Watch a video.

Thus, van Veen turned to reel-to-reel (RTR) tape machines and Konstantin Raudive’s experiments with blank media in which he attempted to record the ‘voices of the dead’. (Little did van Veen know that John Hudak was exploring similar terrain in Voices from the Paradise Network.)

“This led to a series of investigations of the sonic realm arising between two networked R2R machines, a simple mixer and a DSP processor (to add spatialization and stereo channel manipulation to sometimes mono signals). These investigations revealed a performative realm, a space to improvise and to develop a capacity to ‘play’ the machines, or rather tweak & twiddle their hard knobs into spasms of ecstasy, cries of joy &, at times, moans of despair. The machines sang to me & each other, & I was drawn into the deadzone…”

[’til death do us a part] will be performed live at Programmable Media II: Networked Music tomorrow [Not in New York? Join us in Second Life].

Read Greg J. Smith’s interview with Tobias on Serial Consign.

[’til death do us a part] is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Tobias c. van Veen is a renegade theorist and pirate, techno-turntablist and writer. Since 1993 he has directed conceptual and sound-art events, online interventions and radio broadcasts, working with STEIM, the New Forms Festival, the Banff Centre, Eyebeam, the Video-In, MUTEK, MDCN.ca, the Vancouver New Music Society and Hexagram. His work has appeared in CTheory, EBR, Bad Subjects, Leonardo, Locus Suspectus, FUSE (contributing editor), e/i, the Wire, HorizonZero and through Autonomedia, among others. He has sonic and mix releases on No Type’s BricoLodge and the and/OAR labels. From 1993-2000 he was Direktor of the sonic performance Collective [shrumtribe.com] in Vancouver. He is co-founder of technoWest.org with Dave Bodrug, controltochaos.ca with DJ FISHEAD and thisistheonlyart.com with artist ssiess. From 2002-2007 Director of UpgradeMTL [upgrademtl.org] and Concept Engineer at the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT.qc.ca]. Tobias is doctoral candidate in Philosophy & Communication Studies at McGill University.

Network Sonification is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., for Networked Music Review. It was made possible with funding from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.

BIOGRAPHY

Zach Layton, a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory and the Interactive Telecommunications Program, is a composer, curator and new media artist with an interest in biofeedback, generative algorithms, experimental music, biomimicry and contemporary architectural theory. His work investigates complex relationships and topologies created through the interaction of simple core elements like sine waves, minimal surfaces and kinetic visual patterns. Zach’s work has been performed by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and he has performed and exhibited at Roulette, The Kitchen, the New York Electronic Art Festival, Eyebeam, and many other venues in New York and Europe. Zach is also the curator of Brooklyn’s monthly experimental music series “darmstadt: classics of the avant garde” which features leading local and international composers and improvisers.

When Brandtsegg suggested the idea to Aas in 2003, Aas responded “I really would like to hear the Flounder sing”. Brandtsegg’s installation makes use of a loudspeaker technique in which the sound is transferred to the metal in the sculpture. The natural environment, and especially the tidal stream, inspired Brandtsegg to program several variables which different sensors record from their surroundings.

The music is influenced by light level, temperature, moon phase, water level, water direction, and local time. Brandtsegg also composed different themes for days of the week and each of the twelve months. The sensor data and the sound signals are streamed — via the Internet — from Inderøy to Trondheim, where a computer processes it and sends it back.

At the Flounder website, you can follow the audible development of the work over a span of 10 years (2006-2016). You can listen to the composition in two versions – the sound played through the sculpture, or the “raw” version. Go here to learn more about the project.

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.

French visual artist Guillaume Leblon creates a new performance where invisible sounds and words meet. A dialogue within the imagination of the audience. Jeph Jerman (US) will be searching the surroundings of Leuven for materials that can be used as instruments. Wood and rocks become part of an improvised work in which natural and daily noises transform into new and subtle music. Marc Van De Sijpe (BE) has studied the sonar navigation system of bats and made their mysterious world of sounds accessible for us to hear. The video Lost Sound by John Smith & Graeme Miller (UK) shows discarded audiotapes around London - strands clinging to a fence, trapped in the crevices of a tree trunk, intertwined with weeds. The sound track combines the voices and songs on the found audiotapes with ambient sounds recorded on location. Finally, David Watson (US) will be exploring the acoustic qualities and possibilities of the venue at STUK with his bagpipes.

