures gallery visitors' skin moisture using a GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) interface and transforms that data into sound and images. Psychological states such as stress, nervousness, and even arousal become observable, external information. Be careful who you test it out around. "

"Sixteen bottles, each with its own air blower, stand arranged in a circle playing music. For his piece, and the wind was like the regret for what is no more, artist João Costa brings the wind indoors, translating its wild energy into simple sounds. "The work explores the interaction of two invisible factors, sound and wind," explains Costa in the video's description. "It deals with the dialectics of scattered and shapeless coefficients that cannot be seen, but have an intrinsic need of existence, of being, and nothing more. To articulate these elements is to deal with the unknown, the unpredictable.""

"The Self-Destructing Modules Behind Revolutionary 1956 Soundtrack of Forbidden Planet"

"How to create music with simple rules and a loop pedal. A mix of music, maths, and molecular dynamics."

"The Enlightenment is described as a "hidden concert of pure light", performed by an uninhabited orchestra of lighting elements, including stagelights and high-powered bulbs. It reminds me somewhat of Francois Bayles "Acousmonium", but with a variety of lamps instead of speakers. Neon lights instead of violins, strobe lights instead of drums, etcetera."

""Quintetto" is an installation based on the study of casual movement of objects or living creatures used as input for the production of sounds. The basic concept is to reveal what we call "invisible concerts" of everyday life.(The vertical movements of the 5 fishes in the acquariums is captured by a videocamera, that translates (through a computer software) their movements in digital sound signals.(We'll have 5 different musical instruments creating a totally unexpected live concert. The installation was born with the collaboration of the Aesop studio.(In 2009 Quintetto wins the third prize at the "International contemporary art prize-Celesteprize" - Berlin."

more here: http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/july/spacex-testing-complete-at-nasa-glenns-renovated-facility/#.VJDoS4f-lqk

"Moscow-based musician/engineer Dmitry Morozov has built an incredible instrument called the Metaphase Sound Machine. It produces music based on radioactive particles sensed by its built-in Geiger Counter."

"Welcome to the final installment of Hearing the UnHeard, Sounding Out!'s series on what we don't hear and how this unheard world affects us. The series started out with my post on hearing, large and small, continued with a piece by China Blue on the sounds of catastrophic impacts, and Milton Garcés' piece on the infrasonic world of volcanoes. To cap it all off, we introduce The Sounds of Science by professor, cellist and interactive media expert, Margaret Schedel."

A new special issue of the great Journal of Sonic Studies has been published, dedicated to "sounds of space".

"Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass."

Great visualization about how speakers work. "Speakers (also called loudspeakers) push and pull surrounding air molecules in waves that the human ear interprets as sound. You could even say that hearing is movement detection. So what makes a speaker travel back and forth at just the right rate and distance, and how does that make sound?"

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is a state-of-the-art radio telescope developed and operated by 20 countries and territories in East Asia, Europa and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. Connecting 66 parabola antennas deployed in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, ALMA works as a giant radio telescope with a diameter comparable to the size of the Yamanote Line. ALMA detects faint radio waves emanated by distant celestial objects to study the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars, and planets. Obtaining a clue to the origin of life is another goal of ALMA. In 2011, ALMA observed radio waves from a dying star "R Sculptoris." The ALMA MUSIC BOX made use of this data, and translated the 70 different radio images onto 70 musical discs.

"Writer Frank Swain has been able to hear Wi-Fi signals for the past week, and no, it's not "the result of a sudden mutation or years of transcendental meditation," he says. Swain wears a special hearing device that gives him the ability to translate wireless frequencies into sounds. Alongside sound artist Daniel Jones, Swain created Phantom Terrains in order to give those invisible data fields that surround us a bit more presence. "

"The history of field recording is central to the development of electronic music, with artists - from Eno through Scanner to Burial - drawing on its theories and strategies to create distinctive soundworlds. Lawrence English - boss of the long-running Room40 imprint, and the man behind this year's exceptional Wilderness of Mirrors - presents this beginner's guide to the discipline, including a rundown of crucial recent releases. "

"Some say that acoustic ecology places a negative emphasis on noise in urban environments. In fact, it is concerned with improving the quality of the sonic environment, or soundscape, by re-sensitizing aural faculties both on the individual and the social level. This approach was pioneered in the late 1960s by the Canadian composer, educator, and founder of the World Soundscape Project, R. Murray Schafer. He realized that it was better to set aside moralizing about noise pollution in order to objectively study all aspects of the soundscape."

"Putting a spring back into your step could be as simple as listening to the sound of lighter footsteps, new research suggests. Scientists at University College London believe it is possible to 'hear yourself happy' by changing the noises that the body hears as it moves around. "