The graphics and ambient “music” come from the onboard tracking instruments.

Interactivity has become ambient. Individual people are no longer isolated resulting from the scaling up of networks and the scaling down of the apparatus for transmission and reception. Various communication devices always carried are continuously emitting and receiving information. This continuous data flow is both invisible and often, by the majority of people, unknown. Today’s hand-held devices that can be seen as extensions of the human body allow ubiquitous, inescapable network interconnectivity. Continue reading

The Frog Rock, by self-styled crackpot inventor Bryon Mumford, is a natural sandstone boulder, mounted on a short steel pedestal. It seems to float about two inches above the floor. The stone has been hollowed out, and inside is a small, battery operated microprocessor. This processor spends most of its time asleep, but periodically wakes up to reproduce the digitally recorded sounds of insects and amphibians. During the daytime (a light sensor enables it to make this distinction) the Frog Rock periodically reproduces the call of a Pacific Tree Frog. After dark, the Frog Rock sometimes reproduces the call of a pond frog, and sometimes reproduces the calls of field crickets. Low power CMOS circuitry allows it to play for many months on a set of batteries. Continue reading

BronxMAP - Media Arts and Performance :: July 8 @ 8PM :: BronxMAP is a regular event held in the event space at the rear of the Bruckner Bar & Grill (1 Bruckner Blvd, 718.665.2001) near the first subway stop into the Bronx from Manhattan on the 4/5/6 train.

A night of performances featuring the expressive abstraction of the Bronx’s own Adriaan Doering, the audiovisual hacking and sculpting of Providence’s Blair Ciemiecki and Matthew Underwood, and the audience driven ambient soundscapes of Jasper Streit from Sydney, Australia. Continue reading

MEME: Pat Muchmore, Bill Brittelle, Tuba, Joe Exley, Red Sails, Molly Thompson, and Peter Kirn :: June 27, 7:30pm :: $5 :: Galapagos Back Room, Williamsburg :: Directions.

Peter Kirn is also doing a 20-minute live music/keyboard/visual set at the return of the Meme Music night. Galapagos is in its last days as a Williamsburg space before the big move to Brooklyn. Kirn will be doing some of his more floaty ethereal ambient stuff. He fully expects some of his colleagues to do the opposite. That should mix it up.

Meme’s mission: “Meme Music is a tri-monthly series dedicated to 1. The right to drink while listening to “classical” music, 2. The idea that the words “experimental” and “avant-garde” don’t have to be defined as mindlessly boring, 3. Since nowadays rock musicians and classical musicians are playing the same instruments and writing the same sorts of songs, shouldn’t they get to share billing? 4. Multi-media is neat! And 5. Listening to music should be fun, goddamnit!”

UNDER SOUND UNDER (2007) A Jeff Talman Soundspace Installation at St. Lawrence Church, Klatovy, Czech Republic will open at 3 PM, June 2, 2007 and remain open until July 29, 2007.

As humans we tend to hear in a horizontal plane. Speech, music performance and TV and radio broadcast are ready examples of typically horizontal or near-horizontal listening situations. But the human ear can hear three-dimensionally, such that perceptions of different altitudes and depths of sound are possible. In UNDER SOUND UNDER different planes or strata of sound are made apparent in the installation. Further, sound motion from loudspeaker to loudspeaker across and between strata dynamically engages the space creating volume-field effects. Continue reading

Shared Frequencies by Kabir Carter will be presented at Diapason on Saturday, May 26 from 6pm to 8:30pm.

Shared Frequencies was presented at Diapason in February 2005, but was originally realized as a public art project in 2002 (supported by a fellowship from Media Alliance). Shared Frequencies is an ever changing sound installation where Carter gathers others’ acoustic transmissions, environmental sounds, or a combination of both for live or future modification and modulation with an analog sound synthesis system. Initially, acoustic materials pulled from Family Radio Service (FRS) channels were transduced and/or received via two-way radios and immediately processed by a portable sound synthesis “studio” that Carter set up at various sidewalk locations throughout New York City. Continue reading

AWSoM - Ambient Weather Sound Machine:: May 20, 2007, 10.30 am - 4 pm :: Essex Wildlife Trust, Two Tree Island, only 15 minutes walk from Leigh on Sea station (map).

AWSoM is a free media artwork that integrates meteorological sensors (temperature, windspeed, direction and motion) to trigger and manipulate sound samples recorded on Two Tree Island nature reserve. Samples of wildlife - including the rare avocet bird - in competition with trains, planes, automobiles, dogs and people, create ambient sound and music responding to changing environmental patterns. The project is a collaboration between artists Stuart Bowditch and Damien Robinson and the Mediashed. Continue reading

Silence of the Lands enables participants to map and annotate the soundscape of urban and natural environments. Participants can record and collect ambient sounds, create and share acoustic cartographies, and use them as conversation pieces of a social dialogue on the sonic environment. The result is an ecomuseum in which personal acoustic ecologies are translated into an affective geography that changes over time according to participants’ perceptions and interpretations of their environmental setting.

A Community of Soundscapes in Boulder, Colorado: Applications for participating in the Boulder program will close on May 21st, 2007. Participants in the project will be involved in activities of sound mapping from July 23 to August 10, 2007. Continue reading

Jeff Talman’s new installation, WAVE SHADOWS (2007), opens at St. Lukas Kirche am Marianenplatz, Munich, Germany on Saturday, May 12, 2007, starting at 8 PM. It can be heard daily: May 13-25, 2007, 11-3, 6-9 PM. A choral Performance will take place on May 18, 9 PM by the Lukas-Chor Munich, Gerd Kötter, Music Director.

WAVE SHADOWS explores the depths of silence (room tone) in Sankt Lukaskirche, Munich. Extracted from recorded silence, the inherent resonant sound waves of the space are projected back into the church as its central and apse domes, measuring to 40 meters from the church floor, are engaged as giant parabolic sound reflectors. A sonic shadow environment made of and in an environment of its own sound is offered. While tracing the resonance of the site daily for two weeks, the installation is further developed by performances of Lukas-Chorus Munich, Gerd Kötter, Music Director. The choral voices follow the installation sounds, singing on frequency so that humans and recorded resonance sing the space as an integrated mass. Continue reading