It seems to me that play has become an ever more significant aspect of networked activities, and while much of this is brought about by the participatory nature of the work, it also exists in work that is “through-composed” or out of the hands of the listener. In the October 2007 Newsletter, I mentioned the performance piece, You Say Potato, I say Potato, a humorous study of the sonic properties of genetically modified potatoes, in which two research groups try to answer the crucial question: GM potatoes, they may be good for our stomachs, but are they good for our ears? That month, we blogged the Tomato Quintet, the sonification of 7 days of tomato ripening into 49 minutes of musical wonder by Chris Chafe (Music), Nikolaos Hanselmann (Visuals) and Greg Niemeyer (Cook). This month, vegetable humor is back again with the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. In existence since 1998, the orchestra, composed of 11 musicians, a sound engineer and a video artist, performs throughout Europe and Asia on instruments made of fresh vegetables. As an encore, the audience is offered fresh vegetable soup.

And then there’s Vaibhav Bhawsar’s Udder Utter, an instrument that utters syllabic sounds derived from the Devanāgarī alphabet. Its playability is inspired by the gestures involved in milking a cow. And Lucier-in-a-Shower MP3s, an aquatic take on Alvin Lucier’s classic I Am Sitting in a Room Listening, that may not be intentionally humorous, but if you know Alvin, the idea of putting him in a shower has its humorous side.

A little more on the macabre side – and without vegetables, udders or showers – is Diamanda Galas’ upcoming performance on February 14th of the Valentine Day Massacre.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all.

Networked_Music Review also launched two newly commissioned works, More of the Same by LoVid, a work that loads copies of a single sound sample and explores fissures in the digital veneer as the spoken communication is played back repeatedly. And You’re Not My Father, by Paul Slocum, composed of a sequence of re-enactments of a 10 second scene from the television show Full House, overlaid with sound loops from the scene’s original music.

Finally, an interesting interview by Peter Traub with Golan Levin that focuses on his 2001 project, Dialtones (A Telesymphony), a concert performed through the choreographed dialing and ringing of the audience’s own mobile phones, can be found on the site. Peter and I both agree, it’s nice to see older work get a “second life”.

Part of a graphical depiction of the mole­cular vibrations. (Courtesy Max Planck Inst. for Nuclear Physics)

The report, which can be found in the February 6, 2008 edition of World Science News, says that physicists have recorded “tiny vibrations of individual molecules, that could be called sounds.”

The sounds created from these vibrations are bell-like tones. Too fast and too small to hear in their original form, they none-the-less fit the standard dictionary description of what makes a sound. Their vibrations produce vibrations in neighboring molecules, which in turn excite vibrations in their neighbors, and so on, spreading the vibrations (oscillations) outward.

According to world.science.net, “Uwe Thumm, one of the researchers, said he ‘prefers not to call the effects of a single molecule’s vibration sound.’ But that, he went on to say, is “a matter of what you define as ‘sound,’.” In the end, all the researchers would agree, it’s a pretty safe conclusion that no one can hear a molecule.

Making the molecules’ vibrations audible is simply a matter of playing them back much slower and louder by recording them to a lower pitch and giving their volume a boost. Thumm and his colleagues used hydrogen atoms, striking them with short intense laser pulses.

You can listen to the sound here. Windows Media Video (WMV) needed.

Thumm said researchers hope to be able to do the same thing for more complex molecules like water or methane, which will have their own unique sound.

For more information on the sound of individual molecules, read world.science.net’s article, and yahoo.news

In the January 18th issue of the Boston Globe, correspondent Billy Baker tells of Bullitt’s long quest for a satisfactory rendition of the sounds of the earth’s internal vibrations. Bullitt’s upcoming projects include one on the internal sounds of the human body and possibly another on the sounds of the underwater world.

You can listen to samples of his work here. In one, where the sounds of Earth are sped up 10,000 times, you can hear the sound of seismic waves traveling through the Earth’s crust from distant earthquakes. You can buy the CD (and listen to samples) here. Read about the installation version of the project here.

According to the very limited information on the site, DNA, mRNA and Protein sequences are translated into MIDI to generate the sound and control the image variables in realtime. When presented in live performance a MIDI controller is used. The gene information and sequences are available here. Other audio samples are available here.

Polli is currently at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, where she’s developing 90ºS. Working with a team of scientists, she is gathering and modeling environmental data in order to communicate both the aesthetic beauty of Antarctica and the scientific importance of Antarctica to the global climate; and explore art and science collaboration. She is maintaining a daily blog - including audio recordings - about her experiences here.

As a member of the steering committee for New York 2050, a wide-reaching project envisioning the future of the New York City region, Polli is currently working with city planners, environmental scientists, historians and other experts to look at the impact of climate on the future of human life both locally and globally. She is currently co-chair of the Leonardo Education Forum, an affiliate of the MIT Press and the College Art Association of America (CAA) that promotes the advancement of research and academic scholarship at the intersections of art, science, and technology, and is a founding member and co-chair of the New York Society for Acoustic Ecology (NYSAE), a chapter of the American and World Forums for Acoustic Ecology.