This choir takes the first minute and 46 seconds to create a sound of a rainstorm with their bodies.
You might want to stop watching at that point (but that’s just me!)
video
Sep 072011
Mute Button, took place on a Sunday in early May 2011 at the Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn, where a large group of street actors blended in with the environment. At predetermined intervals, the performers behaved as if a “mute button” had been pressed. For example, a couple in a loud argument suddenly became inaudible, though their mouths continued to move. A man playing a saxophone in front of a tip jar suddenly became silent, though he seemed to still be playing. A group of breakdancers putting on a show had their music abruptly muted, though they continued dancing as if they could hear it. A small crowd watched them and laughed and cheered, silently. While the sounds and silence of these actions alternated on and off, passersby unexpectedly and suddenly found themselves aware of the sounds of the urban landscape.
From Stillspotting
Sep 042011
Worldwide one of a kind, the Vegetable Orchestra performs on instruments made of fresh vegetables. The utilization of various ever refined vegetable instruments creates a musically and aesthetically unique sound universe.
The Vegetable Orchestra was founded in 1998. Based in Vienna, the Vegetable Orchestra plays concerts in all over the world.
There are no musical boundaries for the Vegetable Orchestra. The most diverse music styles fuse here – contemporary music, beat-oriented House tracks, experimental Electronic, Free Jazz, Noise, Dub, Clicks’n'Cuts – the musical scope of the ensemble expands consistently, and recently developed vegetable instruments and their inherent sounds often determine the direction.
- From the vegetable Orchestra’s website
Sep 042011
When I visited Ameland this summer I was surprised by the sounds I heard on the beach. Wind was blowing hard and played the ropes of the sailboats’ masts. I love to encounter those sounds, it’s like the elements are playing rhythms too complex for me to understand.
But you can also help the wind a little by building some instruments. That’s what Pierre Sauvageot did with his Harmonic Fields sound installation. Wouldn’t it be magical to suddenly hear these wonderful sounds while walking in the dunes?
– from Everyday Listening
Sep 012011
This brief clip is from the film Touch the Sound, a documentary about the world renowned percussionist Evelyn Glennie who happens to be deaf . While the entire movie is beautiful, this particular snippet is a great example of the mingling of sounds in the city and the way that attention alters the way that we hear the world around us.
You can actually watch the entire film on Hulu.
Aug 312011
In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon (website / twitter) and developed with contributions from users. The videos can be played simultaneously — the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders. Learn more in the FAQ. You may also enjoy marker/music, another music, video and spoken word project, produced in collaboration with NSU in South Dakota.
Aug 292011
From “The Empire Strikes Back” to “Robin Hood”, award-winning Foley artist Gary Hecker of Todd-AO says it takes “timing and a huge creative mind” to be the man behind the sound. Here, he shares tips and tricks he’s learned during a career that has spanned more than 200 films.
Hecker also recently joined CSS Studios’ Todd-AO in late 2009. One of the most accomplished Foley artists in Hollywood. Among his recent credits are 2012, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Angel & Demons, Watchmen and the Spiderman trilogy.
Check out more video profiles at soundworkscollection.com
Aug 282011
Stephen Vitiello’’s new multi-channel sound installation A Bell For Every Minute is a site-specific work commissioned for the High Line. The piece will fill the 14th Street Passage, a semi-enclosed tunnel between West 13th and West 14th Streets, with sound recordings of bells taken from all over New York City and beyond. Sounds range from the iconic rings of the New York Stock Exchange bell, the historic Dreamland bell days after it was discovered in the water off Coney Island, the United Nation’s Peace Bell, and more everyday and personal sounds of bike bells, diner bells, and neighborhood church bells. Bells are used in our culture to mark the passing of time, act as warnings and alerts, mark celebrations, and memorialize those lost. While there are numerous conditions under which bells are heard in our city, they are universal sounds that all of us can appreciate as part of the auditory landscape of our lives.
More on the Creative Time website.
Aug 282011
Blow Out is a 1981 thriller film, written and directed by Brian De Palma. The film stars John Travolta as Jack Terry, a movie sound effects technician from Philadelphia who, while recording sounds for a low-budget horror film, serendipitously captures audio evidence of an assassination involving a presidential hopeful. Nancy Allen stars as Sally Bedina, the young woman Jack rescues during the crime. The supporting cast includes John Lithgow and Dennis Franz.
- Wikipedia
Aug 282011
This ‘boat-movie’ follows Stephen Vitiello, internationally celebrated ‘sound artist’ from the US, as he embarks on a 300km odyssey around the rugged Kimberley coast capturing unique sounds. Vitiello’s latest challenge, to capture the sound of Australia, is at the behest of art patron John Kaldor and is to create an ‘installation’ to be exhibited in the old kilns at Sydney Park’s brickworks buildings.
