Scale is a bio-art collaboration with neurobiologist/ engineer Malcolm MacIver, visual/ conceptual artist Marlena Novak, and composer/ sound designer Jay Alan Yim. It is being presented at STRP Festival, Eindhoven, Netherlands.

This audience-interactive installation involves electric fish from the Amazon River Basin. Twelve different species of these fish comprise a ‘choir’ whose sonified electrical fields provide the source tones for an immersive audiovisual environment. The interface for Scale incorporates custom-designed software, a hacked Wiimote ‘conductor’s baton’ that participants can use to ‘cue’ individual fish so their unadulterated tones (as well as digitally processed versions) can be heard through the audio system, a touchscreen panel to allow for changes in volume, and arrays of LEDs under each tank to provide visual feedback to visitors. Continue reading

Using Sound to Filter Bacterial Spores from Water — Acoustic trapping can remove bacterial spores from water, according to a new set of experiments funded by the US Army.

Measuring the quality of water on an ongoing basis is an important task but not one that is always straightforward. Taking samples for chemical analysis is simple enough and can be relatively easily automated. But determining what kind of bacteria are present is a little more tricky because these need to be filtered and removed from the water before testing. And because filters quickly become clogged and useless, this requires human intervention on a regular basis. Continue reading

In response to: The Music of the Sun (Thanks to Simon Biggs) Charles Dodge – Earth’s Magnetic Field [1970] from Records as I Buy Them:

From the record notes: “The solar wind may be viewed as pushing against Earth’s magnetic field, in turn producing an equal but opposite push on the solar wind. The solar wind is not uniform and consequently any changes in it are quickly reflected at the Earth’s surface as changes in the magnetic field …. The Kp index represents the average of the magnetic changes, which are measured at a selected group of magnetic observing stations on Earth and may take on any of 28 distinct values. Every three hours, the observations provide a new value for the index, thereby giving eight values of Kp for each day. Continue reading

Sun Boxes in Rhyolite Nevada. A twenty speaker piece powered by the sun by Craig Colorusso.

Sun Boxes are an environment to enter and exit. It’s comprised of twenty speakers operating independently each powered by solar panels. There is a different guitar sample in each box all playing together making the composition. The guitar samples are all of different lengths so the whole piece keeps evolving.

Participants are encouraged to walk amongst the speakers. It sounds different inside of the array. There is a different sense of space inside. Certain speakers will be closer and louder therefore the piece will sound different to different people in different positions throughout the array. Creating a unique experience for everyone. Continue reading

From khs frst on Vimeo.

Truce is an interactive sound installation created by Robin Meier and Ali Momeni at the Spark Festival 2009, Minneapolis USA. Continue reading

Variable 4 by James Bulley and Daniel Jones :: May 22-23, 2010; noon-noon :: Dungeness, Kent, TN29 9ND.

Since the earliest civilizations, a complex relationship has existed between human society and the weather systems that define the world around us. We make sense of seasonal cycles through rituals and folklore, passing down ways of harnessing the natural elements whilst constructing defenses against those which threaten our existence.

Variable 4 transforms these weather patterns into a living musical composition with the same unpredictability as the elements themselves. Using meteorological sensors connected to a custom software environment developed by the artists, the wild weather conditions of the Kent coastland act as composer, navigating through a map of 24 specifically written movements. Every aspect of the piece, from broad harmonic progressions down to individual notes and timbres, is influenced by changes in the environment: wind speed, rainfall, solar radiation, humidity, tropospheric variance, temperature, and more. Continue reading

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot at London’s Barbican from The Wire Magazine on Vimeo.

From: On the Wings of an Unusual Exhibition by Alice Pfeiffer, Part of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s exhibition at Barbican’s Curve, (Barbican Gallery, Silk Street, London): …. For his first solo show in Britain, the French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has built an aviary orchestra at the Curve — and the exhibition is designed specially for the unusual space, which wraps around the concert hall at the Barbican Center.

At the show, which runs through May 23 at the Curve …, a basic rock set-up — guitars, bass, cymbals — are set up alongside amplifiers, and seeds and water are sprinkled all over the instruments; instead of musicians, there are 40 zebra finches. As they fly around and pick grain off the instruments, they generate a chance composition. Continue reading

BoulderPavement is an online multimedia journal. Volume 1, Issue 1 features work from and beyond The Banff Centre, centered around music and nature. It includes: an interview with composer John Luther Adams & percussionist Steven Schick; artwork by Peter von Tiesenhausen, poetry by Jennifer Still; memoir excerpt by climber and author James Perrin; an audio interview with artist Kate Hartman; and more.

Explore the issue here. Follow BoulderPavement: http://www.twitter.com/boulderpavement ; Follow The Banff Centre: http://www.twitter.com/TheBanffCentre.

Videotage is proud to present Hong Kong-based Portuguese artist Joao Vasco Paiva as the first selected artist-in-residence of fuse:: residency program 2010. The objective of fuse:: residency program has always been encouraging individuals interested in the field of new media art, be it art & technology, art & science or art & anything, to create new works. With the support from Videotage, Joao Vasco Paiva will bring the audience a new sculptural sound installation Chirps, through which he creates a score by determining rules.

The prototype of the work (v1) was presented in the Microwave International New Media Art Festival 2009 in which a set of toy birds performed a sequence of calls and movement interfered by the passers-by at the lobby of Langham Hotel, while this time, Vasco has made the toy birds migrate to the raw space of Videotage where they would react to the motion and sound of a new player - a real mynah bird. Continue reading