In This Place Of Safety (ITPOS) uses a building as a projection screen to explore intersections between temporary video interventions, architecture and art. It combines images of empty playgrounds projected across NOVAS gallery building facade and sound of children’s voices on a playground. It aims to add an extraordinary element to the cityscape of LB Southwark, but also more quietly start a conversation about how safe do we feel and why.

As a logical progression from large-scale outdoor video installation 205A Morning Lane, ITPOS looks into new forms of displays on buildings with knowledge of recent technical developments addressing the chances and risks of this development. The project looks into relation between the content and the display structure on the one hand and the building structure and it tries to find its specific correspondence.

Artist talk, private view and lovely Japanese DJs on 17th July 2008, 7.00 - 10.30 pm

Novas Contemporary Urban Centre
73-81 Southwark Bridge Road
London, SE1 0NQ

Supported by the University of Westminster and Arts Council England.

Part of London Festival of Architecture 2008.

Editors notes:

Larisa Blazic’s work is focused on interactive site-specific installation exploring audience participation, real-time audio distribution and networked audio-video installation. It explores location as main carrier of meaning, aesthetics of everyday urban experience, creative use of surveillance technologies, real-time video stream and moving image in the context of temporary public art interventions and its communication to wider audience.

Novas CUC - London Bridge Bankside: Novas is at the cutting edge of tackling social disadvantage through creating inclusive employment in social enterprises, providing flexible community based support services to vulnerable people and offering quality art and cultural programmes, which involve the wider community in understanding complex social issues.

Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.

The Coda

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http://www.e-w-n-s.net
http://www.ex-centric.net

The second volume of the Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series asks the question: what lessons can architecture learn from software development, and more specifically, from the Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement? Written in the form of a quasi-license, Urban Versioning System 1.0 posits seven constraints that, if followed, will contribute to an open source urbanism that radically challenges the conventional ways in which cities are constructed.

About the Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series:

Series Editors: Omar Khan, Trebor Scholz, Mark Shepard — Published by the Architectural League of New York.

The Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series extends a discourse initiated in the summer of 2006 by a three-month-long discussion on the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC) mailing list that culminated in the Architecture and Situated Technologies symposium at the Urban Center and Eyebeam in New York, co-produced by the Center for Virtual Architecture (CVA), the Architectural League of New York and the iDC. The series explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: how our experience of space and the choices we make within it are affected by a range of mobile, pervasive, embedded or otherwise “situated” technologies. Published three times a year over three years, the series is structured as a succession of nine “conversations” between researchers, writers and other practitioners from architecture, art, philosophy of technology, comparative media studies, performance studies, and engineering.

For more information about the series, visit
www.situatedtechnologies.net

About the Architectural League:

The mission of the Architectural League is to advance the art of architecture. The League carries out its mission by promoting excellence and innovation, and by fostering community and discussion in an independent forum for creative and intellectual work in architecture, urbanism, and related disciplines. We present the work and ideas of the world’s most interesting and influential architects and designers to New York, national and international audiences, through lectures, exhibitions, publications, and the worldwide web. We identify and encourage talented young architects, through competitions, grants, exhibitions, and publications. And we help shape the future of our built environment by stimulating debate and provoking design thinking about the critical issues of our time.

The Architectural League is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization supported by the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. League programs are also made possible by contributions from foundations, corporations, and League members and friends.

For more information about League programs, visit www.archleague.org.

For information on architecture and sound, see interview with Karen Van Lengen: http://transition.turbulence.org/networked_music_review/2008/05/29/interview-karen-van-lengen/

From November 2005 - April 2006, the work was installed at a bus transit stop in Tempe, AZ located on the NW corner of the intersection of two major streets, Priest and Broadway.

MOTIVATING IDEAS: In conceiving this public work we have built upon the idea of the transit network as a metaphorical and practical sonic force. Topographically, the visual arrangement of speaker placement simulates a transit map that moves from a dense urban arrangement on the left, toward a widely spaced arrangement on the right. As sound moves across the wall, we have modeled the notion that transit paths will evolve and perhaps grow more sluggish with use. Thus, sound travels differently through each node of the network over time. This use of the network as a musical and visual presence, is intended to more broadly reference to role of networks in our lives. Transit networks physically link our communities, but networks of social, intellectual, and cultural connection span our world as well.

