Bronx Rhymes is a 2008 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.

BIOGRAPHIES

Claudia Bernett is an artist and designer living and working in New York City. Since receiving her MFA from Parsons School of Design in 2000, she has been creating work that operates at the intersection of the digital and physical realms, and explores cognitive responses to human-computer interaction. She also works as an interaction designer in the Mobile and Emerging Platforms group at R/GA where she leads the user interface development on a wide variety of digital tools, toys, and experiences.

Maria Ioveva is an interaction designer and motion graphics artist. Her interest in urban narratives has led her to the creation of “after-images” of the city – animated dreamscapes in which past, present and fantasy intertwine. In her projects she has reimagined classic New York silhouettes such as the Brooklyn water-towers and the abandoned High Line rail line. She received an MFA degree from Parsons School of Design in 2005, and currently works as an Interaction Designer at R/GA for the Nike+ account.

Become a tour guide and take artist Kelly Andres on a one-hour bicycle ride of your Banff. Andres will accompany you with her mobile sound lab, Songbike, transforming your narrated ride into a unique soundscape composition broadcast live to the world on www.radio90.fm.

In August 2006, Songbike was presented as a concept for the Interactive Screen 06 competitive pitch session at the Banff New Media Institute. It was awarded a co-production residency to develop the project. Songbike traveled to Vancouver to participate in Video In/Video Out’s Signal and Noise Festival, April 19th-21st. Although Songbike was not fully developed, it provided participants the opportunity to create unique soundscape compositions based on specific bike routes in west and east Vancouver.

The concept of Songbike is to create mobile, urban, soundcape compositions to share through a website. The idea is that anyone can build a “Songbike” by throwing together whatever consumer electronics they can find to make a recording or broadcasting unit. Each time Songbike is performed it is different… never a prescribed set of components or objects. Songbike uses sound as a subtle activist gesture - narratives of current issues, noise pollution, the body extended, politics of space, time and movement arise through cues only available while listening.

For the first time in Canada, and concurrently in Quebec City and Montreal, Christina Kubisch presents her Electrical Walks, where members of the public are invited to pace the urban space with headphones specially developed by the artist to transform electromagnetic fields into audible frequencies.

WORKSHOP: Electromagnetic Explorations of the City :: September 16 - 18, 2008 :: OBORO’s New Media Lab.

Christina Kubisch offers an audio creation workshop that explores the hidden electromagnetic world existing inside and outside spaces of the city. The workshop is for composers and artists with interest in sound art. For more info about the workshop and registration, see press release.

The Electrical Walks and the audio creation workshop are part of the interdisciplinary series Noise and Silence presented by Goethe-Institut Montreal.

Mouth of a Story explores subjects of history, place, memory, and language through a series of seven intertwined audio walks. Mouth of a Story will take place at the site of the old bear cages where voluntary participants become live performers guided by sound. Seven participants at a time are guided around the space via audio on headphones. Each of the seven audio works is unique and intertwines: instructions for navigating the space, storytelling, music, and ambient sound. For other observers around the location, the seven participants play out a performance whose actions and interactions are choreographed by the audio recordings but interpreted by the participants, creating a unique performance with each new set of participants. Anyone can participate; everyone can watch.

Mouth of a Story is open to the public on September 6th and 7th and 13th and 14th 2008 between the hours of 10am and 2pm. All are encouraged to participate by reserving a time slot via email at: mouth@testperformance.org. One cycle of the piece will last approximately twelve minutes and will then repeat with a new set of participants. Like short stories in a collection or songs on an album, the seven audio adventures accumulate into the full concept of Mouth of a Story.

Please visit www.mouthofastory.com for complete details, including directions and parking. Visit. Explore. Participate.

Mouth of a Story is made possible by a generous grant from the LEF Foundation. Special thanks to Mobius, the Franklin Park Coalition, and the Boston Parks Department.

Stretching from Hackney Marshes, through Waltham Forest to Redbridge, the M11 Link Road was completed in 1999 after the demolition of 400 houses amid dramatic and passionate protest. Graeme Miller has filled the empty spaces these buildings once occupied with a treasure trail of sound celebrating everyday East End life. Along a three-mile route, 20 transmitters broadcast hidden voices, testimonies and memories of those who once lived and worked where the motorway now runs. Borrow a receiver and map to explore the streets alongside the road and hear the speech and music that brings the landscape back to life. Read more here.

