Wired: When you were growing up, hearing music often required going to see it performed. But iPods make music ubiquitous, like mental air-conditioning. What have we gained or lost by that?

Sacks: At first it would seem to be a wonderful gain. Darwin might have had to go to London to see a concert. But I can’t help wondering if the incidence of earworms and musical hallucinations is higher now, with background music in every public place. You can’t go to a restaurant without music, and they get offended if you ask them to turn it off. They feel it’s part of their creativity – they’re doing it for you.

The brain is very sensitive to music; you don’t have to attend to it to record it internally and be affected by it. I think we may be exposed to too much loud and repetitive music. One patient of mine has epileptic seizures induced by music and has to wear earplugs in New York City. It’s a dangerous place for him. Read the rest at Wired… [posted on BLDGBLOG]

Urban Noise Generation - The Observer this week takes a look at the sounds of cities. “For some,” we read, “living in a city is a loud, unpleasant babble of intrusive noise. For others it is a soundscape of calming tones that lift the spirits and brighten the day. Now a £1m, three-year research project is building a database of noises that people say improve their environment. It will translate those findings into design principles to help architects create sweeter-sounding cities.” Wonderfully, the leader of the study “is looking for members of the public to take part in mass ’sound walks’ through cities or in laboratory listening tests, where the team will use MRI scanners to measure participants’ brain activity as they are played a variety of urban noises.” They will thus develop an artificial soundtrack for the urban future. More on BLDGBLOG.

smSage receives SMS text messages, which are converted to audible speech, using a text-to-speech engine with a synthesized voice. It speaks these messages coherently at first, but which each repetition, starts to mix them with previous messages it has received, producing a concrete poem. The voice becomes quieter … A new message wakes it up again, for brief lucidity, before sense begins to dissolve again.

smSage can sense the ambient sound level and adapt its volume accordingly. When the project isn’t receiving any messages, it advertises its presence by quietly reciting its phone number.

The device is contained in a security camera housing, which contains a parabolic speaker to throw the sound at a nearby surface. The sound appears to come from a point on a wall where the speaker is directed.

The security camera acts as disguise for the source of the voice, making it more spectral and mysterious. It takes the function of a security camera and turns it around rather than capturing information from the environment, it projects onto it, voicing and remixing participants comments and observations in a transient, ephemeral way. At Conflux Festival 2007.

Todd Machover (b.1953) is renowned for his work with computer music, having pioneered at IRCAM and now, at MIT’s Media Lab, a series of works using hyperinstruments that extend traditional performance practice with interaction, real-time digital processing. These pieces are uniformly entertaining and often very funny. You can squeeze squishy embroidered balls, play soundless violins or bang on glowing bugs with antennae.

These hyperinstruments were developed by Machover in an attempt to break free of conventional musical instrument design. Building on technologies developed for Machover’s groundbreaking Brain Opera, the Music Shapers enable children to engage in sophisticated listening, performing and composing activities normally accessible only after years of study. The instruments have a short learning curve that allows children and adults alike to achieve a basic level of understanding in just three to five two-hour sessions.

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