Two Years of Everyday Listening

It’s already been two years since the first post on Everyday Listening today! Some months have been more active then others, as at times other projects take away my attention, but Everyday Listening is still going strong!

Here’s a selection of three of my favorite posts of the last year: 

Waves by Daniel Palacios - A great looking and sounding installation.

Cinématique - Interaction between video and contemporary dance.

Five Sound Questions to Damian Steward - A great post in the Five Sound Questions series (which is now in hibernation mode).

And now for some quiet time...

It's been three months since my first post on Everyday Listening. It's been a great start and now it's time for some rest! I'll be traveling to Sweden and Norway for a month, hopefully recording interesting sounds on the way. I will not update the site during this period, so expect to read and hear about fresh and inspiring sounds from the beginning of August. 

I might be updating my status on Twitter now and then, find me at twitter.com/hugoverweij. In the meantime, don't hesitate to send me your links, sounds and interesting projects you'd like to see featured on Everyday Listening. See you in August!

Photo by sebilden

Futuresonic festival: Art, Music & Ideas

The Futuresonic festival takes place this week (13-16 May 2009) in Manchester, UK, together with the Social Technologies Summit. There will be a lot of artworks, an impressive music programme and talks by visionary thinkers from around the world. I would love to go, too bad I have other occupations.

One of the exhibitions is Futuresonic Sound Art, showing projects by Royal College of Art & Yamaha, 2D barcode graffiti sound project, premieres with Jodrell Bank Observatory and Liverpool Cathedral, SoundNetwork and The Owl Project.

The music lineup looks very promising, with performances by Murcof, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Xela, Daedelus, Tim Exile, Kode 9 and Philip Glass, to name a few! We’ll take a closer look at some of the Futuresonic projects during the coming days.

Photo courtesy of futuresonic.com

International Noise Awareness Day

Today is International Noise Awareness Day. I didn't even know this existed, until a woman on the street handed me a flyer advertising a soundwalk - a walk through the city passing the most interesting sounding spots, while listening carefully to the soundscape. A nice idea. I do it all the time.

The flyer also mentioned International Noise Awareness Day. A day to become aware of the impact of noise on hearing, health and the quality of life. Noise is everywhere around us, it's a by-product of our industrial society, but we are not very aware about how it can cause negative physical and psychological changes in humans.

What can we do about it? Everybody makes noise, it's not just there. So we can start by paying attention to the noise we make ourselves. The Center for Hearing and Communication in New York has a recipe for a quiet diet on their website. A good place to start.

Photo by: BarelyFitz