As this work is situated in the desert southwest, we also considered environmental issues in its conception. The propagation of sound across the surface of the wall simulates the way that the surface of water will ripple and expand when disturbed. In addition, all the electronics in this work are powered by a solar panel mounted above the work. The use of reusable energy is an important aspect of the work.

REALIZATION: At the heart of the piece is a 6′H x 10′W interactive wall that houses a network of sensors and sound producing elements. This wall is comprised of twenty-six modules that have the same basic design and function. There are two types of modules that, like in a real world transit network, serve as hubs or straight paths. Each module contains two proximity sensors, one light sensor, ten piezo speakers, and one microcontroller computer with supporting circuitry. Adjacent modules are connected to one another such that they form a fully connected network across the entire wall that allows sounds to wash across its surface.

This internal wall of sensor/speakers is enclosed on the back by a solid panel that keeps the elements out of sight and reach of the public. The wall is enclosed on the front side by a porous sheet of metal that provides protection and security, while allowing sound to easily emanate from the speakers, and providing visibility to the sensors and resonators embedded on the inner panels. The total depth of the structure is approximately 8 inches.

A large solar panel is mounted above the wall to generate electricity for the installation and provide protection from the elements. A battery is safely housed within the structure and is recharged by the solar panel to provide power to the electronics during the day and night. The structure is rooted in the ground behind the transit stop, facing, and in close proximity to the bench where transit users converge while waiting.

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.

Tuned City - Between Sound and Space Speculation is an exhibition and conference project planned for 1-6 July 2008 in Berlin which proposes a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic. The project draws the traditions of critical discussion about urban space within the architecture and urban planning discourse–as well as its strategies and working methods–into the context of sound art. This expanded discussion reinforces the potential of the spatial and communicative properties of sound as a tool and means of urban practice.

At the foundations of this event are artists’ works and theoretical approaches which examine in a critical and sensitive way the given urban and architectural situations alongside their resulting socio-political implications, that re-use existing spaces or that conceive and open new spaces.

A dialog will be built at the intersection of both disciplines which traces out the complex relations and interactions of space-sound, both presenting and testing new strategies, methods, possibilities and potentials of sound work within the artistic and applied context.

TOPICS:

The Built Space:
- examples that illustrate phenomena, problems or possibilities in the relation of sound and architecture
- usage of architecture as a space for sound and as an instrument

The Public Space:
- relation of sound and city
- situated sonic practices, site-specific sound awareness
- sound as a system of social communication, division and defense
- mobile sound

The Imaginary / Speculative Space:
- hearing-space - virtual acoustic spaces
- sound space in relation to human anatomy, memory and psyche
- mechanics and principles of translating sound into architecture and vice versa

PRODUCTION TEAM:

Carsten Stabenow
Gesine Pagels
Carsten Seiffarth
Derek Holzer
Anke Eckardt
Anne Kockelkorn

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. By bouncing the sound off surfaces, it seemed as if the sound could be coming from a window, door, elevator, or a poster on the wall. Most of the sounds seemed to belong to the site; others were slightly out of place, like the sound of a chandelier blowing in the wind.

I wanted it to be slight distortions to the regular soundscape of the passageway, and was pleased to see that the people who used this passageway regularly were noticing these disturbances. This could be described using the first of Barthes´ three listening modes: hearing involves “evaluation of the spatio-temporal situation“ and thus, it is linked to a “notion of territory“. It places the listener on alert when new sounds which don’t “fit in” are heard. By adding an extra layer of sound if also made people focus on the sounds which were already there.

For Soundpocket 2, HC Gilje set up an Internet radio station (using Nicecast), and played sounds from his library of field recordings. He found three locations in Oslo to serve as local radio stations. They were connected to visible cues: a huge oak tree, a small sculpture, and a small pond in the roundabout. The range of the local stations more or less corresponded to these visual cues: if you saw them you would be able to pick up the signal. Gilje used AAREFF FM transmitters placed with the three hosts, who allowed him to pick up their Internet radio streams. The result was three very local radio stations sending out a continuous soundtrack from other places, so somehow these recorded locations came in dialogue with the physical locations of the radio stations. The listening involved active participation from the public as you would need to tune in on your own radio to pick up the broadcast.

