Every Object Has a Spirit

Oliver Jennings is a graphic design graduate from the Camberwell College of Art. Strangely enough, he’s been focusing on sound, exploring the natural sounds present in everyday objects.

In “Every Object Has a Spirit” he does just that. Using contact microphones, he captures the inner resonances of objects. Using a device to capture bio-activity in plants, he generates MIDI-notes based on the miniscule electronic impulses.

I especially like the contact mics, as they’re an amplification of a physical resonance, and are very closely related to the object one sees. For the MIDI-triggering plants this is less true, although Jennings does make a nice composition, in sound as well as images. In the description under the video on Vimeo, there’s a legend explaining the source of the sounds in the video, which gives an insight in how the sounds are made.

The ending is also quite strong, pulling the contact-mics out of his recorder, moving from the internal sounds of the bridge to the external sound of his surroundings.

HyperCube

HyperCube is an immersive light and sound installation created by Jaap van den Elzen and Augusto Meijer. In their own words it’s:

an art installation in which the viewer is immersed in an audiovisual environment. The cube-shaped space of the Hypercube - surrounded by mirrors and dynamic lightlines - guarantees a stunning multi-sensory experience. Infinite reflections, lack of spatial reference, intense focus, disorientation and a distorted sense of time and space are key. Hypercube gives its own definition of how space can be experienced and adds a new dimension to one of the most cultivated building blocks known to mankind: the Cube.

Augusto (sound) and Jaap (video) have collaborated on various projects. To learn more about their projects visit augustomeijer.com and jaapvandenelzen.nl.

Murmur

“Talking to walls” is the tagline for Murmur, a video and sound installation which translates sound waves into visuals. The audience can talk into the Murmur ‘echo chamber’, and a direct visible interaction with the visuals on the walls becomes apparent. The visitor’s murmurations become visible. 

Murmur was created by a multidisciplinary group of French artists. It’s an interesting experiment, exploring visualization of sound interactively. What the direct relationship between the spoken words and the resulting visuals are remains a mistery though.

Cinématique

I don’t often post projects that are not directly sound related, but today I have to. Cinématique by Adrien Mondot is an impressive dance performance! Normally I feel like a video of a dance piece really does not capture the atmosphere of it in a good way, but Cinématique is so visually appealing, it is great just watching the video, and doing so makes you want to see the whole performance.

The video is used in a clever, effective way, and you can only imagine how sound could be used to add another dimension to the experience. 

Julian Treasure - Sound Health

We’ve heard Julian Treasure speak about sound at TED before. This time he talks about sound health and listening. Ironically, the sound of the video is not really good enough to get the examples he plays. What he is saying is - although for a sound professional not new - something we all should be taught at school. It would make the world a much more pleasant sounding, and thus healthier place to live in.

F L U X

What sounds do these moving abstract images make? Candas Sisman created this nice example of how motion and sound can come together. The objects twist and turn in a way that would be impossible in the real world, yet the sounds they make seem to fit to them perfectly.

F L U X was inspired by the sculptures of Ilhan Koman, and created for the Ilhan Koman Hulda Festival in Istanbul, 22 September - 31 October.

Sound Waves and their Sources

For six years now I have been teaching a beginner’s lesson with as main question “what is sound?”. It covers the vibration of air molecules, amplitude, pitch, timbre, overtones, all the things you have to know before you want to start working with sound on a more serious level.

It is fun to see how many decades ago the same lesson was thought in this video. The video covers exactly the same topics, be it in a compressed format, while it takes me and hour and a half to tell the whole story. This will be a fun addition to my words.

Although the YouTube title says the video was created in 1933, I assume that should be 1950, looking at the Roman number MCML - correct me if I am wrong. Looking at the video and the animations used, that seems like a more plausible date. And to eager students visiting my blog: this is what we will be talking about! 

Found on Nick Seaver’s Noise For Airports

Piano Migrations Installation

For her Piano Migrations Installation, Kathy Hinde took the inside of an old upright piano and transformed it into a kinetic sound and video installation. The projected birds seem to excite the strings as they fly by and sit on them. 

The twitching and fluttering of small machines, fastened to the piano, touch the strings and cause them to resonate. The image is analyzed by the controlling software to make sure only the string closest to the moving bird is heard.

Dataflux

Dataflux, created by Kit Webster is a wonderful installation with synchronized sound and images. The visuals are projected on seven pillars, and the sound greatly enhances the experience of movement. Dataflux has some resemblance to Minus 60° by Karl Kliem. Again I cannot help thinking of Ryoji Ikeda’s work when watching this video, also because of the name, as it’s very similar to Ikeda’s Dataplex. For Dataflux Webster created software that renders the visuals live. 

Kit Webster will be one of the artists at this year’s Liquid Architecture festival in Australia taking place in June and July. 

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Classic: One Apartment and Six Drummers

Today we will watch a classic many of you will have seen before, but as it was made long before Everyday Listening was born, and I really like this to be part of my archives, here we go once again. Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers (2001) shows us a surreal situation in which six musicians ‘play’ the apartment of an unsuspecting couple while they walk their dog. 

I still love watching these smartly dressed drummers leave their Volvo for a well-planned guerilla performance. It is a wonderful and inspiring idea. The whole world can be our instrument, all we need is great musicians to play it!