Welcome to the second issue of Networked Music Review Newsletter, a monthly review of some of the many events archived on Networked_Music_Review [to receive this via email, subscribe here].

This month’s blog was filled with entries about audio-visual work; from Harvestworks’ Crackle, Noise & Light, an evening of electronic sound and video performances that included interactive sound-art and live cinema by NoiseFold (David Stout and Cory Metcalf), as part of the New York Electronic Arts Festival, to performances by LoVid and Zach Layton at Roulette in NYC.

From Cut Chemist (aka Lucas MacFadden ), who presented a video-scratching performance in which he grabbed a digital camera, pointed it at the audience and proceeded to scratch the live footage in sync with the music rhythm, to FEED (Kurt Hentschlager), an audio-visual composition in which audio and video activate one-another; and Audio Kinematics (Jost Muxfeldt), a virtual audio sculpture where sound is visualized and a speeding diagram set to sound – both part of SONAR 2007 in Spain.

The Musicians (Julia Burns, with Ardrian Hardjono and Balint Seeber), drawing on the work of David Rokeby, is an interactive artwork that makes use of cinematography and sound. The user can direct two musicians as they jam filmically and impact the artwork by their movements.

And then there’s Sound Economy, an audio/video approach to economics that uses the Philippines Gross Domestic Product as a source to manipulate sounds and video.

Even Joseph Nechvatal’s viral symphOny, in which custom-created computer viruses were given audio manifestations – beautiful ones at that – by Andrew Deutsch and Matthew Underwood.

There are several locative works, among them: Audio Nomad (Nick Mariette), part of a 3-year research project that will trace the now-absent Berlin Wall through Berlin-Mitte, overlaying the space with a complex two-dimensional soundscape generated on a mobile device; and Always Something Somewhere Else (Duncan Speakman) which touches on issues of climate change and globalization.

Among my other favorites: Vatnajokull, a project that invites you to phone a glacier in Iceland and listen to its melting through a submerged microphone. While the sound of melting ice is actually very beautiful to listen to, the artist reminds us in her invitation that what we will be listening to by far, is Undercover by Dana Gordon, a blanket with 24 wireless speakers that provides a very special physical/sound experience for the user.

There were many new instruments and sound controllers, a number of them presented at NIME 2007 in NYC. Among them were two controllers that make use of eye movements – Oculog, a new system for performing electronic music where a video-based eye movement system is used to control the sound. And, EyeMusic v1.0., presented in performance, that demonstrates how the eyes can be used to directly perform a musical composition.

For those interested in non-traditional instruments that provide amateurs with meaningful performance experiences, check out Experimental Music Instruments, a group of engineers, composers and sound artists who can hack almost anything and turn it into a musical instrument.

There is a short interview with Amit Pitaru and a longer one with Miya Masaoka, a composer and musician known for her koto, laser interfaces, and work with the sound and movement of insects, the physiological responses of plants, the human brain, and her own body.