Sound Song is a captivating piece that emerges from attentive listening and from the imagination and participation of audience members. It’s a unique experience.

McGill University music perception expert Daniel Levitin and Grammy-winning singer Rosanne Cash explain how the brain processes aural information and how our perception of sounds can inspire emotion. Cash will also give a live musical performance during this spectacular final senses event.

Learn More — Buy Tickets Now: scienceandthecity.org | nyas.org | or email: nymeetings [at] nyas.org.

Underwater speakers submerged in the pool will play sounds and music to an audience floating or swimming through the water. Sound travels four times quicker in water than in air so the sound is perceived not only by the ears but also by the bones and the body. Session One is undersea sounds for the under 14s. Later on the grown ups can immerse themselves in a listening gallery of international sound and some leisurely Aquadelica.

Jacob Kirkegaard has turned his ears inwards: His new work LABYRINTHITIS is an interactive sound piece that consists entirely of sounds generated in the artist’s auditory organs – and will cause audible responses in those of the audience. LABYRINTHITIS relies on a principle employed both in medical science and musical practice: When two frequencies at a certain ratio are played into the ear, additional vibrations in the inner ear will produce a third frequency. This frequency is generated by the ear itself: a so-called “distortion product otoacoustic emission” (DPOAE), also referred to in musicology as “Tartini tone”.

By arranging the tones from his ears in a composition and playing them to an audience, the artist evokes further distortion effects in the ears of his listeners. At first, each new tone can only be perceived “intersubjectively”: inside the head of each one in the audience. Kirkegaard artificially reproduces this tone and introduces it, “objectively”, into his composition. When combined with another distorting frequency, it will create another tone… until, step by step, a pattern of descending tonal structure emerges whose spiral form mirrors the composition of resonant spectra in the human cochlea.

(The effect in your ears will not appear when listening to the sound file)

Paradoxical as it may sound: we can listen to our own ears. The human hearing organ – still often perceived as a passive unidirectional medium – does not only receive sounds from the outside, it also generates its own sound from within itself. As a matter of fact, it can even be “played on”, just like an acoustic instrument.

This is Jacob Kirkegaard’s 3rd album for Touch, after ‘Eldfjall’ [Touch # T33.20, 2005] and ‘4 Rooms’ [Touch # Tone 26, 2006]

Jacob Kirkegaard is an artist with an interest in the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time and hearing. His performances, audio/visual installations and compositions deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain inaccessible to sense perception. With the use of unorthodox recording tools such as accelerometers, hydrophones or home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard manages to capture and explore “secret sounds” - distortions, interferences, vibrations, ambiences - from within a variety of environments: volcanic earth, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, crystals, ice… and the human inner ear itself.

A graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, Kirkegaard has given workshops and lectures in academic institutions such as the Royal Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen and the Art Institute of Chicago. During the last ten years, he has been presenting exhibitions and touring festivals and conferences throughout the world. Among his numerous collaborators are JG Thirlwell, Ann Lislegaard, CM von Hausswolff, Philip Jeck and Lydia Lunch. He is a member of freq_out. You can find out more on his website and you can order this release from the TouchShop.

Among the awarded prizes for acoustic creation, the Phonurgia Nova competition has, since 1986, occupied a special place by virtue of its recognition of artists whose work exploits sound as a medium for expressing the real and the imaginary. In 2007, 152 productions and projects from 15 different countries, entered the competition. The winners were Gilles Aubry (Suisse), Antje Wowinckel (Germany), Bernadette Johnson (Suisse), Léonore Mercier (France), Jean-Philippe Scellier (France).

This year’s contest will once again distinguish authors whose work manifests a keen sense of sound and listening as means of expression, in two areas :

A) Radio Arts, will privilige all forms of inventive radiophonic creation : feature, new documentary, fiction, essay, radio mix, hörspiel, soundscapes, experimental forms, etc…

B) InterMedia awards will go both to “sound installations” and to sonic works which have been specially created for “new media” or a new combination of media, and to bring new sound experiences to listeners.

In each category the jury will deliberate on two types of work : 1) completed/finished productions; 2) projects/works in progress

The deadline for submission is the 15th of October, 2008. The Jury is chaired this year by the French sound director Daniel Deshays. The preselection of the candidates will be communicated at the beginning of November. The jury will deliberate the 14th and 15th of December in the Reattu Museum - Arles (France) - during two days of listening, open to all applicants.