- from ABC Arts
Aug 282011
Demonstration of two recreated Intonarumori (Noise Intoners) developed by Luigi russolo.
from:
One hundred years after the founding manifesto of Futurism, Robert Worby examines the least-documented aspect of Italy’s most audacious art movement: the Art of Noises. See and hear more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m8pdk
Aug 222011
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Jaap Blonk
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Jaap Blonk (born 1953 in Woerden, Holland) is a self-taught composer, performer and poet. He went to university for mathematics and musicology but did not finish those studies. In the late 1970s he took up saxophone and started to compose music. A few years later he discovered his potential as a vocal performer, at first in reciting poetry and later on in improvisations and his own compositions. For almost two decades the voice was his main means for the discovery and development of new sounds.
As a vocalist, Jaap Blonk is unique for his powerful stage presence and almost childlike freedom in improvisation, combined with a keen grasp of structure. He performed in many European countries, as well as in the U.S. and Canada, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa and Latin America. With the use of live electronics the scope and range of his concerts has acquired a considerable extension.
- From Jaap Blonk’s website
And have a look at this!
Aug 212011
The BQEar is an enormous trumpet-like horn perched atop the fence of the outdoor sculpture venue The Art Lot in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It was a project of mine included as part of a group exhibition called Media Mixed X4 in September 2010.
johnroach.net/pages/2010_bqear.html
Aug 212011
The key to understanding this video comes when we realize that each time the tuning fork is held above the glass bottles you are actually hearing 2 sounds, not one. You are hearing the sound made by the tuning fork and the sound that reflects off the water and reemerges from the jar. When the reflected wave reemerges, it overlaps with the wave coming from the tuning fork. If the wave emerging from the jar overlaps constructively you will hear a loud sound. If the emerging wave overlaps destructively, you will hear no sound or a very low amplitude sound. For more on constructive and destructive interference, check out http://www.stmary.ws/highschool/physics/home/notes/waves/…
http://www.stmary.ws/highschool/physics/home/notes/defaul…
The video covers the anatomy and physiology of the ear and discusses the outer ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. Other topics include the eardrum (tympanic membrane), hammer (malleus), anvil (incus), stirrup (stapes), organ of corti, and the cochlea. Included in the video is a labeled diagram showing the parts of the human ear.
Aug 202011
Hukkle—written and directed by 29-year-old György Pálfi—takes its onomatopoeic title (pronounced HOOK-leh), as well as its framing motif, from the sound of a wrinkly old codger’s hiccup. There are plenty of other noises—all manner of baas, snores, cowbells, and birdcalls—but virtually no dialogue.
Deranging a venerable Hungarian tradition of “village sociology,” Pálfi employs a bizarrely associative montage to fashion a portrait of a traditional peasant community—just a midsummer Sunday on Mars. The perspective keeps shifting from bird’s- to worm’s-eye view. At one point there’s a shock transition to an editing room; at another we’re granted X-ray vision to study a fisherman’s insides. Palfi has a juvenile fondness for yucky close-ups and barnyard humor. There’s a comical match cut from two boccie balls to a pig’s distended testicles.
John Cage (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer, philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker,[1] and amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A pioneer of aleatoric music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century.
from an extensive page on John Cage in Wikipedia
While it is difficult to imagine an avant garde composer as a guest on a TV game show, it seems to work quite well for John Cage. It is difficult to sum up Cage’s work and philosophy here (refer instead to the Wikipedia link above), but it is fair to say that Cage believed strongly in the practice of listening, of incorporating all sounds into our understanding of music. Even the laughter from the audience, which is not surprising considering this clip is from the year 1960 (51 years ago) when the vast majority of people watching would have never encountered anything like this.
Cage is absolutely unflappable as he goes about his business on stage, manipulating unusual objects (possibly selected in some cases for their humorous theatrical quality… good for TV) and marching back and forth across the stage.
In this video, Richard Lerman places small, self-built microphones into the nests of swarming digger wasps. Recorded using Hi-8 in 1996.
RICHARD LERMAN, works in Music, Film, Installations, Performance, and Video. He often constructs functional microphones from diverse materials, and then composes using these transducers to amplify and pick-up sounds of the environment, and allow the sonic flavor of each material to be heard. Recent works combine sounds from his self-built microphones with computer and MIDI techniques.
- Excerpt from Artifact.net
Aug 172011
Try as you might, you can’t walk in a straight line without a visible guide point, like the Sun or a star. You might think you’re walking straight, but as NPR’s Robert Krulwich reports, a map of your route would reveal you are doomed to walk in circles.
Jul 282011
A soundscape is any collection of sounds, almost like a painting is a collection of visual attractions,” says composer R. Murray Schafer. “When you listen carefully to the soundscape it becomes quite miraculous.” David New’s portrait of the renowned composer becomes a lesson unto itself, gracing viewers (and listeners) with a singular moment of interactive subjectivity. This film was produced for the 2009 Governor General’s Performing Arts Award.
- The National Film Board of Canada
