| from Thomas Maghe's website |
Here's a video:I brought along some field recording gear to use while I was staying in the lovely pod/room/boat. I went out during the day and recorded sounds that I thought might be useful and evocative. It turned out that most of the sounds—even the church organ in Southwark Cathedral—seemed to converge around a common rhythm. It's a bit too good to be true—that every large city should have its own rhythm, but here it is. I let the sounds dictate the groove, the tempo, and then I simply played along.Here are where the sounds come from:Strawberry seller: Borough Market
Train: Southwark
Woman Evangelist: Spitalfields Market
Organ: Southwark Cathedral
Jackhammer: near Waterloo
Footsteps: mine, embankment
Thames waves: near Surrey water
Sonification is the use of nonspeech audio to convey information. More specifically, sonification is the transformation of data relations into perceived relations in an acoustic signal for the purposes of facilitating communication or interpretation.In this example, from space.com and the University of Michigan, the speed and inertia of solar particles are being measured, and these data are turned into sound. Sonifying data can offer additional insight into certain types of data. Multivariate data (such as human EEG signals) are good candidates since the human auditory system is well-equipped to process multiple concurrent 'streams' of data.
This program is a partnership between the university, Arts Santa Monica (which I wrote about here) and Hangar, which describes itself as "...a centre for art research and production, offering support to artists."The Master’s in Sound Art from the University of Barcelona provides the conditions of creation and research to afford professionals or degree holders in visual arts, architecture or music already working in the field of sound art, or who have a specific interest in it, a complete and well-founded practical methodology, technological understanding and set of theoretical reflection tools.The aim of these studies is, within a well-defined atmosphere of creation and investigation, to gain hands-on creative and analytical theoretical experience in the phenomenon of sound; studies which, until now, have remained scattered, marginally represented within other fields of study, such as fine arts, music and architecture and, along its more theoretical side, philosophy, art history, musicology and education.
Mogees currently uses two audio synthesis techniques — the first is physical modeling, which consists of generating the sound by simulating the propagation of the sound wave through different physical materials such as strings, membranes, or tubes using a piece of software called Modalys. The second technique is mosaicing, where the user loads a sound folder and then the audio coming from the contact microphone is analysed and the software looks for the closest segment within the sound folder. So if a sound folder of voices is loaded, touching the surface gently would provoke a whispering while scratching it will cause a sound similar to screaming voices.Of course, nobody has time or the attention span to read a whole paragraph any more. Fortunately, there is a video.
Arts Santa Monica, housed in an exceptional building on the Rambla in Barcelona, is a space of convergence and crossover between the different disciplines of contemporary artistic creation and science, thought and communication.Basically, this means that Art Santa Monica is filled with awesome, and entry is free.
There are a lot of notable and interesting pieces in this show, including some using the now seemingly ubiquitous Arduino. The highlight for me, however, was a piece by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. His piece, called "Frequency and Volume", is a brilliant use of sound and interactivity to explore some basic concepts of radio waves. Basically, the user's shadow (or shadows, since there can be more than one person at a time), is projected on a large wall. A computerized system can track the shadows and their movements, and the images are translated into sound, with the size of the shadow on the wall controlling volume, and the position left-to-right controlling frequency. The system uses this data to tune into radio stations and play them using a fairly sophisticated automated digital mixing console.Invisible Fields explores how our understanding of our world and our cosmos has been transformed by the study of radio waves. With the invention of telecommunication technology at the end of the 19th century, the radio spectrum became a tool for rethinking the world we live in.Radio collapsed geographical distance, crossed borders and cultures, became a powerful catalyst for commerce and enabled scientists to study the cosmos in entirely new ways. Yet whilst the radio spectrum is the invisible infrastructure that enables the technologies of information and communication, most people are unaware of the way it works, how it is managed, and how it is has shaped our understanding of our lived environment.Invisible Fields aims to shine a light on this enigmatic landscape. The exhibition differs from past explorations of these topics, in that it is conceived as an interdisciplinary blend of social-cultural analysis, science communication, and artistic practice.
I/O/I. The senses of machines (Interaction Laboratory) proposes an experimental and educational look into the relationship between man and machine at a time when new generation interfaces include natural interactive features and social behaviors. It is an exploration of new areas where interaction design is developed and generates new needs, disciplines and experiences.I really enjoyed this exhibit, particularly (for the purposes of this blog), some of the pieces that utilized sound.
Over the last forty years, information technologies have become part of our lives, producing major changes in how we relate to our environment. We live in an era, in which, objects and environments are endowed with more intelligence and more autonomy; machines are more sociable and communicate with humans and each other, and where designers have begun to understand the impact of their designs on humanity.
I/O/I. The senses of machines addresses interactivity on different levels and represented on a scale ranging from very simple devices that demonstrate the transmission of energy and their conversion into gestures, signals and data; to more complex systems where identical machines interact with each other and produce community behavior.
All this is done with the intention of reflecting on the effects that we produce with the use of technology, the different scenarios where interactivity is present and the development of intelligent interfaces and their role in designing the future- in short, the technology, man and his environment.
We have built an Internet map sound to identify which parts of the city through its sounds. The technology we can record and send sounds, sensations and images, geo-location to place them. We invite you to participate by placing value on the recordings made as a result of your experiences in architectural spaces that are part of the Barcelona Open House Festival 48h.So was asking for submissions from visitors to the festival, and then he and Mario Bellonzi used the sounds (or images, words, etc) to create a multimedia "OpenRemix" at a private concert held for volunteers of the festival. Pretty neat.
Once again the idea of industriousness of the river and it’s people is conjured by Laura Shults Stella and Andy Stella’s interactive “…that once was a clear stream.” Here the gallery goer can ride a bicycle surrounded by found objects, the cycle in turn, powers projected antiquarian images of the industry and people on the river.Now, based on his review of the show, it was clear that the author attended the opening, although I don't know if he was present while our piece was producing sound. Still, a simple look at our artist statement would have provided all the details one might need to describe the piece. I'll admit that I'm no journalist (I'm not even a blogger, really), but the author's lack of attention to detail was troubling.
There is more to do in public health besides teaching and research, but what should students expect when they graduate? Public Health: On the Inside is your inside look at the world of public health practice. Each month, host Tom Burke, Associate Dean for Public Health Practice and Training at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, takes listeners to the front lines of public health to meet interesting people working in the field.As part of my job, I get to engineer, edit and mix these sessions. Not only is the content interesting, but it's a chance to do something a little different with the audio we record here. Plus, host Dr. Tom Burke, is one of the coolest people I've worked with at JHSPH. Sure, podcasts aren't exactly cutting edge in 2011, but I like what they can offer as way to listen to a given piece of audio whenever and wherever a listener might choose. I like to make use of podcasts on long drives, and the variety of content and the "on-demand" nature of it suits the way that more and more people are consuming media these days.