To get more information go to : http://www.phonurgia.org (in english, german and french)
More sounds : www.transradio.org (texts in french)

Creating sound works is a lighter task than making a feature film. Sound as an endless territory for evocative power and transporting oneself over the rainbow. Give it a go

At the end of this trip, a floating listening lounge is unfolding as an Archipelago of creations: embarked on a specially fitted sightseeing boat (a 3000 Watts 4.1 embedded sound system), one will discover there the 27 sound pieces created on board by the residents but also the 10 imaginary audio landscapes from some ten guest composers. These 7 cruises along the Strasbourg canals will each be punctuated by a live performance taking place in a different background each time. At the same time, on the Nuits Electroniques de l’Ososphère site, the Mirror Ball installation will display visual documentation of the two parallel journeys…

ESD is therefore ending after 3 months on the water, a long vibratory cruise is echoing this finale along the sonic and aquatic waves of Strasbourg.

Conception and coordination : Collectif MU (Paris-France)
Associated curators : Valérie Vivancos et Joachim Montessuis

PROGRAM

All departures: Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art embankment

September 26, 2008

Opening cruise
2.30 pm to 4.30 pm
with a concert of Aki Onda

Concerts in the MAMCS Auditorium
6.30 pm to 09.00 pm
with
Rainier Lericolais (France)
Christian Zanesi (France)
Phill Niblock (USA)
Katherine Liberovsakaya (Canada)

Mirror Ball at Osophère main site
10.00 pm to 04.00 am
video installation of Vincent Voillat

September 27, 2008

Cruise 1
10.30 am to 12.30 pm
with a concert of Michel Guillet (France)

Cruise 2
01.00 pm to 03.00 pm
with a concert of Rainier Lericolais (France)

Cruise 3
07.00 pm to 09.00 pm
with a concert of Aki Onda (Japon-USA)

September 28, 2008

Cruise 1
07.00 am to 09.00 am
with a concert of Michel Guillet (France)

Cruise 2
02.00 pm to 03.30 pm
with a concert of Michel Guillet (France)

Cruise 3
04.00 pm to 05.30 pm
with a concert of Philip Griffiths (Brazil-France)

FREE ACCESS on reservation (booking: rendezvous [at] ososphere.org). Tickets out at the reception desk (MACMS embankment) 15 minutes before departure

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.

Francisco López’s sound performances are something beyond a “normal” music concert. An intense and rich sonic immersive experience in the dark, with a surround multi-channel sound system and blindfolds provided for the audience. Virtual worlds of sound created out of a myriad of original sources collected all over the world - from rainforests and deserts to factories and buildings from multiple locations in the five continents - and mutated and evolved during years of studio work through the master compositional skills of López’s universe. The space is reconfigured with a multi-channel surround system around the audience, which is placed in seats arranged in concentric circles facing the outside array of speakers. The performer operates from the center of the space (not on stage), in order to be able to control live the sound as is heard by the audience.

Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the main figures on the stage of sound art and experimental music. His experience in the field of sound creation and work with environmental recordings covers a period of more than 25 years, during which he has developed an impressive sound universe that is completely personal and iconoclastic and based on profound listening to the world. He has performed hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings and sound installations in 50 countries all over the world, including the main international museums, galleries and festivals, such as: PS1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), Museum of Modern Art (Paris), International Film Festival (Rotterdam), Festival des Arts (Brussels), Darwin Fringe (Darwin, Australia), Institute of Contemporary Art (London), Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires, Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona, Center of Contemporary Art (Kita-Kyushu, Japan), etc. His extensive catalogue of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations with more than 100 international artists) has been published by more than 170 recording companies all over the world and he has received the honorific mention of the Ars Electronica Festival (Linz) on three occasions.

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.

It is known that learning takes place by weakening or strengthening axon connections in the brain, and that axon connections that are not used will eventually wither away.

The Tinnitus Tamer uses sequences of special tones and silent periods to retrain the neural networks in the auditory system of the brain to weaken, and ultimately eliminate, the positive feedback loop that creates the Tinnitus sound.

The Tinnitus Tamer thus uses the resources of your own body to take care of the Tinnitus in a natural way.

For more information: http://vavsoft.com/Tinnitus_Tamer.html

Developers can freely access the current analysis via a web services API that, given an MP3, will return an XML file that describes all the information we can extract from a song file. Visit the registration page to request an API key. For more direct and commercial use, they also offer heavily optimized libraries and stand alone binaries for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms on Intel, AMD, Power PC, and ARM hardware. Please contact audioapi@echonest.com for more information on direct licensing.

The Echo Nest Analyze API powers the automatic beat matching technology “Capsule.” As we know the beat of a track at any moment, we can seamlessly transition between two different pieces of music in real time. You can try this technology yourself on This is my jam at http://www.thisismyjam.com/