voyageacoustiquesix: Train Sonor - Piano (January 22, 2008) by Ralph Lichtensteiger - In rail transport, a train consists of rail vehicles that move along guides to transport freight or passengers from one place to another :: train of thought - the connections that link the various parts of an event or argument together; “I couldn’t follow his train of thought”; “he lost the thread of his argument” :: Internal monologue, also known as interior monologue, inner voice, internal speech, train of thought, stream of thought, chain of thought or stream of consciousness is thinking in words. It also refers to the semi-constant internal monologue one has with oneself at a conscious or semi-conscious level :: Keywords: avantgarde; ambient; experimental; electronic; microsound; noise; minimal; piano. Continue reading

Duncan Wilson created OTTO with Manolis Kelaidis at the Royal College of Art.

OTTO (Greek for ‘ear’) is a device that makes hidden sounds audible. This is achieved via a thin polymer piezoelectric contact that senses weak vibrations and plays them as a sound through an integrated speaker. OTTO can be positioned on almost any surface through a combination of suction and magnets. By placing several units on different objects, one can select and create a new sonic experience and a form of ambient music appreciation, thereby utilising our space as a multidirectional audio platform. Continue reading

White Sound Down - Jeff Talman is a sound and installation artist based in New York City. His work is a sensory meditation on the elementary sound of space. In his installations, he amplifies the background resonance of an environment by extracting and strategically redirecting ambient sound back into its place of origin. In so doing, he heightens the occupant’s aural perception of the surrounding area.

His most recent project, entitled White Sound Down, is a temporary multi-channel sound field installation in a remote section of the Bavarian Forest. White Sound Down is only accessible by cross country ski trails, and will be up until January 6, 2008. Continue reading

Based in London, Peter Cusack is a sound artist, musician and phonographer especially focused on environmental sound and acoustic ecology. His interests range from community arts, to how sounds affect our sense of place, and how they change as people migrate and technologies develop. Cusack’s current project Sounds from Dangerous Places examines the soundscapes of sites of major environmental damage, for example, Chernobyl and the Azerbaijan oil fields. He has also studied the sound properties of areas such as Lake Baikal, Siberia, and controversial dams on the Tigris and Euphrates river systems in south east Turkey. He writes: Continue reading

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The graphics and ambient “music” come from the onboard tracking instruments.

Interactivity has become ambient. Individual people are no longer isolated resulting from the scaling up of networks and the scaling down of the apparatus for transmission and reception. Various communication devices always carried are continuously emitting and receiving information. This continuous data flow is both invisible and often, by the majority of people, unknown. Today’s hand-held devices that can be seen as extensions of the human body allow ubiquitous, inescapable network interconnectivity. Continue reading

The Frog Rock, by self-styled crackpot inventor Bryon Mumford, is a natural sandstone boulder, mounted on a short steel pedestal. It seems to float about two inches above the floor. The stone has been hollowed out, and inside is a small, battery operated microprocessor. This processor spends most of its time asleep, but periodically wakes up to reproduce the digitally recorded sounds of insects and amphibians. During the daytime (a light sensor enables it to make this distinction) the Frog Rock periodically reproduces the call of a Pacific Tree Frog. After dark, the Frog Rock sometimes reproduces the call of a pond frog, and sometimes reproduces the calls of field crickets. Low power CMOS circuitry allows it to play for many months on a set of batteries. Continue reading

BronxMAP - Media Arts and Performance :: July 8 @ 8PM :: BronxMAP is a regular event held in the event space at the rear of the Bruckner Bar & Grill (1 Bruckner Blvd, 718.665.2001) near the first subway stop into the Bronx from Manhattan on the 4/5/6 train.

A night of performances featuring the expressive abstraction of the Bronx’s own Adriaan Doering, the audiovisual hacking and sculpting of Providence’s Blair Ciemiecki and Matthew Underwood, and the audience driven ambient soundscapes of Jasper Streit from Sydney, Australia. Continue reading

MEME: Pat Muchmore, Bill Brittelle, Tuba, Joe Exley, Red Sails, Molly Thompson, and Peter Kirn :: June 27, 7:30pm :: $5 :: Galapagos Back Room, Williamsburg :: Directions.

Peter Kirn is also doing a 20-minute live music/keyboard/visual set at the return of the Meme Music night. Galapagos is in its last days as a Williamsburg space before the big move to Brooklyn. Kirn will be doing some of his more floaty ethereal ambient stuff. He fully expects some of his colleagues to do the opposite. That should mix it up.

Meme’s mission: “Meme Music is a tri-monthly series dedicated to 1. The right to drink while listening to “classical” music, 2. The idea that the words “experimental” and “avant-garde” don’t have to be defined as mindlessly boring, 3. Since nowadays rock musicians and classical musicians are playing the same instruments and writing the same sorts of songs, shouldn’t they get to share billing? 4. Multi-media is neat! And 5. Listening to music should be fun, goddamnit!”