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!)
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
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 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
Jul 282011
In Ceará, Brazil, Narcelio Grud has created one of the more impressive alternate uses for street signs the Urban Guide for Alternate Use has seen, and we’ve seen plenty. Narcelio transforms street signs around the city in to public instruments as part of his Musica Livre project. As the video above shows, the project is exceptional not only for its merits of installing DIY musical instruments throughout the city, but also for the range and inventiveness of the instruments themselves. From stringed instruments to xylophones, the city’s street signs’s new identities bring a smile and tune to anyone who passes by.
- The Urban Guide for Alternate Use
Handy (Jam) Organization
Demonstration of the latest audio technology: stereo sound. (1957)
This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives
Producer: Handy (Jam) Organization
Sponsor: RCA Victor Corporation
Professor Paul Jennings is leading a team researching how sound affects the perception of environments including urban and hospital intensive care units. People have generally seen noise as being unwanted, but the right sound has many positive aspects.
By building on their considerable experience in the automotive sector, Prof Jennings team is looking to quantify what people perceive as the ‘right sound’. This will help town and hospital designers build environments with sounds that engender positive responses in users, such as a lively city centre or a hospital ward that helps people feel less stressed and recover more quickly.
Jul 102011
“There are some fundamental principles regarding the construction of an acoustically healthy society, one where we can exist within the sounds of life. Respect towards voice and words, sonic awareness, the awakening of the sense of hearing. To preserve the sounds that tend to fade out, while remaining open to the sounds that spring out of each technological stride. To build an aural idiom that interprets its own symbolism. To accept the silence, enforcing it in the due moments. And, above all else, to listen.”
