Inanimate Life by Mark Peter Wright

I like making field recordings, recording and archiving a moment in time, to travel back to while listening to it on some later day. The field recordings Mark Peter Wright made for his album Inanimate Life are not the same though. They take the listener a little closer to their sources. 

Mark Peter Wright made his field recordings along the North East coast of England, inspired by the voice of the coastal winds. Other than what you might expect from field recordings, it is never really clear what I am listening to. While listening to Inanimate Life on my headphones the sounds rumble through my head, evoking images in my mind of what might be the source of those haunting soundscapes.

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Five Sound Questions to Petra Dubach and Mario van Horrik

The five sound questions, answered this time by Petra Dubach and Mario van Horrik. Their work experiments with both movement and sound.

In their research project Waves they experiment with inaudible sounds as a means to create movement. See their website to learn more about their work.

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

Petra: Every Monday at 12.00 all the sirens in Holland are tested. It is an alarm system introduced just before or during the Second World War to warn people for air-attacks. For me as a child the sounds of the sirens were very frightening.

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More TodaysArt 2010

On Monday I wrote about the sound installation ‘!’ which I saw at the TodaysArt festival last weekend. I only had time to visit during the day program, so I had a look at different parts of the exposition. Here are some more things I would like to share with you.

The above image is Squeeeque, an igloo made of old speakers by Alexis O’Hara. Visitors can enter the unit and play around with microphones, which will result feedback trough the speakers, creating an immersive sonic environment. It’s a bit of a toy, but it does really look great.   

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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.

The Organ of Corti

The idea is wonderful: recycling the noises of a busy city and filtering them to create something beautiful, making people aware of the sounds surrounding them, which always is a good thing. That said, I wonder how well it works, especially when the listener is surrounded by noise. 

The Organ of Corti is a sound installation created by Liminal, a partnership between sound artist and composer David Prior and architect Frances Crow. The Organ of Corti won the PRS New Music 2010 Award, and will premiere at the City of London festival, July 2011. 

! at TodaysArt Festival

This weekend I visited the TodaysArt festival in The Hague. The festival explores the newest forms of art, music and technology. After having some fun with RovoVox, a giant 8 meter tall robot that will speak any text you send via SMS, I entered the impressive Atrium, The Hague’s city hall to be surprised by !. 

! is an installation by sound artist and researcher Anke Eckardt, which explores her theory of ‘vertical hearing’. Every three minutes a sound comes from above and ‘drops’ into a puddle of black water. It seems like an invisible object causes the splash, yet it must be a huge woofer beneath the surface.

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A Balloon for... a Water Tower

The cities we live in contain many places with marvelous sonic properties, but who is aware of them? Concrete, towers, a hole in the wall. It might just take a little amplification to bring them to life. A popping balloon might also work. 

With A Balloon for… a Water Tower Davide Tidoni shows us the amazing effect the sound of a popping balloon creates in front of the water tower of Santarcangelo. The project invites the average passers-by to listen a bit more careful to the world around them. Watch the movie and listen to the effect:

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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. 

Five Sound Questions to Oscar Sol

A very interesting project featured on Everyday Listening this year was Oscillare, An Interactive Dawn, created by Oscar Sol and his collective Electronic Performers.

 

A good reason to ask this man our five sound questions. Read more about Oscar Sol and his projects on the Electronic Performers website: www.electronicperformers.in.

 

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

In my parents house there’s a big old clock with a iron man that hits a bell every hour… I listened to this since I was born and it’s still working! Long live the man who built that clock!

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

It’s noisy… I live in a city…

 

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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