Urban Resonances

The beautiful snowy Macedonian landscape

I am currently visiting Macedonia for the Urban Resonances project. With a group of artists and teachers from the Utrecht School of Music and Technology we travel from our home base Skopje through the country for concerts and master classes at schools and faculties of music. 

The project is an initiative of the Zoey foundation for arts and culture in the Netherlands and Public Room in Macedonia. You can read more about the project at their websites: ZOEY / Public Room. 

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Foodjob

One of the great artists answering our Five Sound Questions was Enrico Ascoli. His latest work is Foodjob, a culinary and sonic performance, presented at this year’s Interferenze festival in Bisaccia, Italy. 

For a person who loves sound and loves food (someone like me) this has to be a great performance. I almost makes me hungry again although I just had dinner. It’s like that Magnum commercial in the movie theatre, in which the chocolate breaks with such a delicious cracking sound, I want one instantly. I know it’s just a marketing trick, but if sound is used in the right way, they get me. 

Seven Thousand Oaks

Touch at a Distance was a day organized by Seven Thousand Oaks, Festival of Art and Sustainability at the Heide Sculpture Park in Melbourne. Artists from around Australia contributed to the event. Watch the video to learn more about Touch at a Distance and Seven Thousand Oaks.

I love the description of sound artist and saxophonist Jim Denley, about how his “music is woven into the world or the world woven into his music”. The artists were spread out in the park, to add their own sonic touch to the local soundscape. 

Green Sound Soundwave Festival San Francisco

Inflorescence 2010 sound and performance installation - June 17, Soundwave Festival

The Soundwave Festival, organized every two years by ME’DE.ATE will have the theme ‘Green Sound’ this year and will take place from June 6 till August 13, 2010 in San Francisco. The festival combines sound art and sound installations with innovative performances, experimental, classical and popular music. 

With the Greeen Sound theme the festival will explore the natural world and environmental issues, together with over 75 artists and musicians. Looking at the list of artists it is nice to see Alyce Santoro, who was one of the first to answer the Five Sound Questions, is one of them. 

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150 Years of Music Technology - Competition

We have listened to the first sound ever recorded this week, and today, april 9th 2010 it is exactly 150 years ago this sound was recorded. For some, like the people from First Sounds, a good moment for a celebration! 

This year from the 1st till the 4th of May the Linux Audio Conference 2010 (LAC) takes place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and one of the special events on this conference will be a composition competition, in collaboration with First Sounds. 

Here is a description from the LAC newsletter:

The original 150-year old “Au Claire de la Lune” sample, found here can be used as a starting point. There is also a free Tonehammer sample package which can be used.

For the composition process, the use of Linux and/or open source applications is strongly encouraged and appreciated. The composition must be accompanied by a (short) description of the work and the use of software and technology.

Submissions can be sent to lac [at] linuxaudio [dot] org, before the 26th of April. Or you can hand in your submission on the first day of the festival. 

I am happy to announce that I will be part of the jury for this competition. I am looking forward to hearing all creative contributions! Read more about the Linux Audio conference on the LAC website: lac.linuxaudio.org/2010/

Best of One Year of Everyday Listening

Today it is exactly one year ago since the first post on Everyday Listening. Oh, how time flies! 132 posts later it feels like I am only just getting into this. I would like to thank all the people who visited, subscribed, came back, commented, sent me tips and collaborated. Here’s to an inspiring sonic future! 

To celebrate the first birthday of Everyday Listening I selected some of my favorite posts of the last year. As you might have noticed I like to serve a mix of inspiring links and movies, interviews, some longer articles and news. Some great new collaborations are in the pipeline, stay tuned and keep visiting the site! :)

1. Soundwalkers
   A great documentary on we use sound to navigate our way through the world.


2. Soundclusters 2
   Fascinating music making robots.


3. Mexico City: Coyoacán 
   The Places category has not been updated lately, but it is wonderful to listen to another place in the world and go on a sonic journey. Lately I have been uploading short bits of sound using AudioBoo on my Posterous page.  

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Wet Sounds: Swim in the music

As an avid swimmer I've been missing the ability to listen to music while working out. I recently came across a solution I would like to try; a waterproof MP3 player. But what would be even better than that? How about an underwater sound art gallery?

That's what Wet Sounds is. Wet Sounds tours swimming pools around Europe and presents sound art and music collages under water, away from their normal environment. A very interesting experiment, and I would love to be able to dive into a pool full of sound waves and get immersed by music.

Passage: a dynamic sound corridor

The idea of creating a ‘sound corridor’ is not new, I’ve heard about similar projects before, a buildings hallway seem like a suitable place for a sound installation. Things change all the time, people move up and down the corridor, creating an ever changing pattern for an artist to capture and use to generate or influence sounds.

You need a good technical system to capture these movements though, and that’s exactly what IRCAM created and and what Pierre Jodlowski uses for his dynamic sound corridor ‘Passage’. 16 sensors detect visitors movements. The information is sent to Max/MSP so the composer can use it to control his music.

You can experience this sound installation yourself at the Agora event in Paris: Monday, June 8 and Saturday, June 13, 1pm-6pm.

Urban Explorers festival: Sponge Expanded

This weekend the Urban Explorers festival takes place in Dordrecht, the Netherlands. A festival of film, music, theater, dance, sound art, and crossover between those media. One of the pieces in the exhibition will be Sponge Expanded by Maurits Fennis (website doesn’t seem to be up-to-date).

Visitors of Sponge Expanded will be immersed in sound, as the installation consists of 18 speakers positioned in a spherical manner around them. There are no sound examples on the site yet.

After viewing the art projects and theater performances at Urban Explorers you can enjoy a concert of Mira Calix or the Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, to name just two of the 22 performing artists.

Royal College of Art & Yamaha

The Tenori-on shows how Yamaha likes to experiment with musical instruments. At Futuresonic 2009 Yamaha presents a new collection of unusual experimental instruments in collaboration with the Royal College of Art.

With the title ‘Making Fun Serious’ the exhibition shows concepts of the Royal College of Art students. They try to transform the mundane actions of daily life into a music performance. This results in projects like:

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