The Tinnitus Tamer helps Tinnitus sufferers to reduce or eliminate their Tinnitus by using the resources of their own bodies to take care of the Tinnitus in a natural way. Produced by VAVAsoft, Tinnitus Tamer is a tone generator replicating in a very flexible and precise way the tinnitus phenomenon produced by our neuronal ear system.

The striking similarities between the Tinnitus sounds and the sound produced by positive feedback in electronic circuits processing audio signals suggest that Tinnitus sounds are caused by positive feedback between neurons in the auditory neural system in the brain by inappropriate axon connections. Continue reading

The Echo Nest Analyze API is a tool that can enrich your software’s understanding of musical recordings. It uses a perceptual model of human listening to generate detailed descriptions of a song’s structure and musical content. Given any musical sound file, the analysis engine outputs global musical track information such as tempo, dominant pitches and timbre, key, time signature, energy, etc. It also segments the sound file into large sections (such as verse, chorus, bridge), beats, and smaller time slices. Each segment is described in terms of pitch, timbre, and loudness content. The engine then segments a musical track into small time slices, each representing a perceived “sound” (a note of a piano, a syllable of a vocal line, etc.). Each segment is then described in pitch, timbre and loudness. This information can power performances, visualizations, and games with the ability to respond to a wide range of nuances in the music they use. Continue reading

Transmitting live from the Ocean below the Antarctic Ice: “Providing an acoustic live stream of the Antarctic underwater soundscape is a formidable challange. After all, more than 15000 km lie between Antarctica and our institute in Germany. Underwater sound is recorded by means of two hydrophones by PALAOA (Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean), an autonomous, wind and solar powered observatory located on the Ekström ice shelf (Boebel et al., 2006).

The data stream is transmitted via wireless LAN from PALAOA to the German Neumayer Base. From there, a permanent satellite link transmits the data to the AWI in Germany. Continue reading

Shinichi Takemura is a designer who uses technology in an attempt to enable creativity. He believes technology should not be used to stop people thinking, but rather to enable potential in humanity. Aqua Scape is one such example. This website invites the viewer into another world, where they can be involved in situations across the globe. The viewer can listen to various sounds of water from around the world, in real time. Takemura believes that listening to sounds in real time can change peoples emotional responses, and that the Internet is a platform to unite global citizens. This website becomes a unique dynamic experience, that can never be the same, rather than a static source of information. Takemura has transformed the function of a website and is working at using the internet to facilitate change.

Soundpockets is a series of intimate sound interventions in public spaces. By using FM radiowaves, soundbeams and miniature speakers to create local pockets of sound, the different projects create private listening rooms, change the soundtracks of locations, and/or displace time and space.

Soundpocket 1 — created for Urban Interface, Oslo (2007) — was installed in a narrow passageway connecting two parts of the city. The soundbeam, which can be as narrow as 50 cm in diameter, was mounted on a pan/tilt head which made it possible to place the sounds very precisely in the passageway. Continue reading

[Image: Icon attached to the railing] Touched Echo, a performative installation by Markus Kison, can be experienced at Brühlsche Terrasse, Dresden until October 31, 2008. The installation takes visitors back to the night of February 13, 1945 when Dresden’s Old Town was almost completely destroyed.

An icon on the balustrade instructs participants to adopt a contemplative position - one must lay ones elbows onto the balustrade, cover ones ears, and look at the Old Town. While in this position, they hear the sounds of bombers and explosions, which travel through their arms directly into their inner ears via bone conduction. Continue reading

Harmony in the Age of Noise :: April 23 - August 10, 2008 :: Opening: April 23; 4:00-5:30 pm :: Tisch Library Rooftop, Tufts University, Medford, MA.

Close your eyes and listen. It is the Age of Noise: hums, buzzes, whines, traffic, ventilation systems, disc drives, cell phones, sirens, aircraft, muzak, televisions, radios, car alarms, leaf blowers, jack hammers, compressors — biproducts of an overheated visual culture bombard us endlessly. It’s no surprise that many people withdraw from our public hearing space and retreat into iPods or buildings with windows that don’t open. Harmony in the Age of Noise intends to empower the sense of hearing and deconstruct this sea of noise. In transforming this barrage of sounds into information about the way we live, the piece attempts to restore harmony and balance to the senses. Continue reading

Curated by James Webb, NewMusicSA’s 2nd Unyazi Festival, Fear of the Known, is a festival of “extreme listening” featuring some of the most adventurous sound artists, theorists and experimental musicians from South Africa and the rest of the world.

Fear of the Known will be hosted at the University of Cape Town (March 12), the University of Stellenbosch (March 14 + 15) and at the University of the Witwatersrand (March 16). Details >>.

Displaced Sounds is a new series of performances and presentations, organised by STUK arts centre and (K-RAA-K)3 :: March 13, 2008; 8:30 pm :: STUK KUNSTENCENTRUM vzw, Naamsestraat 96, B-3000 Leuven.

Expect unexpected sounds, exciting evenings where listening and hearing are the keywords. Even before we are born, we are affected by noise invading our safe and quiet space. We are surrounded by sounds that define the rhythm of our world. Artists and researchers will guide you through the labyrinth of sounds that constitute our daily lives. Continue reading

Voices from the Paradise Network by John Hudak, with Flash programming by erational.org [Needs Flash Player and speakers on] - John writes: My mother-in-law passed away recently, reminding me of a technique that a parapsychologist named Dr. Konstantin Raudive (1906-1974) used to record what he purported to be voices of deceased spirits. With the amount of information moving around on the internet these days, and the passing of my mother-in-law, who I thought would want to get in touch (if possible), I thought I’d give Raudive’s technique a try within the digital realm. Continue reading