Jeff Talman’s sound installations focus on notions of “self-reflexive resonance”, often using no other sound source than the natural ambient resonance of the installation site. His works also have a strong visual component, owing to his dual backgrounds in music and the visual arts. His latest work, “A Play of Flows” premiers on October 23, 2008 at the Galleria Mazzini in Genoa, Italy. Talman was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Sound Art in 2006 and was a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Award in Computer Arts in 2003. He currently resides in Manhattan.

Due to the nature of his pieces, Talman does not provide sound samples on his website - the pieces are simply too site-specific to experience in any other way than first-hand. As such, we will only be providing photos and discussion with this interview.

Peter Traub: Before you began creating sound installations in the mid 1990s, you were a more ‘traditional’ computer music composer and musician. Could you discuss how you made the transition into sound installation work? Was there a particular experience of a space or place that pushed you in this new direction? Continue reading

Karen Van Lengen is the Edward E. Elson Professor of Architecture and Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. She is also the former Chair of Architecture at the Parsons School of Design.

Van Lengen’s current work focuses on the use of sound as a significant design component. Her designs mix environmental sounds into public and private space, often taking sounds from one space and playing or mixing them into another. Her most recent project is a collaboration with Joel Sanders Architects to create a sound installation within the newly renovated Campbell Hall, home to the UVA School of Architecture.

Peter Traub: Your 2003 paper co-authored with Ted Sheridan, “Hearing Architecture: Exploring and Designing the Aural Environment”, argues for a greater emphasis on sound and aurality as elements of modern architectural design. When and how did you become interested in sound and “designing the aural environment”? Continue reading

Stephen Vitiello creates sound installations that often feature pristine recordings of natural environments and phenomena – the Amazon rain forest or flapping moth wings for example– sonically magnified to expose their internal detail and beauty. His installation work also focuses heavily on the use and implications of space as a compositional parameter. Vitiello has released several CDs and his work has been performed at The Tate Modern, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Kitchen, NYC. His work was also featured in the 2006 Biennale of Sydney and the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He is currently Assistant Professor of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.

On September 21, 2007, Vitiello visited the University of Virginia. We sat and discussed his work for an hour in the university’s Jefferson Rotunda. The recording and transcript of that interview is presented below. Continue reading

Golan Levin is an artist/engineer interested in the exploration of new modes of reactive expression. His work focuses on the design of systems for the creation, manipulation and performance of simultaneous image and sound, as part of a more general inquiry into formal languages of interactivity, and of nonverbal communications protocols in cybernetic systems. Through performances, digital artifacts, and virtual environments, Levin applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight our relationship with machines, make visible our ways of interacting with each other, and explore the intersection of abstract communication and interactivity. Presently he is Associate Professor of Electronic Art at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. Continue reading

Adam Nash is a new media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer. He works primarily in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as live audiovisual performance spaces. His sound/composition and performance background strongly informs his approach to creating works for virtual environments, embracing sound, time and the user as elements equal in importance to vision. Adam’s work has been presented in galleries, festivals and online in Australia, Europe, Asia and the Americas, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. He also works as composer and sound artist with “Company in Space” (AU) and “Igloo” (UK), exploring the integration of motion capture into real-time 3D audiovisual spaces. He is currently undertaking a Master of Arts by Research at the “Centre for Animation and Interactive Media” at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching multi-user 3D cyberspace as a live performance medium; and he’s a Lecturer in “Computer Games and Digital Art” in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University. Continue reading

Bill Fontana has been creating musical networks and making “sound sculptures” since the early 1970s. His works are usually large in scale and often involve the transmission of sounds from one ‘listening’ location with a network of microphones and/or sensors to another location where the sounds are overlayed onto the local sonic environment. Fontana’s work focuses strongly on the idea of listening as a compositional act - that is, it is driven by the idea that music surrounds us constantly and that the patterns of music are audible if we just take the time to listen. Examples and excerpts of many of Fontana’s works can be heard and seen at his website, resoundings.org.

Bill Fontana will be answering reader’s questions in the comments section below until December 6, 2007. Continue reading

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller create multimedia pieces that combine aspects of sculpture, cinema, sound installation, and short-story fiction. Installations such as ‘The Paradise Institute’ (2001) use forced perspective and a three-dimensional sound track to create the illusion that one is sitting in a large theater. Their ‘sound walks’ and ‘video walks’ are immersive pieces that use common consumer technologies, such as iPods and video cameras, to create experiences that blur the line between experienced reality and narrative fiction. Their works are exhibited internationally and they currently have a solo exhibit ‘The Killing Machine and other stories’ that will arrive at the Miami Art Museum on Oct. 15, 2007.

Due to Janet and George’s busy schedule, they will not be able to answer reader’s questions in the comments section following the interview. Continue reading

Max Neuhaus is a pioneer of artistic activities with sound. Utilizing the sense of sound he developed in fourteen years as a musician, Neuhaus began to make sound works which were neither music nor events. He coined the term ’sound installation’ to describe them. In these works without beginning or end, the sounds were placed in space rather than in time.

Neuhaus continued his activities in music with his Networks or Broadcast Works, virtual architectures which act as forums open to anyone for the evolution of new musics. In the first, “Public Supply”, in 1966, he combined a radio station with the telephone network and created a two-way public aural space twenty miles in diameter encompassing New York City, where any inhabitant could join a live dialogue with sound by making a phone call. Later in 1977 with “Radio Net”, he formed a nationwide network with 190 radio stations. To listen to selections from ‘Public Supply” and “Radio Net”, click here. Neuhaus’ current project, “Auracle”, constructs a twenty-four hour a day global entity for live interaction with sound over the Internet. Continue reading

Scot Gresham-Lancaster is a composer, performer, instrument builder and educator. He is dedicated to research and performance using the expanding capabilities of computer networks for musical and cross discipline expression. He studied with Philip Ianni, Roy Harris, Darius Milhaud, John Chowning, Robert Ashley, Terry Riley, “Blue” Gene Tyranny and Jack Jarret, among others. Gresham-Lancaster has been a composer in residence at Mills College and he has been developing new families of controllers at STEIM, Amsterdam. He has toured and recorded as a member of the HUB and has performed the music of Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, John Zorn, and John Cage, under their direction. Gresham-Lancaster has also worked as a technical assistant to Lou Harrison, Iannis Xenakis, David Tudor among many others. http://o-art.org/Scot; http://myspace.com/scotgl; blog: http://scotgl.blogspot.com/.

Helen Thorington: Welcome Scot. You were a member of the computer network band, the HUB, and an early pioneer of computer networked music. Tell us about the HUB and the kind of work you, John Bischoff, Tim Perkis, Chris Brown, Mark Trayle and Phil Stone did at that time. Continue reading

Miya Masaoka is a musician, composer and performance artist. She has created works for koto, laser interfaces, laptop and video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. In her performance pieces she has investigated the sound and movement of insects, as well as the physiological responses of plants, the human brain, and her own body.

Helen Thorington: Miya, you were trained in Japanese court music as well as contemporary music and I understand have expanded on the playing techniques of the koto – first by using extended techniques, but more importantly, by building a Laser Koto. For those who don’t know, can you tell us about the koto and how you developed it? What is the Laser Koto and how does it work? Continue reading