Sawako Kato will premiere new compositions for 15 hemispherical speakers in the Floating Point Festival at the Issue Project Room. Sawako weaves the intimate sound scape with fragments from her recent trips + sine tone + subtle voice.

Tristan Perch will show his new work with 5 voices and 15-channel 1-bit electronics + a short piece for 3 violins.

This upcoming performance of Gang Clan Mafia unravels over 1,440 minutes. Performance actions become sonic rhythms; soundscapes dictate the flow of video information; sound becomes objects which inform the actions that transform the physical, sonic, and psychic space of the location.

Gang Clan Mafia creates improvised, live sound. It is a sound collage, landscape, journey and conversation. Video, installation, and performance actions are used as a visual Transportation Pod.

Gang Clan Mafia is:
Vela Phelan (turntable, knobs, mic, tapes, etc.) and Dirk Adams (found sound, constructed sound, mic, effects) and occasional collaborators.

Contact GCM : vela@templeofmessages.com / mrdirky@yahoo.com

Mobius, founded by Marilyn Arsem in 1977, is known for incorporating a wide range of the visual, performing, and media arts into innovative live performance, video, installation and intermedia works. Mobius has produced hundreds of original works that have attained critical acclaim in Boston, nationally and internationally. Works created at Mobius have been presented throughout the North and South America, Europe and Asia.

Mobius has long been committed to creating artist exchange projects bringing artists from different geographic regions to work together. The international exchange projects with artists from Macedonia, Croatia, Poland, and Taiwan have focused on site-specific and publicly-sited work. Mobius has presented work involving thousands of artists over its 30-year history and is recognized as one of the seminal alternative, artist-run organizations in the U.S.

Over five days, July 1-5, the symposium will approach the topic architecture and sound from five different theoretical and spatial perspectives. The chosen venues - spaces built for the production or reception of sound, acoustically flawed or impossible spaces, public and semi-public urban spaces, finished and planned spaces, wasteland or cultivated spaces, indoor and outdoor locations - each serve to illustrate the topics of that day, and offer a mixture of lectures, artistic presentation, performances and examples of working architectural practice.

Below you will find a rough overview of the themes, places and times. For information on the single slots of these blocks and to the participants please visit our website: http://www.tunedcity.de

TUNED CITY - BETWEEN SOUND AND SPACE SPECULATION :: 1 - 5 july 2008

1 july 2008 - aural architecture :: venue: Pfefferberg Haus 13 :: 8 pm opening / keynotes / performances

2 july 2008 - sound material :: venues: Technische Universität Berlin (block I) Brunnenstrasse 9 (block II) Pfefferberg Haus 13 (block III)
block I / 11 am: listening to soundscapes
block II / 3 pm: building with sound
block III / 8 pm: sound - space - architecture

3 july 2008 - sonic interventions :: venues: Alexanderplatz (block I+II+III)
block I / 11 am: urban space and sonic experience
block II / 1 pm: sound and social communication
block III / 4 pm: public and private soundscapes

4 july 2008 - sonic landscapes :: venues: Tafelgarten Hamburger Bahnhof (block I) :: Wriezener Freiraum Labor (block II+III)
block I / 11 am: installation Punktierter Garten
block II / 2 pm: design of acoustic environments
block III / 9 pm: das kleine field recordings festival

5 july 2008 - virtual soundspaces :: venue: Rundfunkhaus Nalepastrasse
block I / 11 am: radio space
block II / 3 pm: sonic derive
block III / 5 pm: talking sound and building space

Tuned City is produced by garage g e.V. (Carsten Stabenow and Gesine Pagels) in cooperation with Carsten Seiffarth (singuhr - hoergalerie), Derek Holzer, Anke Eckardt and Anne Kockelkorn. The project is funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.

