Sound Ecologies: Listening in the City :: November 18, 2009; 10:00 am - 4:00 pm :: Department of Music, City University London, Northampton Square, London. EC1V 0HB :: Free

A day of presentations, participatory workshops and informal performance around themes of urban sound, networked sound, locative media and acoustic ecology – the relationship between living beings and their environment, as mediated by sound. Featuring Furtherfield (Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett), and guest speakers Stanza, Peter Cusack, Ximena Alarcón and Pedro Rebelo. Continue reading

Carrie Bodle: Sewing Sonifications Performance :: October 10, 2009; 2:00 - 6:00 pm :: Westlake Park, Seattle, WA.

Visual and sound artist Carrie Bodle will create a five-channel sound installation and sewing performance sonifying data from an ecosystem model developed by UW oceanographic scientist Dr. Neil Banas. Sound is translated from data, then visualized and made tactile by the artist embroidering the combined waveform into a continuous sound wave.

This computer model simulates the growth and consumption of plankton in the ocean ecosystem along the Washington coast during summer 2005. The five sound channels broadcast five dimensions in this data: Continue reading

Columbia College Chicago Art + Design Lecture Series presents World Listening Project :: April 15, 2009; 6:30 - 8:00 pm :: Ferguson Hall, Columbia College Chicago, 600 Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL.

The Art + Design Department is proud to present the World Listening Project (WLP). Panelists will talk about its current local and international efforts, and discuss opportunities for designers and artists to participate in the unrealized potential that lies in the field of acoustic ecology, in order more fully to realize an effective and creative response to an all too often neglected part of human experience and knowledge—the world of sound and our ability to listen. Listening means paying attention. If you want to change the world, you need to listen to it. The panel discussion’s participants include: Eric Leonardson, Jesse Seay, Chad Clark, Brett Balough, and Dan Godston. Continue reading

Returning for its third year, the Electronic Music Foundation’s acclaimed sound art, music and ecology festival Ear to the Earth will take place this month in locations all over New York City. Ear to the Earth is organized around the principle that sound’s distinct emotional impact makes it a significant medium in which to explore environmental concerns such as global warming, extinction and habitat destruction. Divided into two sections, “New York Soundscapes” and “Other Soundscapes,” this year’s events maintain a strong urban emphasis. Andrea Polli’s installation Cloud Car, takes the automobile, a key force within the development of American cities, as its locus. With the aide of special effects technician Chuck Varga, Polli will envelop a Ford Taurus station wagon entirely in mist. Visitors will be invited to sit in the car and listen to environmental sound compositions. Resembling a broken down vehicle on the side of a highway, the work is a poignant symbol for America’s current predicament in regards to oil dependency. Cloud Car will be on display at Eyebeam October 18th and will then move to the New York Hall of Science on October 25th. Continue reading

ARTS ELECTRIC presents EAR TO THE EARTH 2008 :: October 15 - 25 :: Various venues in New York City.

Ear to the Earth 2008 began with the launch of New York Soundscape, a multi-year project to create a panoramic portrayal of the city’s audio personality and urban ecology by composers, sound artists, students, and New Yorkers from all walks of life. The composers this year include Walter Branchi, Francisco Lopez, Alvin Curran, Michael Schumacher, Miya Masaoka, Richard Lainhart, Lo Vid, Marina Rosenfeld, Andrea Polli, Ezequiel Vinao, Charlie Morrow, Helen Fisher, Matthew Burtner, and John Cage.

Don’t miss New York Big Fritz, a multimedia presentation of Times Square around the clock, produced by faculty and students of the NYU Music Technology program, among them Agnieszka Roginska, Paul Geluso, Robert Rowe, Joel Chadabe, and Tom Beyer. (Image above is: Recording New York Big Fritz - Photo by Izzi Ramkissoon) Continue reading

As part of Metal’s Village Green, The MediaShed presents The Eco-Media Open Day featuring: The Internet vs. Pigeons Race; Human Telephone Lines; A Requiem for Cod; an Olympics of Lobbing, Shouting and Whistling :: September 27, 2008; 12 – 4 pm :: Chalkwell Park, Chalkwell Avenue, Southend-on-Sea.

An afternoon of fun experiments to see how we can combine “natural media” with “man made media”. We will be linking together ecology, human bodies and other gadgets to devise ingenious methods of communication inspired by natures own systems of signals, warnings and imprints. Taking inspiration from early media like shouting, carrier pigeons, throwing and the message-in-a-bottle, we will try to turn the ecology of Chalkwell Park into a living switchboard! Continue reading

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - Ecology: Water, Air, Sound :: Deadline: September 30, 2008 - Full submission form here.

New Adventures in Sound Art invites artists of all ages and nationalities to submit works on the theme Ecology: Water, Air, and/or Sound for consideration in 2009 future programming for the annual Deep Wireless, Sound Travels, and SOUNDplay festivals, produced by New Adventures in Sound Art in Toronto, Canada. Artists may submit works in one or all of the following four categories: 1) Radio Art, 2) Electroacoustic Music, 3) Videomusic and 4) Installation Art. Individual interpretations or variations on the theme - Ecology: Water, Air, Sound - are encouraged.

All submitted works must respond in some way to the theme Ecology: Water, Air, Sound in order to be considered for 2009 NAISA programming.

Resonating Bodies-Bumble Domicile :: Conceived by Sarah Peebles, others :: A Co-Presentation between InterAccess and New Adventures in Sound Art :: through July 27, 2008 :: *new* Gallery, 906 Queen West, Toronto, Canada.

Resonating Bodies is a series of mixed media installations and community outreach projects, which focus on the biodiversity of pollinators indigenous to the ecosystems of the Greater Toronto Area. Conceived by Sarah Peebles with Rob King, Rob Cruickshank and Anne Barros, the installations illuminate aspects of local biodiversity, such as bumblebee colonies and their foraging activities, ultraviolet bee vision, and pollinator / plant co-evolution. Some of these projects feature colour-coded DNA barcodes, a new technique for species identification pioneered by Canadian researchers. Continue reading

This past spring at the University of Virginia, a first-time joint class was offered that brought graduate students from the Virginia Center for Computer Music (VCCM) together with undergraduates in the School of Architecture.The undergraduate Robotic Ecologies class merged with the Emergent Systems in Music graduate class, and was co-taught by professors Jason Johnson (architecture) and Matthew Burtner (music), with assistance from music graduate student Troy Rogers. I had the opportunity to participate in this exciting new venture between our departments. The goal of this year’s class was for students to create and fabricate “performative spatial and acoustic instruments that sense, compute and interact to/with emergent atmospheric inputs.” The class’s group collaborations resulted in three new robotic sonic-spatial instruments. Movies and descriptions of the instruments are provided below. Descriptions were provided by the groups and video footage was provided by Jason Johnson. Continue reading

Transmitting live from the Ocean below the Antarctic Ice: “Providing an acoustic live stream of the Antarctic underwater soundscape is a formidable challange. After all, more than 15000 km lie between Antarctica and our institute in Germany. Underwater sound is recorded by means of two hydrophones by PALAOA (Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean), an autonomous, wind and solar powered observatory located on the Ekström ice shelf (Boebel et al., 2006).

The data stream is transmitted via wireless LAN from PALAOA to the German Neumayer Base. From there, a permanent satellite link transmits the data to the AWI in Germany. Continue reading