[From Daily Dose Pick by Karsten Lund: Nick Cave’s Soundsuits] Artist Nick Cave turns sundry materials, such as cast-off clothing, flea market discoveries, and dyed human hair, into transformative “soundsuits” that double as sumptuous sculptures.

Cave (not to be confused with the musician of the same name) draws from sources as varied as African ceremonial costumes, Tibetan textiles, and pop-culture creatures. His elaborate suits aren’t just objects pegged to a pedestal; they’re meant to be worn, vitalized through movement and the sounds they make. In fact, the dance-trained artist is working toward a 90-suit performance that he’ll take around the world. Continue reading

Wearable sound experiment or Why does my knee bark and my armpit squeak?
@ Atelier Nord, Oslo, Norway :: March 15 to 18, 2010 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. :: at: Atelier Nords project room,
Kunstnernes Hus, Wergelandsvn. 17, 0167 OSLO :: Registration for the workshop at http://www.ateliernord.no Maximum number of participants: 10 :: Application deadline: March 5, 2010 :: Participation fee: NOK 500.

This four day workshop introduces basic soft electronics techniques for constructing fabric sensors and wearable circuits. Instead of using soldering irons and wire, we will use sewing needles and conductive thread. The theme of the workshop is hacking sound toys into wearables. Continue reading

New York-based composer and multi-media artist Miya Masaoka has developed The LED Kimono Project, an installation-based media and performance piece featuring a kimono fabricated from over a thousand LEDs that have the capacity to respond to musical, visual and physical conditions throughout the course of a performance, or as an installation in a gallery setting. The work has been performed at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and at the Japan Society of San Diego. It will be performed at the New York Electronic Art Festival on October 17, 2009; 6:00 - 11:00 p.m. at Roulette, 20 Greene St. @ Canal, New York City. Ikue Mori & LEMUR, Peter Blasser, David Galbraith, and Laetitia Sonami will also perform.

Miya Masaoka has created works for koto, laser interfaces, laptop and video and written scores for ensembles, chamber orchestras and mixed choirs. Her work has been presented in Japan, Canada, Europe, Eastern Europe and she has toured to India six times. Continue reading

International Interaktionslabor 2009: Peninsulae of Perception :: July 20 - August 2, 2009 :: Site of the former coal mine Göttelborn in southwest Germany.

This year the main focus of the workshop is on perceptual processes. The project title — Halbinseln der Wahrnehmung/ Peninsulae of Perception — is a reference to a diary written by a person afflicted with Asperger’s Syndrome. The diary has been proposed as research libretto for investigations into differing perceptual channels and psycho-social research on autism, synaesthesia, music composition and real-time performance. The acoustic-musical dimension of the 2009 laboratory is complemented by research into design or wearable audiophonics and acousmatic architectures and sound perceptions. Continue reading

Sensory Threads @ Surface Tension :: June 23, 2009; 10:30 am - 4:30 pm :: The Science Museum’s Dana Centre, 165 Queen’s Gate, South Kensington, London.

Sensory Threads — by Proboscis — is a work-in-progress to develop an instrument enabling a group of people to create a soundscape reflecting their collaborative experiences in the environment. For this interactive sensory experience, we are designing sensors for detecting environmental phenomena at the periphery of human perception as well as the movement and proximity of the wearers themselves. Possible targets for the sensors may be electro-magnetic radiation, hi/lo sound frequencies, heart rate etc). The sensors’ datastreams will feed into generative audio software, creating a multi-layered and multi-dimensional soundscape feeding back the players’ journey through their environment. Variations in the soundscape reflect changes in the wearers interactions with each other and the environment around them.

Making Fun Serious at Futuresonic 2009 :: May 13-23, 2009.

Featured artworks - The Knitting Scanner by Azusa Murakami reads patterns in knitted garments and translates them into music; Chromophone by Benjamin Newland allows people to make music from the colours that they see; Fabien Cappello turns type into beautiful music using a modified traditional typewriter; an installation of porcelain bowls by Jozephine Duker people play using their hands or everyday objects like a pen; a comfortable lounge chair by Vahakn Matossian houses an audio processing ‘brain,’ microphone, joystick and sound horns; Giuseppe Guerriero’s instrument has fifty sensors around its surface to allow body movements to compose and play music; Lucia Massari turns an ordinary book into an extraordinary musical instrument; Matthew Plummer-Fernandez has created a wind-up human-powered electronic instrument; Yiting Cheng and Ting-Chung Cheng have devised a wearable instrument with which body movements execute a symphony of buttons, zip fasteners, velcro and pins. Related: itSpace by Peter Traub.

Wearable Forest by Ryoko Ueoka and Hiroki Kobayashi from the University of Tokyo is “bio-acoustic” clothing which is networked with a subtropical forest of the southern Ryukyu Islands of Japan. Equipped with embedded speakers, LEDs, an embedded CPU system and a wireless internet connection, the dress processes and remotely plays the soundscape of the jungle through the speakers and uses the LEDs to create patterns reflecting the activity level of jungle life. More than just a receiver sensors also let the user transmit pre-recorded acoustic data back to the forest installation, creating a bioacoustical loop. Continue reading

Cyberbirds: Audio | Video Peacock are mobile multimedia screens by Benoît Maubrey — The Audio Peacock is a wearable electronic instrument constructed out of polycarbonate (plexi-glass) equipped with loudspeakers, amplifier, battery and different sound-making devices (microphone, sampler, radio receiver, interactive sensors). As Video Peacocks, the costume functions also as a mobile screen onto which theme-specific visualizations (movies, pictures, internet blogs, interactive computer images, webcasts and closed circuit camera views) are projected.

This wearable electroacoustic instrument is shaped into a peacock’s fan-like plumage and is highly directional — projecting the sound into a space like an oversized radar dish. Much in the same way that the courtyard peacock “strutts his stuff” in front of a pea-hen and imposes with his awesome cry, so does the Audio Peacock stalk his architectural domain — using sound as a scalpel that cuts through air and sculpts it, transforming it to into his new realm. Continue reading

The Sound Jewelry concept occurred to co-author Toru Iwatake, a composer, a few years ago. Since then, its realization has become a collaborative project with co-author Takuya Yamauchi, an interaction designer. Sound Jewelry is an evolving project, therefore the actual method of its realization may differ in one way or another with each use, but the essential concept of creating an interactive sound environment using sensing capabilities remains the same. Video >>. Continue reading

University of Minnesota West Bank Arts Quarter In partnership with the American Composers Forum Call for Works: 2009 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts :: February 17 - 22, 2009 :: Minneapolis, MN :: Submission Deadline: October 31, 2008.

Now in its seventh year, the Spark Festival invites submissions of art, dance, theater, and music works incorporating new media, including electroacoustic concert music, experimental electronica, theatrical and dance works, installations, kinetic sculpture, artbots, video, and other non- traditional genres. Although Spark does not force submissions to adhere to a annual theme, we are especially interested this year to feature wearable and mobile technologies, and events will include the first Spark Fashion Show. Continue reading