TUNED CITY HIGHLIGHTS

There are a couple of events we would like to recommend:

1. keynote :: Tuned City day 1 / 8pm / Pfefferberg Haus 13 :: Dr. Barry Blesser Dr. Barry Blesser is considered one of the grandfathers of the digital audio revolution. He invented and developed the first commercial digital reverberation system, the EMT-250 in 1976, helped start Lexicon in 1971, published the landmark paper, “Digital Processing of Audio Signals” in 1978, co-chaired the 1st International Conference on Digital Audio in 1980, and was an adviser to the US Justice Department on the Watergate Tapes in 1974. Dr. Blesser was President of the Audio Engineering Society in 1980. The AES awarded him their
Silver, Bronze, and Governors Medals, both Publication Awards, and made him an AES Fellow. He has been on the AES editorial review board since 1975, and currently serves as its Consulting Technical Editor. Dr. Blesser has published numerous papers in professional journals and has been awarded many patents on audio and signal process.Most recently, MIT Press published his first book (together with Linda-Ruth Salter): “Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture”, which has provoked a latent interest in sound and acoustics worldwide.

workshop :: 1 july - 5 july 2008 :: Chris Watson / Hearing Berlin: 12 Approaches :: Christopher Richard Watson was a founding member of the influential Sheffield-based experimental music group Cabaret Voltaire in 1971.His sound recording career began in 1981 when he joined Tyne Tees Television. Chris Watson has a particular and passionate interest in recording the wildlife sounds of animals, habitats and atmospheres from around the world. As a freelance recordist for film, TV and radio Chris Watson specialises in natural history and documentary location sound together with track assembly and sound design in post production.

3. installation :: Tuned City day 2 / block 2 / 5pm / Brunnenstrasse 9 ::Mark Bain: BUG :: The project Brunnenstrasse is a complete new planning for two invest ruins of Berlin’s 90ies. Brandlhuber’s construction is using the already built basement and places a 5-floor, very light and transparent concrete building in-between two old typical Berlin fire division walls. This building is going to house a gallery and Brandlhuber’s own studio. Mark Bain is involved in the construction process from the beginning on in order to develop a work which will turn the whole building in a sound installation. He is going to implement a system of geodata and seismic sensors in the infrastructure of the building as well as in the concrete as the building is raised. These hyper-sensitive instruments will capture all mechanic and acoustic micro sensations happening in and around the building, like the wind passing by the fassade, foot steps on the stairs, raindrops on the roof, termic material expansion, etc. - all this raw material will be used for a permanent, generative composition, played back in the long tunnel, connecting the street with the backyard. This public tunnel - typical Berlin “Tordurchfahrt” - is itself an acousticly very interesting place, as it is cutting and filtering the street noise. Certain materials are going to be used to work on these effects in combination and interaction with the playback of the house composition. Additionally, in every room of the building will be next to the light switch a headphone jack - so that later inhabitants (or visitors of the gallery) can tune in and listen to the building.

TUNED CITY WORKSHOPS

Hearing Berlin: 12 Approaches / 01.-05.07.08 :: Chris Watson :: Fee: EUR 75 :: Workshop Language: English :: Hearing Berlin: 12 Approaches is a workshop for environmental sound recording conducted by Watson for Tuned City. This workshop takes a multidisciplinary approach towards field recording, inviting practitioners in different disciplines - from sound artists to architects, city planners to social researchers - a chance to
listen to the city of Berlin under Watson’s expert guidance. The results of this 5 day workshop will be presented in the final day of theTuned City event.

Scrying / 01.-02., 04.07.08 :: Martin Howse :: Fee: EUR 60 ::
Workshop Language: English :: Across three days, the scrying workshop will explore and construct city-wide electromagnetic
[EM] phenomena within the data space domain, examining techniques of digital forensics, of signal archaeology overlapping with contemporary artistic concerns. The scrying platform, an open hardware project concerned with the design and implementation of low power (enabling long-term, solar-powered urban installation) devices interfacing code and EM practice, will be used during the workshop.

