Yuri Suzuki and Naoki Kawamoto (technical support) contribute to the design of daily domestic noises. alarms, mobile phones, a doorbell; They re-explore their sounds. The musical kettle is a part of series ‘re-design soundscape’. As the kettle boils it whistles your favorite tunes

With thanks to Catie Vaucelle at Architectradure.

MP3 player for unborn babies Via Positive Technology Journal

Canadian design student Geof Ramsay has invented a MP3 player for unborn babies - the “BLABY”. By wearing the device, pregnant mothers will be able to play their favourite music to their children. The player consists of a contoured belt that wraps around a mother’s waist with three inbuilt vibration speakers playing music into the womb. Its inbuilt speakers transmit the vibrations of music and voice through to the baby in a safe manner, and the mother wearing it can also benefit from three tiny massage mechanisms.

The Public Sound Objects (PSOs) is a Shared Sonic Environment for experimental music available as an installation or as a web based system. It is targeted to the general Public and it does not require previous music knowledge. A user can join a collaborative performance using a “Bouncing Ball Java Interface” by manipulating Sound Objects in a central soundserver.

To run the client software properly you need to have Java installed and a Standard MIDI Synthesizer. The Public Sound Objects Software is Open Source under a GPL Licence. Source code can be downloaded. A video essay can be found here. Continue reading

Enrico Costanza, PhD student at the Media and Design Laboratory of Lausanne’s Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, has focused his research on designing objects that can bring digital and physical worlds closer. His Audio d-touch project, developed with Simon Shelley, is a clear example of this approach. It consists of three tangible interfaces that are used for musical composition and performance. They have been suggestively named, Augmented Stave, Tangible Drum Machine and Physical Sequencer.

The latter has been used in two live performances by the Sicilian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima. Using the sequencer Sollima is able to record audio or voice samples and organize them in variable length loops. Continue reading

Babbling / Sounding / Noising Cubes by Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon :: November 8 - December 13, 2008 :: November 8; 5:00 pm :: OBORO, 4001 Berri, 3rd floor, Montreal, QC, CA.

The Cubes à sons / bruits / babils (Sonic Cubes) are pleasant-to-touch wooden objects containing a multitude of sounds and composing together an acoustic vocabulary. By holding them in your hand and turning them in all directions, you discover their contents and, in the course of manipulating them, unexpected and unpredictable associations and entanglements occur that you can model as you wish. Sighing, coughing, sneezing, leaves rustling, thunder, car humming, water gurgling in metal pipes, door banging — brief and fleeting stories thus unfold and fold, each time reinvented, starting from a tactile, visual and sound object. Continue reading

Corpus, by Art of Failure (Nicolas Maigret and Nicolas Montgermont), uses the potential which has any object to be set in vibration, and to produce its own tone. Every presentation is based on a specific place and context, and aims to express an usually imperceptible potential of the various present elements (furniture, walls, objects). These various elements are set in vibration by low frequencies via an computer program which analyzes the resonances of the site. Every element then produces its own sound signature. The architectural space is discovered in the form of a complex volume but also through the resonant specificities of its various components.

This installation is based on a program which analyzes, in a given place, the frequencies that makes the objects and elements it contains entering in vibration. This first phase is realized by the broadcasting in the place of a test sound signal that is simultaneously recorded and analyzed. Continue reading

Origami is the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Its goal is to represent an object using only one piece of square paper, which is then folded and creased in intricate ways. American artist Joo Youn Paek has recently combined this traditional art form with contemporary digital sound mixing processes, via an interactive installation called Fold Loud. The installation consists of three square pieces of paper with opened circuits made out of conductive fabrics, which are stitched in place. The sheets are creased according to three origami bases: the balloon, the kite and the dog.

When the papers are folded along the crease lines, a circuit is closed and a sound is emitted. Each fold is assigned to a different human vocal sound so that combinations of folds create harmonies. Users have to bend multiple Fold Loud sheets together to produce a chorus of voices. But in order to generate a harmonic sound, users need to carefully fold and repeat their gestures, focusing on a slow and patient process. Continue reading

sound art for one and two and one :: by Larry Johnson and Lewis Gesner :: Mobius :: 175 Harrison Street, Boston :: June 13 and 14 at 8:00 p.m.

Different objects, manufactured and natural, through their molecular structures, or their shapes or the resonant properties of their volumes, provide an infinite variety of sounds which can be delightful to those who have developed a taste for them. Gesner and Johnson will play solos that exploit these materials; sandwiched between the solos will be a duet . Continue reading

GANG CLAN MAFIA at Mobius :: 725 Harrison Ave , Boston , MA :: 10:00 pm 6/27 - 10:00 pm 6/28.

This upcoming performance of Gang Clan Mafia unravels over 1,440 minutes. Performance actions become sonic rhythms; soundscapes dictate the flow of video information; sound becomes objects which inform the actions that transform the physical, sonic, and psychic space of the location.

Gang Clan Mafia creates improvised, live sound. It is a sound collage, landscape, journey and conversation. Video, installation, and performance actions are used as a visual Transportation Pod.
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Exploring Sonic Interaction with Artefacts in Everyday Contexts — a hands-on workshop on June 23, 2008 at IRCAM (Paris, France):: Part of the 14th International Conference on Auditory Display :: June 24-27, 2008 :: Organizers: Karmen Franinovic, Lalya Gaye, Frauke Behrendt :: Workshop : website :: Deadline: June 6, 2008.

This workshop introduces participants to the use of creative interaction design methods when exploring the design of sonic interactions with computational artefacts. Specifically, focus will be on physical interactions that rely on continuous sonic feedback. Participants will generate future scenarios and concepts for such interactions, and everyday sounding objects in context will be taken as a starting point. By taking part in the workshop activities, participants will get an embodied understanding of the challenges of designing for meaningful and engaging physical interaction with computational sonic artefacts. Methods employed in the workshop will thus be good complements to the cognition or technology-based approaches to designing sounding objects that are mainstream within the ICAD community. Continue reading