SARoskop by Martin Hesselmeier & Karin Lingnau @ lab 30 - A matrix of 25 tubes visualizing electromagnetic waves that can be triggered by certain wave length activities, e.g. by cell phones. The project SARoskop is dealing with the visualisation of electromagnetic waves. In a matrix of up to 25 objects the installation is composed as an interactive sculpture reacting sensitively to the data of the proximate surrounding, transforming it into movement and interdependent oscillations. The sound of the moving mechanical parts interfuses the viewers perspective on the installation and together with blue-lighted displays supports a vibrancy of its own. Continue reading

Driftnet - Fly Like a Bird, a project by squidsoup: Imagine flying like a bird through a musical composition that surrounds you, immerses you and reacts to your presence. Driftnet is a confluence of two ideas – bird-like flight, and a spatialised, navigable musical environment.

At one level, it experiments with intuitive methods for freely navigating 3D virtual space. Users are invited to ‘fly like a bird’ to navigate through a virtual space. Using NO worn equipment - just by flapping their arms/wings and tilting their arms and bodies – people can intuitively (and amusingly!) navigate freely in virtual space. The metaphor used harks back to childhood play, imitating birds and planes in the playground. Continue reading

The MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie), located in the historical neighbourhood of the Marais in Paris, France, invited franco-italian artist Lorella Abenavoli and Quebec artist-researcher Nicolas Reeves to present a joint installation project on the theme Listening to the Sky. This project, called NOX MATER: Study for Muons and Silence, will be presented for the first time in September 2007.

The NOX MATER project explores the relationships between the notions of place and scale by investigating the potential of two unusual materials : darkness and silence. More precisely, it is an attempt to connect two places that are the diametrically opposed in terms of size and scale : the uterine matrix and the Universe as a whole. In an old Parisian building, a staircase leads the visitor towards a small vaulted underground room. The walls are entirely covered with absorbing materials, making the room is almost anechoic. All the sounds and noises emitted by the visitors are instantaneously silenced. In this small underground place, darkness is total, silence is complete. Continue reading

Chris Hand was commissioned by Rick Bamford of Essential Music for All “to design and program a device that would allow a roland SP-606 sampler to be controlled by a shed. Six sheds, in fact, each one produced by a different artist or group. This was the culmination of a public art project looking at what ordinary people get up to in their sheds. Found sounds from local participants were loaded onto a sampler in each shed, along with an amplifier and speakers. Each device comprised a BASIC stamp microcontroller with an ultrasonic sensor to detect proximity of audience members, triggering random sounds on the sampler via MIDI.” Link.

Dutch artist Edo Autopoiesis is exploring an unusual, and mostly ignored side of Second Life - its wind. His installation, Resonating - With - secondlifeWind is an incredible meditative journey into a sky-based field of 100 windmills. Forever set in motion by the wind energy, each one of the windmills lifts a red object: the stronger the wind, the faster the object is lifted.

Upon reaching the top of the pole, the red object drops and hits an acoustic resonator at the bottom, producing a sound. Sounds from neighboring windmills affect the overall rhythm produced by the entire set of windmills. The ever-changing wind patterns of Second Life are the source of variety in this strange, and fully generative melody. Continue reading

c(2)ipo-06 (cybernetic intelligent parasitic object)–by Kostas Daflos–is a musical cooperative organism with a structure related to the neurological system. It is activated by human presence and it communicates with the environment via a sensor. Its internal environment consists of an additional ten contact sensors which supply the system with responses (interrupting and re-establishing endless routes of information). These contacts transform the results of the impromptu sound effects obtained from the environment into a multitude of random sound frequencies. Continue reading

LEARNING AUDITORY MODELS OF MACHINE VOICES [PDF] by Kelly Dobson and Brian Whitman (MIT Media Lab) and Daniel P.W. Ellis (LabROSA, Electrical Engineering, Columbia University).

ABSTRACT: Vocal imitation is often found useful in Machine Therapy sessions as it creates an emphatic relational bridge between human and machine. The feedback of the machine directly responding to the person’s imitation can strengthen the trust of this connection. However, vocal imitation of machines often bear little resemblance to the target due to physiological limitations. In practice, we need a way to detect human vocalization of machine sounds that can generalize to new machines. 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

Lodged in a spacious apartment in an unassuming 19th-century building on Rome’s busy Piazza Vittoria, the new Sound Art Museum is both a public venue and the realized dream of Dora Stiefelmeier and Mario Pieroni, the founders of Zerynthia, a not-for-profit organization created in 1991 to promote exhibitions and performances in Italy and abroad. Inaugurated Feb. 26, the Sound Art Museum is a project of Zerynthia and its subsidiary, RadioArteMobile (RAM), an internet radio station launched in 2002 to explore–and expand–the territory shared by the visual arts and sound research. The Sound Art Museum’s premiere exhibition is “Inaudita” (meaning both “unheard” and “unprecedented”) and features installations by the Vito Acconci studio, Markus Huemer, Donatella Landi, Stephen Vitiello and Achim Wollscheid. The organizers are Lorenzo Benedetti, an independent curator, Riccardo Giagni, a composer and musicologist, and the artist Cesare Pietroiusti. Continue reading

Sounds bring Google Earth to life. As well as homing in on visual feasts around the globe, users of Google Earth may soon be able to listen to the sounds that accompany them. A Californian company has created software that can layer relevant recorded sounds over locations in Google Earth, New Scientist reports. Wild Sanctuary has over 3,500 hours of soundscapes from all over the world.The firm is in talks with Google, although no official agreement has yet been made.

Its director, Bernie Krause said: “A picture tells a thousand words, but a sound tells a thousand pictures.” Dr Krause has spent the last 40 years collecting sounds, and his recordings include more than 15,000 animal noises, and sounds from a huge array of habitats, including cities, deserts, mountains and the marine environment. It is the largest library in existence of natural sound, he said. Continue reading