Kinetic (Architectural) Modelbuilding :: 01.-04.07.08 :: Ralf Schreiber and Martin Kuentz :: Fee: EUR 10 :: Workshop Language: English & German :: This four day workshop aims to create architectural models of of urban structures which can be sonically activated using small motors taken from cassette tape players. Each workshop participant can (alone or in groups) develop and build these “sounding (architectural) models”.
The models can be tuned according to sound criteria and arranged and linked according to their function for a collective presentation on Saturday 5 July.

TICKET RESERVATION

From now on you have the chance to make reservations for tickets. Because some of the venues offer only a limited
capacity we advise to make reservationsas soon as possible. http://www.tunedcity.de/?page_id=244

A performance including live chamber ensemble, electroacoustic soundscape and projected video, Psychodrama is a multiple re-scoring of the shower sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Psycho.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYcp1_onRdo

Psychodrama: 13 Variations is funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center and is made possible in part with public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

The whole piece is based on field recordings from: Mamori Lake, Amazonia, Brazil; Alphios Bridge, Ancient Olympia, Greece; Vibrations from the bridge which connects Denmark with Sweden; A bottling plant in operation and hydrophone recordings from Mamori Lake. Also used were sounds and notes from a church organ. Output signals have been manipulated and electronically treated.

Dramazon is made in memory of a long rainy night in Amsterdam… In the era of 01110011000111010110, one thing remains stable and it will remain stable and non-mutated for eternity. The way people kiss, the way bodies are connected…
Listen >>

TouchRadio is internet audio broadcast streaming direct from the server. To listen you need a mp3 player app. that supports streaming such as Apple’s iTunes for Mac and PC. In the archive >>: Jana Winderen, Guðni Franzson, Lasse Marhaug, Chris Watson, Steve Roden, Leif Elggren, Scott Taylor, The Skull Defekts, Daniel Menche, Fennesz/Rehberg/Toral & Feliciano, Brandon LaBelle, Stephan Mathieu, Leif Inge, Jacob Kirkegaard, People Like Us, KK.Null, Peter Rehberg, Toshiya Tsunoda, Philip Jeck, z’ev, Christian Fennesz & Max Nagl, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, BJNilsen.

During these travels, she has often been struck by the similarities between Cleveland, a city of the Rust Belt, and New Orleans, a city of the bayou. Both cities dwell on the shores of bodies of water with global reach: Cleveland on Lake Erie, New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Both cities have seen the boom and bust of industry and population throughout their histories – past and present. Cleveland and New Orleans look remarkably different, but Christensen has often noticed that they have sounds in common: industry, birds, water, tourists. Rust Belt / Bayou offers an interactive document of aural snapshots from recent trips to both New Orleans and Cleveland.

Rust Belt / Bayou 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

Julia Christensen is an artist whose work treads on the thin line between art and research. She also likes to tread on most of the thin lines between various media, between the electronic and the non-electronic, and between audience and performer. Julia is the author of Big Box Reuse (MIT Press, Fall 2008), a book about how communities are renovating abandoned Wal-Mart and K-Mart structures for creative new uses. Her photography, sound work, and electronic installations have shown recently at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Lincoln Center in New York City, and the DUMBO Art Center in Brooklyn, among other venues. Julia lectures widely about land use, art, music, and interdisciplinary research. She likes hearing stories, playing with her rock band in Troy, traveling in the depths of the United States, and thinking about the future.

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. A constant hiss pervading the signal is the natural, isotropic background noise made audible here through the use of ultra sensitive hydrophones. Additional broad band noise caused by wind, waves and currents adds to it on occasion. Due to the limited bandwidth of the satellite link, jamming of the WLAN link due to storms, or energy shortage, the connection might temporarily be down or scrammed.”

You can listen to the underwater sound of the Antarctic Ocean with a delay of a few seconds. [MP3 audio stream. OGG-Vorbis audio stream - provides better sound quality at a lower bitrate, for a list of compatible players please check out www.vorbis.com.] [via]

Please join us as we host an international group of scholars and practitioners who are gathering to explore the roles of narrative and mediation in art practices that engage sound as a material. The symposium will consist of three panel discussions as well as an exhibition of audio-works for portable music players made expressly for the geography, architecture, and social spaces of the Princeton University campus.

