Transition Soundings — an interactive public sound art sculpture by David Birchfield, David Lorig, Kelly Phillips, and Assegid Kidané — is a free standing, fully self contained outdoor installation. Located at a bus stop in Tempe, Arizona, the structure has the appearance of a large transit map with hubs and paths connecting locations across its surface. However, this stylized ‘map’ is actually a large network of sensors and speakers that trace paths in sound across the surface of the wall. As users move and gesture in front of the piece, a network of proximity sensors initiates sonic events that wash across the surface in a fashion that references ripples across the surface of water. Sound events propagate through the network in a way that mimics movement of traffic, ideas, currents, and connections in the networks of our lives. Continue reading

Call for Performance Proposals: Tuned City - Between Sound and Space Speculation :: Garage, Kastanienallee 73, 10435 Berlin.

Tuned City is seeking proposals for short performances and artist presentations addressing issues of sound and architecture. These proposals should relate to one or more of the topics listed below, and should include links to online documentation of the proposed performance/presentation, or to similar work by the same artist / author. The deadline for proposals is April 30, 2008, but proposals will be considered as they are received. Please submit proposals in English. Continue reading

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

I posted about some work of Rodrigo Derteano’s last week (here) but this third work I omitted as it didn’t quite seem suitable to include with the other two works.

Recomputing Space is a sound installation which employs field recordings as a psychogeographic study of urban sound. “Following the commands and rhythm imposed by an algorithm, two persons walk around in chosen locations in the city, recording a mix of noise, language, music and the sound of their own steps. The chosen locations are public places, such as public squares, parks, tram stations etc. Continue reading

Sound and the City: Interdisciplinary Perspectives :: February 22, 2008 :: CRASSH, University of Cambridge.

Over the past year, the Cambridge University City Seminar at CRASSH has explored diverse and enlivening topics in the study of cities, urban space, architecture, and visual and material culture. These topics have ranged widely in time and space, from predictions for the age of the supermetropolis to the use of digital technology in architectural space to an analysis of Mussolini’s use of Rome’s imperial past in the construction of its present.

Out of these encounters emerged an aspiration to allow for a more intense investigation of a particular area within this field. This will find its preliminaryculmination in a one-day conference to be hosted by the City Seminar organisers at CRASSH in Lent term 2008. Continue reading

Freestyle SoundHack - a workshop and performance with Jessica Thompson :: January 26, 2008; 1 - 5 pmM :: p|m Gallery, 1159 Dundas Street East, Suite 149, Toronto, Canada.

Freestyle SoundKits are wearable sound pieces that generate and broadcast electronic beats as users move through the urban environment. Freestyle SoundHack is a collaborative performance in the form of a workshop. During the performance, the artist will give her project to the public by teaching workshop participants how to make their own Freestyle SoundKits, to distribute as they wish, using whatever sounds they choose. Material fee: $20 (full kit), $10 (kit-amp). Continue reading

Tuned City - Between Sound and Space Speculation is a comprehensive exhibition and conference project planned for July 2008. The project searches for a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic through the facilitation of dialog between the discourses of sound art, architecture and urban planning as well as the commissioning and exhibition of several site-specific works in various locations around the city of Berlin.

Tuned City presents artistic work and theoretical approaches derived from a critical preoccupation with sound in the context of urban and architectonic situations and their socio-political implications. Continue reading

Echologue, by Orkan Telhan, is a public interface for sensing and displaying socio-cultural characteristics of a place based on its sonic features. The goal is to build a medium that can reflect its surroundings like a smart mirror, highlight the salient details and patterns in the environment and contribute to our understanding of the perception of social places. The interface senses ambient sound, records deliberate user input and displays a visualization of the activity in that space as its output.

The design explores the utility of sound for envisioning new social, cultural and entertainment uses of public places and help us shape our relationships with each other with new social interfaces embedded in urban settings. Continue reading

Broadway (2007), by Jacob Kirkegaard, is a five-channel sound installation comprising the columns that run through the gallery space and the entire building. Although elements of the building’s architecture, the columns also transmit subtle vibrations generated by movement on the street and subway below. The internal sound of each column was recorded with accelerometers and is played back into the columns by means of sixty small exciters. Thus the five columns are transformed into loudspeakers, each of which plays out the sounds of Broadway in its individual resonant frequency.

With this piece, Kirkegaard not only outlines a multifaceted portrait of Broadway as idea, location and historical concept - he also offers a unique means of experiencing the reverberations of an urban environment, conducted vertically by the columns. More info: secretsounds.dk/nada. [via VVORK]

TRAMPOLINE, Year 10: The Surveillance City :: Call For Submissions :: DEADLINE: November 12, 2007 :: EVENT TO BE HELD ON: November 29, 2007.

If we are not to be played and lost like Pawns scrabbling on the surface of a chessboard we need to understand the rules of the game we are engaged in. As developers buy up our city centres for regeneration into desirable properties for the market, a similar appropriation is taking place within the spectrum that lies above. The air we breathe is itself becoming digital real estate, an intangible landscape carried on radio waves, filling the voids of our cities like Dark Matter. Continue reading