Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang and Beyond by Hillel Schwartz (Zone Books).

When did the “silent deeps” become cacophonous and galaxies begin to swim in a sea of cosmic noise? Why do we think that noises have colors and that colors can be loud? How loud is too loud, and says who? Attending, as ears do, to a surround of sounds at once physical and political, Hillel Schwartz listens across millennia for changes in the Western experience and understanding of noise. From the uproarious junior gods of Babylonian epics to crying infants heard over baby monitors, from doubly mythic Echo to amplifier feedback, from shouts frozen in Rabelaisian air to the squawk of loudspeakers and the static of shortwave radio, Making Noise follows “unwanted sound” on its surprisingly revealing path through terrains domestic and industrial, urban and rural, legal and religious, musical and medical, poetic and scientific. Continue reading

x_sound: John Cage, Nam June Paik and After :: March 9 – July 1, 2012 :: Nam June Paik Art Center, Paiknamjune-ro 10, Sanggal-dong Giheung-gu, Yongin-si Gyeonggi-do, Korea.

The year of 2012 marks the 80th anniversary of Nam June Paik’s birth and the 100th anniversary of John Cage’s birth. The exhibition includes Cage’s and Paik’s works, but also works of today’s sound artists inheriting the two frontiers’ experimentations.

The term “x_sound” has a triple meaning: a sound that is unknown(x), that is ex-panded and that ex-pels fixed ideas about sound. “Sound” itself is literally a neutral and straightforward term, but in the contemporary art’s context, it’s a complex arena of different questions and discourses. Continue reading

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Lovid :: Saturday December 4, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. :: at Graham Foundation, Madlener House, 4 West Burton Place, Chicago, IL :: Admission is FREE but space is limited. RSVP at http://lovid.eventbrite.com/

Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus will use their Sync Armonica, a 9 ft. sculptural, analog, handmade A/V synthesizer and electrical signals gathered from guest performers. LoVid events are playful yet aggressive, with realtime audiovisuals that are immersive, visceral and intensely colorful, patterned and rhythmic. Works combine handmade and machine produced craft, DIY electro-engineering, textile, video and noise.

Saturday they’ll premiere two new works — fast-flickering “C/O/L/O/R/G/B” with a new synthesizer color wheel, and “Becoming One.2.” Continue reading

Object Lessons! – an evening of extraordinary audio visual performances :: Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. :: @ Secret Project Robot, 210 Kent Avenue @ the corner of Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY :: Created by David Linton, Lesley Flanigan, Marcia Bassett, Maria Chavez, David First, Jon Giles, Shelley Burgon :: $10 ::

In tacit compliance with the Flickering Fingers of Fate Friends of the Creepy TriAngle proudly presents:
* Lesley Flanigan – 9:00-9:30: speaker feedback instruments + voice performance

**Naval Cassidy – “instant cinema” performance – 9:45-10:15

***”MERCE” Maria Chavez & Shelley Burgon -10:30-11:00: Turntable / Harp & electronics duet with live visuals by Thomas Dexter. Continue reading

Furtherfield on Resonance FM :: Wednesday, November 17, 2010 from 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. (UK-GMT) :: http://resonancefm.com :: Hosts: Marc Garrett, Irini Papdimitriou & Jonathon Munro :: Special Guests: Joseph Young & sketchPatch (Sophie McDonald & Davide Della Casa)

This critically acclaimed broadcast is every Wednesday evening at 7-8pm, a series of hour long live interviews with people working at the edge of contemporary practices in art, technology & social change; discussing events and controversies, exhibitions, artworks and their social contexts. Continue reading

Hydrophonia Barcelona 2010 :: Raising Awareness of Ocean Noise :: October, 29-30, 2010 :: Plaza de Catalunya 9, Barcelona, Spain, 08002 :: Featuring: live ocean noise inspired performances by Tomoko Sauvage, Kim Cascone, Lee Patterson, Enrico Coniglio, Emiliano Zeleda, Mike Rooke, Lars Kinderman, and Gianni Pavan ::

Also see interview with Kim Cascone: Kim Cascone Talks about Ocean Noise and Sound Art at “SynthMusic&Electronics ::

I’ve been interested in hydrophone recording for some time now but it wasn’t until I stumbled across this book: ‘How to Build & Use Low Cost Hydrophones’ by Frank Watlington in a used book store that I decided I wanted to build one for myself and do some recording since I live by the ocean. Continue reading

Chicago Calling Arts Festival: Chicago Equinix ::
Sunday, October 10, 2010 from 9:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. :: at Soapbox Music, 1612 N. Sawyer Ave., Chicago, IL ::

You are invited to attend “Chicago Equinix,” when 60 Hz audio noise will travel 792 miles. “Chicago Equinix” is part of the Fifth Annual Chicago Calling Arts Festival and Chicago Artists Month.

New York based artist Eric Laska will create and send the sound of a 60 Hz ground hum from his New York studio to Chicago, a distance of roughly 792 miles. The 60 Hz hum is an instantly familiar sound to musicians and to almost anyone who has dealt with audio electronics in the past 100 years. Continue reading

Tiny Noise about LOUDNESS@ TodayArt festival :: Saturday, September 25th, 2010 :: opening at 21h :: at Club SEVEN, Prinsegracht 14, 2512GA, Den Haag ::

After much communications and great ideas from our network of friends, we are now ready to launch the upcoming program to be presented at Club SEVEN as part of this year’s Todaysart festival in Den Haag.

For the occasion of our 20th project, Tiny Noise teams up with the grand Todaysart festival to explore the notion of LOUDNESS. Look forward to sound generated by light machines, computer music and handmade noise.

Program: Full description of all the artists and performances on Todaysart website. Continue reading

You are invited to participate in the first World Listening Day :: July 18, 2010; 12:00 am – 11:30 pm :: everywhere around the world, wherever you are, wherever there is sound.

The purposes of World Listening Day are:

• to celebrate the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology • to raise awareness about issues related to the World Soundscape Project, World Listening Project, World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and individual and group efforts to creatively explore phonography • and to design and implement educational initiatives which explore these concepts and practices. Continue reading