The exhibition will begin the festival on the morning of Friday, March 28th. Thirty iPods and corresponding maps will be made available for check-out from the Mendel Music Library Circulation desk in the Woolworth Center for Musical Studies. After participants have had time to explore the audio-works, opening comments and a panel comprised of artists and musicians will start the symposium. The first panel will consist of musician and sound artist William Basinski, whose melancholy minimal electronic music has achieved critical acclaim; artist Jon Brumit, whose Neighborhood Public Radio project is featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial; multimedia artist Brenda Hutchinson, who will lead sunrise and sunset bell-ringings throughout the festival; as well as sound artist Michael J. Schumacher, founder of New York’s Diapason Gallery for Sound Art.

After more time Saturday to explore the site-specific audio-works, the second panel will take up the notion of narrative as it relates to sound practices. Kristin Oppenheim’s spare and hypnotic sound installations invoke layers of personal memory, while Stephen Vitiello’s work transforms incidental atmospheric noises into mesmerizing soundscapes that alter our perception of the surrounding environment. Mendi + Keith Obadike collaborate on interdisciplinary projects investigating race, history and identity, and Thomas Levin, a curator and cultural theorist, focuses on sound technologies and issues of surveillance in media practices.

The symposium’s third and final panel will address issues of mediation in sound art. Ruben Gallo will talk about Mexican sound artist Taniel Morales’s Pirate Radio. Ed Osborn will present his kinetic and audible sound installations, while Camille Norment will discuss her artistic practice, which extends the fine arts into extra-disciplinary realms such as scientific research, city planning, and interaction design. Tianna Kennedy, program director of Brooklyn’s free103point9 transmission arts network and a participating artist in the festival, will discuss issues related to transmission, participatory practice and social sculpture.

Sonic Fragments is sponsored by the Princeton University Department of Music, The Peter B. Lewis Center for the Performing Arts, The Graduate School, The Sound Lab research group in the Department of Computer Science, The Aesthetics and Media Track in the Department of German, The Program in Media and Modernity, The Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

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.

Anthropologist and poet David Guss invited sound artist, Bruce Odland — sonic thinker, composer, and sound artist known for his large scale, public space sound installations — to create Harmony in the Age of Noise. Along with sculptor Mark McNamara and media artist Michael Luck Schneider, they will collaborate with over 80 undergraduates and grad students as well as professors and staff at Tufts University. Together they are designing and building a sonic observation post that will allow visitors to navigate through sound maps of the campus and surrounding community. Harmony in the Age of Noise will be a parabolic gazebo where the hub of students and traffic are harmonized through a mix of a real time feed, a collection of stored psychoacoustic maps, and visitors’ sounds programmed to play like hourly chimes.

All students and the public are invited to participate and attend.

Read more here.

According to a 2003 report from the BBC, Hospital Raymond Poincare is famous for treating road injury victims. Every year 450 deceased people pass through its morgue, and after 40 years of conducting autopsies and talking to bereaved families, chief pathologist Professor Michel Durigon decided it was time to create a Salle des Departs that did not include the traditional red carpet and lugubrious background sound.

Spalletti’s azure blue Salle des Departs was the catalyst for Scanner’s composition, for he “found himself moved beyond all expectation by the project. His brief was daunting, but Durigon felt that the hospital needed an artist whose sensibility would be a source of sustenance to mourners, help them through their pain and suffering, and fully respect the memory of the deceased.

It was this last thought which triggered a painful series of memories for Scanner. As a teenager, he lost his father in a terrible motorcycle accident. The death was a blow which left his family unable to deal with the magnitude of the loss and of their own suffering. This lack of formal mourning came back to haunt him when he met Michel Durigon. Fate has presented him with a unique opportunity to mourn his own father’s death at last, by using his gift of music to help ease the pain of other bereaved families.”

The RadioLab program is available for audition. Listen to Scanner’s Channel of Flight (18′08”) and David Lang’s Départs (18′14″) [Real Player required].