Just a few hundreds miles away from the Danube delta two major cities Giurgiu (Ghiurghiu)-RO and Ruse (Ruse) - BG are facing each other. They face each other stonily even though they are linked by one of the rare bridges on the eastern part of the Danube. The Festival has been designed as a dialogue between both cities since it will associate Rumanian and Bulgarian artists but also students taking part in a workshop entitled sonic landmarks of the territory in collaboration with EU Space 21 (Ruse-BG), Banlieues d’Europ’Est (Bucarest) and the Elias Canetti House (Ruse-BG). A networked sound installation will be equipped with listening booths and microphones located on either riversides (LE POULPE installation by APO33) – it will be linked to another installation in MONS. The musical selection for the festival will be finalised by Rokolectiv, who organise the Festival of the same name at the Bucarest MNAC. Arena –Ruse’s radio– and MU studio-boat will broadcast the completed creative radio works and will transmit both events via FM waves and the Internet.

The night concerts will take place in the Roman fortress Sexaginta Prista, on the border of the Danube, and the entrance ticket costs a symbolic 1 euro per day. Apart from the live concerts, The Bridge also presents Le Placard headphone festival, audio installations at the Elias Canetti House in Ruse, as well as audio-walks in various venues in Giurgiu and Ruse.

The Bridge Festival is organised by Rokolectiv (Ro), MU (Paris) and Arena Media (BG)

Participants include: Prins Thomas (NO), Mira Calix (UK), Phill Niblock (US), Joachim Montessuis (FR), Katherine Liberovskaya (CA), Chica and The Folder (DE), Minus & Ion, Sillyconductor (RO), Tom Wilson (RO), Alien Pimp (RO), SKVJS (RO), Vali Chincisan (RO), SKVJS (RO), Henning Lundkvist (SWE), Pistamashina (BG), Cosmiq Microbiq (RO), Camil (RO), Julien Ottavi (FR), TÔ (FR), WPMG (FR)

More details on: www.sound-delta.eu and www.rokolectiv.ro

In a culture where technology enables source information to be collected and maintained by means of collaboration—such as public drives in the workplace and wikis on the Internet—The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to present Halsey Burgund: ROUND, an exhibition that introduces an innovative audio tour guide that operates on a similar premise. The exhibition will close on July 27, 2008.

ROUND is an audio installation that solicits spoken voice contributions from visitors and uses them as part of a musical composition intended to be listened to while viewing the work in the galleries. The interactive audio experience allows visitors to hear a diverse range of voices—including artists, curators, and visitors—sharing their perspectives about the exhibitions, and to add their responses to the mix. Burgund’s installation is supported in part, by a grant from LEF Foundation.

The name of the exhibition alludes to both a musical round—a song in which two or more voices sing exactly the same melody but in an offset fashion—and the age-old Arthurian legend about the Knights of Camelot who sat at a round table, affording no one person a privileged position. Halsey Burgund explains, “Equality of opinion and the opportunity for two-way dialogue are core ideas of this project.”

ROUND allows visitors to experience other Aldrich exhibitions—specifically Charlotte Schulz: An Insufficiency in Our Screens and Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture—in a new way. The hand-held tablet computers will provide patrons the opportunity to select criteria for the types of voices they would like to hear while looking at the art—female curators, male artists, or children, for instance. Burgund says, “The comments will be collected in a database of recordings and subsequently incorporated into the piece in real-time using various computer algorithms and custom software. Thus, there will be a continual loop of opinion and emotional response, all contained within a musical work.”

You can hear a selection from the work here: http://www.aldrichart.org/exhibitions/burgund.php

Halsey Burgund is a musician and sound artist who lives and works outside Boston. Both his installations and musical performances make extensive use of spoken human voice recordings as musical elements, alongside traditional and electronic instruments. He collects these voices from otherwise uninvolved individuals whom he records in various locations, from museums to street corners to rock clubs. Halsey’s band, Aesthetic Evidence, performs music publicly, often including interactive performances in which he records audience members’ voices and uses those recordings improvisationally within songs.