Ideas in Movement

My friend Joachim Baan was invited to create a project for the all new Samsung Galaxy Tab, and he asked me to be one of his collaborators, together with Raymond Lemstra and Mathijs de Bruin. So came up with the idea to create a virtual world in image and sound, using Layar on Android. 

Joachim drove to Germany in the middle of the night and took wonderful, strange and surrealistic pictures at some chalk mines. They are the starting point of our project. My task will be to create a new sonic layer around this dark world. More soon. It is part of the Ideas in Movement project.

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. 

Five Sound Questions to Anke Eckardt

The first sound installation I saw at this years TodaysArt festival in The Hague was Anke Eckardt’s ‘!’. I was impressed by the impact it had, especially in a place like The Hague’s Atrium. 

A good reason to find out who had made this installation and ask her to answer my Five Sound Questions. So here are Anke’s answers! You can read more about her and her work on her website www.ankeeckardt.com.

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

The sounds of my stomach.

2. How do you listen to the world around you?

 In the middle of my artistic research project ‘Vertical Hearing’ (2008-2010) I decided to train one of the less needed and therefore less developed human abilities - I decided to consciously listen to the world vertically. Airplanes, helicopters, historical documents which make you imagine the sounds of falling bombs, noises from the top of big cranes, thunder, birds, noises from the top of high buildings, hanging PA-systems, announcements in big public spaces - these sounds coming from above are semiotically fascinating.

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The BoomCase

I am a friendly man, but The BoomCase by Mr. Simo makes me fantasize about a smartly dressed man carrying this suitcase, entering a train, sitting next to one of those kids playing inferior ‘urban’ beats on his inferior mobile phone speaker, waiting five minutes, than hitting a button to blast him away with 200 Watts of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

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Interview on Soundesign.info

If you like visiting Everyday Listening and you would like to know a little bit more about its writer, head over to www.soundesign.info, a website dedicated to sound design by Gianpaolo D’Amico and Sara Lenzi!

83,7 Kilo Ohm

German artist Erwin Stache created the interactive installation 83,7 Kilo Ohm. The installation is placed in public space, inviting passers-by to touch it, play with it and thus create their own sound and music with it. If more people touch the installation, they can also shake hands and touch each other to influence the sound. 

Each time two or more of the metal tubes are touched, the sound, playing from the speaker attached to the base, is triggered and manipulated. Some of the (more interesting, if you ask me) parts are more abstract, electronic sounding, while others are precomposed pieces of music a participant can ‘conduct’. 

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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.

Five Sound Questions - Sarah van Sonsbeeck

Sarah van Sonsbeeck is a Dutch artist working mainly with sound. The above picture shows her new work Machine for my Neighbours. Read the answer to question no.4 for an explanation. For more great projects like this one visit Sarah’s website: www.sarahvansonsbeeck.com.

 

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you? 

I don’t like Beethoven anymore than I do a lot of other music. But if I hear his music, for instance if I take my father’s iPod by mistake, it sends me back to being seven, sitting behind the family sofa and listening while leafing through a book. The stillness of this memory is overwhelming; Beethoven represents silence for me, a silence with firm walls.

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Another Sound: Glasser

For the fourth edition of Another Sound, my contribution to Joachim Baan’s blog Anothersomething, I wrote about Glasser and her newly released album Ring. I was pleasantly surprised by the sound of it at first listen. Curious? I invite you to read the complete article on Anothersomething!

Visual Soundscapes

Looking at these images, is there a sound that comes to mind? What do shapes and colors do with that sonic image in your mind? Pablo Padilla Jargstorf, the creator of these Visual Soundscapes, calls them “intuitions of visual sound”. 

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