FILTER and ONOMATOPEE at P40 in Hamburg present Shotgun Architecture at P40 — A sound and light installation by Justin Bennett :: until 11th of January 2009 :: Alte Pathologie/P40, Friedrichsberger Strasse 32, D-Hamburg.

Can one make sound visible? What happens to our thought processes and emotional perception when sound and its movement is performed or even manipulated in space? Mapping urban space and its architecture through the sound of a gunshot, the method Justin Bennett is currently using, entails numerous domains of expression.

P40 is a turn of the century building with an ornamental red brick facade, a cupola roof and spaces with high ceilings. Built as pathology department for the Eilbek hospital until its privatization, the space has been used and redefined for different purposes over the last decade. Bennett analyzed this piece of architecture with a gunshot and recorded its echoes. Continue reading

Art’s Birthday Party 2009 — 1,000.046th Art’s Birthday :: January 16, 2009; 8:05 pm to January 17, 2009; 12:00 am :: Kulturfabrik Hainburg, Kulturplatz 1 and EBU Ravel, Radio Devín, ORF’s Radio Ö1 and kunstradio.at.

In 1963 the French Fluxus artist, Robert Filliou, declared January 17 to be the 1,000,000th birthday of art which for some decades now has been celebrated worldwide. As in the previous years, in 2009 artists all over the world will organise a networked birthday party for art.

Kunstradio is collaborating with Experimental Studio of Slovensky Rozhlas, IMA (Institute of Media Archaeology) and Tilos Radio Budapest for a two-day-happy-birthday-event, as usual online, on site and on air. The “Fête Permanente” will take place at the exhibition Magical Soundmachines at the Kulturfabrik Hainburg on the shore of the Danube, close to Vienna and even closer to Bratislava. Continue reading

Dear Friends,

Mark Amerika says: “Turbulence is a permanent part of the digital art and electronic literature curriculum I have developed at the University of Colorado and a major component of our special topics courses too. The students who pass through our media arts program are amazed at everything Turbulence has achieved over the years. A common response is something like “I had no idea artists made work like this.” And then, with a little more direction, they too begin making networked art projects. To us, Turbulence is one of the most important cultural institutions on the planet! (Helen) and Jo have single (double)-handedly played a huge role in making it possible for higher arts educators like myself to successfully teach the networked arts.”

We know for a fact that many of you use our resources to teach digital art and new media. And many others have written to tell us how great an impact we’ve had on their careers. Please, show us how much we matter by making a donation right now. Continue reading

Noise performers extraordinaire, The Loud Objects, and Dr. Bleep have teamed up to create the first being of pure noise!

The Bit Blob is a digital noise maker that’s controlled by connecting its contacts together, allowing you to bend your way through unlimited sonic madness. You can also connect LEDs, audio outputs, or other Bit Blobs between control pins!

Comes with hookup wires, output jacks and LEDs.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfVO0-JKouY&eurl=http://bleeplabs.com/bitblob/[/youtube]

Thanks to Bleep Labs

Tonewheels — drawn sound and light music with Derek Holzer :: January 10, 2009; 2:00 pm :: xxxxx_micro_research [Berlin] :: Workshop fee: 12 euros :: Limited places! Please register at: m [at] 1010.co.uk

TONEWHEELS is an experiment in converting graphical imagery to sound, inspired by some of the pioneering 20th Century electronic music inventions. Transparent tonewheels with repeating patterns are spun over light-sensitive electronic circuitry to produce sound and light pulsations and textures. This all-analog set is performed entirely live without the use of computers, using only overhead projectors as light source, performance interface and audience display. In this way, TONEWHEELS aims to open up the “black box” of electronic music and video by exposing the working processes of the performance for the audience to see. Continue reading

Currently under development at the Music Technology Group is The SAME Project: Sound and Music for Everyone Everyday Everywhere Every Way.

Music making and listening are a clear example of a human activity that is above all interactive and social, two big challenges for the new communication devices and applications. However, to date music making and listening is usually a passive, non-interactive and non-context sensitive experience. The current electronic technologies, with all their potential for interactivity and communication, have not yet been able to support and promote this essential aspect of music making and listening. This can be considered a significant degradation of the traditional listening and music making experience, in which the public was (and still is) able to interact in many ways with performers to modify the expressive features of a music piece. Continue reading

Music 3.0 is R&D project funded by the program Avanza Contenidos of the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade. Its main goal is to develop an experimental web-based system for music creation, interaction and socialization. Such system should integrate the most recent technologies of the Web 2.0, advanced on-line tools for music creation, and large sound and music repositories. For such system there will be a need to develop social networking models specific for music, models for the treatment of music content and also models for the creation of new content.

The result will be a Web portal which will allow any user, or software application, to participate in a musical social network, easily accessing a wide range of musical content and being able to create and share new content using new concepts and adapted to the user’s profile. 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

The Midas Project: Paul Thomas and the sound of atoms vibrating — The Midas Project gathers data from an Atomic Force Microscope focusing on the particles that exist at the interface between skin and gold. The work examines the data gathered at the nano level to investigate how we become part of the world. This project explores and extends the principles of visualising the infinite smallness through new technologies. The research investigates questions of nanotechnological spatial boundaries and turns the infinitely small into an audible and palpable experience.

Midas project from Paul Thomas on Vimeo Continue reading

A History of Music Torture in the War on Terror by Andy Worthington, CounterPunch. Posted December 17, 2008 in AlterNet:

From Britney to Barney, any music can drive you mad if it’s played enough. And unlike with physical torture, you can’t mentally prepare yourself. There’s an ambiguous undercurrent to the catchy pop smash that introduced a pig-tailed Britney Spears to the world in 1999 — so much so that Jive Records changed the song’s title to “… Baby One More Time” after executives feared that it would be perceived as condoning domestic violence.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EuIlAiFWQc[/youtube] Continue reading