IBM 1401, a User’s Manual Part I - IBM 1401 Processing Unit Continue reading

Discovering Electronic Music Part 1

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If human beings had radio antennae instead of ears, they would perceive an entirely different sonic universe to that which we presently inhabit. Radio signals, created by the planet itself, surround us at all times, wherever we are. At parts of the frequency range far below that of most man-made radio transmissions, these phenomena can be thought of as a level of sonic reality beyond (although surrounding) our daily sound experience. For although radio waves are generated by vibrations in electro-magnetic materials rather than air particles (as is the case with sound waves) we nonetheless tend to think of radio as a purely sonic medium. Continue reading

Manchester : Peripheral – a soundclash of voices and music from across the city can be seen at Kro Piccadilly and around Piccadilly Gardens :: 29 June – 29 July 2007 :: Sun – Thurs, 8am – midnight, Fri – Sat, 8am – 8.30pm.

Manchester : Peripheral is a networked installation which remixes and replays music, voices and ambient sound recorded in Moss Side, Levenshulme and Ancoats & Clayton. Driven in real-time by votes from special control kiosks in each ward, Manchester : Peripheral uses digital media to create a continually evolving soundscape, plotting a new relationship between city centre and its surrounding areas. As cities change, things get left behind. Things get forgotten. In Manchester, urban redevelopment has left many communities and cultures ignored or excluded – communities that are central to the city’s history and its continued vitality. Continue reading

ctrl_alt_del OPEN CALL :: Deadline: July 20, 2007 :: In 2007-2008, ctrl_alt_del will be realized by NOMAD in corporation with Istanbul Technical University – MIAM. Venues will be garajistanbul, Istanbul Technical University – MIAM, santralistanbul / Bilgi University, and Babylon. ctrl_alt_del will include Opening Concert, Performance Series (live), Workshops, Panels, Presentations, Open Call, Field Studies / Workshops, Exhibition, Radio Programmes, Publication and CD release. The theme of ctrl_alt_del in 2007 and 2008 will be remote orienteering. As the first dedicated sound art festival in Turkey, ctrl_alt_del enjoyed a great deal of international publicity in 2003 and 2005. For the third ctrl_alt_del to be start in September 2007 and continue till the end of April 2008, we are now looking for interesting, provocative, subversive, experimental and sophisticated works. 5 pieces will be selected by the jury and will be presented during ctrl_alt_del. Continue reading

July 6, 2007 Optofonica :: 5-days-off :: Melkweg Amsterdam :: open 20.00; start 20.30 :: entree 12,- excl. membership.

Optofonica is a platform presenting the current state of the art dealing with synaesthetic media and sound spatialization. The showcase at 5-days-off will offer a preview of what is later going to be presented as an exhibition and a multimedia publication featuring works and essays by a pool of internationally acknowledged artists and researchers. The audiovisual works have been developed with the specific intention of showing the relationships between sound, image and space, and designed to be displayed and performed in 5.1 sound surround setup and in a specially dedicated apparatus (capsule) currently under construction. Continue reading

CABLED MADNESS PERFORMANCE SERIES :: July 11 - 15, 2007; daily from 11:00 to 19:00 :: Digital Art Weeks 2007 [DAW] :: @ Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich, Switzerland.

Attention: “Captain Speaking: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I have some good news and I have some bad news: The good news is that we have a very strong tail wind. And we’re doing 1400 miles per hour over land, the bad news is that all of our navigating instruments are out and we don’t know where we are and we don’t know where we’re going. And that’s our situation, our science and technology is a tail wind the like of which we’ve never had before. We’re going so god damn fast.” -jw Continue reading

Undercover, by Dana Gordon, is a blanket which contains a system of 24 wireless speakers and provides a special physical sound experience. It allows you to enjoy the vibrations of the speakers on your body and provides a private mobile soundscape. The blanket has an embedded array of small speakers that can receive a wireless audio signal via a Bluetooth connection. This audio signal can be beamed from any kind of audio device, such as mp3 player, television, computer, radio, etc. The volume controllers were designed in a way, which suits the blanket’s natural cuddling behaviour. The upper corners (A.K.A ‘the blanket’s ears’) control the volume - (pull the right one for higher volume and the left one for lower). [via]

Gokce Kinayoglu’s soundtrack brings together the bird’s-eye experience provided by a satellite map with an immersive and intimate feeling of a stereo sound recording. The technique that is employed involves outdoor sound recordings made on the move i.e. ’soundwalks’, and a GPS track-log generated during the walk. Soundwalk recordings are synchronized with relative GPS-time series coordinates taken from the track-log. This makes it possible to present the soundwalks as ‘tracks’ on the map, letting the user explore and interact with the sounds of a place freely through the map interface. Continue reading

this is not memorex: sample culture revisited by Greg Smith - In familiarizing myself with this work over the past few weeks, I’ve felt an odd sense of nostalgia developing. These projects collectively highlight various facets of what we have dubbed sample culture, that is the continued evolution of the triumph of the fragment. There are dozens of threads that can be traced back to the 1980s and while I am personally indebted to the potent combination of Brian Eno and David Byrne, the perpetual litigation of Negativland, and the sonic collage of the Bomb Squad, I am going to instead direct my attention to another dusty artifact from collective memory. Continue reading