Earworm Assault Devices

Although I consider myself a pacifist, these Earworm Assault Devices are quite funny and (well, moderately) harmless. We probably all know the experience of having a song in our mind that just does not want to leave and keeps repeating compulsively. That is what we call an earworm. 

While most of these earworms arise naturally in our mind, a few years ago the German interface designers from Fur came up with the Earworm Assault Devices. Small weapon-like machines constructed with the sole purpose to plant unwanted song phrases in a victim’s mind. They record samples up to 12 seconds and ‘shoot’ them at your ears repeatedly.

These earworms, if chosen carefully, can stay in your head for a long time. You just have to sing that song, or whistle, over and over again. I heard there is only one way to get rid of such an earworm. Sing the song all the way through, until you reach the end, and after the last notes it will be gone. I never tried this method myself though.   

Via Richard van Tol

Fine Collection of Curious Sound Objects

This Fine Collection of Curious Sound Objects is a project by Georg Reil and Kathy Scheuring. It is nice to see how they created a piece of sound art that also looks great. We see a couple of everyday objects which are modified to surprise users with their sonic abilities.  

All speakers, microphones and cables are carefully hidden inside the objects so they do not spoil the magic. While the sonic results are not mind blowing, the strength of this sound installation is how intuitive the and simple the objects work. They seem fun to play with for a while, and then put them away because of their limited functionality.

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Brick-Up

After looking at the Sew-O-Phone and the Vacumonium, there is another work by Dennis de Bel I would like to share with you. This is the Brick-Up, a concrete pick-up. I do not know if the concrete body improves the sound, but it does look great!

As Dennis de Bel writes on his website, the Brick-Up can be part of a concrete pavement and become a real ‘stratenspeler’ (Dutch for ‘street player’). I think it is better off inside the house though. A maximum of ten Brick-Ups is custom made on request. 

Gandhara Super Mini

Music is never tied to an object. OK, a CD is a physical object containing music, and we can discuss the emotional value of it, but it is easily replicable, and the plastic disc itself is not worth a thing. 

That is what inspired sound art label Field Noise Records to create the Gandhara Super Mini. In collaboration with Toshikatsu they created these little handmade boxes with music inside them and a traditional Japanese painting of waves on them.

It is a great idea to use an art object to carry the music to its listeners. They even participate as they can operate these ‘noise machines’ themselves. As this description implies we should not expect the sweet music-box sounds the package suggests. 

There is an oscillator inside the box, and a knob to change the frequency. There is no built-in speaker, you will have to use the headphone jack output. And how does it sound? Here is an example (the Gandhara Super Mini combined with a multi-effects processor:

You do not have to be the owner of one of their hardware boxes to be able to listen to Field Noise Record’s music, as all their releases (basically just recordings of their art objects), are free to download. 

Sew-O-Phone and Vacumonium

Dutch artist Dennis de Bel creates wonderful objects inspired by things we find in our everyday lives. Like the Sew-O-Phone, a combination of a sewing machine and a turntable. Or the Vacumonium, in which a harmonium perfectly melts together with a vacuum cleaner. 

The retro design of these ‘transfunctional’ machines make them great to look at. Their simplicity and finish on one hand and their mysterious novelty on the other make them very attractive at first sight! Here is an example of what the Vacumonium sounds like.

Listening Ears

These concrete 'Listening Ears' in Denge, England, work the same as the Sonic Marshmallows we have seen before. They serve a different purpose though, as they were used to detect slow moving enemy planes in the years before radar was invented. 

The sound waves reflect on the surface and concentrate in the middle, where most probably a microphone was attached. This technique does work - try holding the palm of your hand behind your ear, you will hear things better! - but as planes became faster and radar was invented around 1935, these Listening Ears became obsolete. 

Syn Chron

It is not the latest project by Carsten Nicolai, but this site was not around by 2004, so I still want to share this with you, just because it creates such a beautiful image. You will have to imagine the sound. 

Syn Chron is an integral sculpture of light, sound and architecture. The images projected on the surface of the object are synchronized to sound, and the object forms an acoustic resonance body.

Yes/No by Carsten Nicolai

Yes/No visualizes sound waves traveling through air, in a very detailed sculpture made of steel. CarstenNicolai used recordings of Laurie Anderson saying "yes" and "no" as input while creating this sculpture. You can clearly see the difference between vowels and consonants.

I've known Carsten Nicolai quite well for his work as Alva Noto, and his collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto, among others. He often explores the relationships between the visual and the audible in his projects. He also published a book, Grid Index, earlier this year.

Sound/Chair

In the ingoing series of visual sound objects here's another one: Sound/Chair. A sound was designed to exactly represent the form of a chair when creating a volume/time/frequency plot. The chair is an exact replica of the resulting graph.

Sound/Chair was created by London-based designer Matthew Plummer Fernandez in an attempt to find the link between furniture and sound. He created 719 different sounds in order to find the one suitable for this chair.

Reflection, a data sculpture by Benjamin Maus

Reflection, a data sculpture by Benjamin Maus, was inspired by a musical piece by Frans de Waard. Software was used to analyze the frequencies of the music. Unlike some projects we looked at before (Cylinder and this project), it's not the visualization of one sound, but of a complete piece of music.

Why do we want to see everything? Some things appear to be more real if you can see them, or touch them. We will not be able to tell what the music sounded like by looking at a sculpture like this. It does look quite fascinating though.