HC Gilje works with realtime environments, installations, live performance, set design and singlechannel video. Gilje has presented his work through different channels throughout the world: in concert-venues,theatre and cinema venues, galleries, festivals and through several international dvd releases, including 242.pilots live in Bruxelles on New York label Carpark and Cityscapes on Paris-label Lowave. He was a member of the video-impro trio 242.pilots, and was also the visual motor of kreutzerkompani. In october 2006 Gilje started a 3 year position as a research fellow at Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway, exploring how audiovisual technology can be used to transform, create, expand, amplify and interpret physical spaces. He blogs at Conversations with Spaces.

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.

The algorithm they follow is composed of a number of simple commands (left, right, forward, back, stop) and a metronome. It is rendered into sound and received on headphones. It tells the two microphone operators how to walk and provides the walking rhythm which structures their recordings. Both recorded soundtracks are later played back at the soundscape-installation, which consists of 30 loudspeakers ordered in a 5×6 matrix, placed on the floor approximately 2 meters from each other. The sounds “move” from speaker to speaker, reconstructing the paths of the microphone operators at the time of the recording.” [posted by Garrett on Network Research]

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. Taking as its theme the intersection of sound and the city, this seminar seeks to present theoretical, artistic and empirical accounts of the complex relationships between acoustics, sensory awareness and performance in the context of urban space, landscape and the built environment (historic and contemporary). But the concepts of ’sound’ and ‘the city’ are only intended to serve as departure points for more creative reflections on, or interventions into, this theme. A discussion of sound could well include an account of silence, just as a description of a city or urban space might well ask where the city ends and its other begins. Consequently, we expect an eclectic and illuminating discussion stemming from a variety of differing disciplines and backgrounds and forming previously unimagined connections.Confirmed speakers:

• Janet Cardiff (Installation artist, Berlin & New York)
  via videoconference
• Eric Clarke (Professor, Faculty of Music, University of Oxford)
  Various Realities: Sound, Music, and Ecological Theory
• Michael Bull (Media and Film, University of Sussex)
  Sounding Out Cosmopolitanism - Mobile Technologies and the migration of Difference
• Graham Jeffery (Institute for Performing Arts Development (IPAD), University of East London)
  Expanding the learning soundscape: notes from some interventions in urban arts education
• Juliana Hodkinson (Composer and arts writer, Copenhagen)
  Instrumentality and the urban instrumentarium: representation and agency in urban sound art
• Jacob Kreutzfeldt (Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen)
  Acoustic territoriality in a Japanese shopping area
• Robin Rimbaud/Scanner (Sound artist and composer, www.scannerdot.com)
  Imaginary Highways: Sound Polaroids in the City

A provisional programme can be downloaded HERE. [posted on Mediateletipos]

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).
For more info or to RSVP, please email info [at] pmgallery.ca.

Jessica Thompson is a new media artist whose practice encompasses sound, performance and mobile technologies. Her projects enable audience members to create user-defined spaces and situations within urban environments. Her work has been shown in exhibitions and festivals such as New Territories, (ARCO 2005, Madrid) MACO, (Mexico City) dp003, (Dundee, Scotland) ISEA 2006, (San Jose, CA) the 2006 Conflux Festival, (New York) Kunsthallen Brænderigården (Denmark) and InterAccess Artist Run Centre. (Toronto) Her project, SOUNDBIKE, was curated into Art Projects at Art Basel Miami Beach by Canadian curator, Natalie Kovacs, in 2005 and recently, she was one of five international artists invited to participate in Reinventing the Wheel, a residency held at *.artlabs in Sibiu, Romania.

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. Invited participants reflect in their work on the aesthetic, ethical and political dimensions of sound art projects and demonstrate the potential in using existing architectures in new ways or designing new spaces. Tuned City extends current discourses on urban development and planning from the perspective of artistic sound production.

On the weekend January 26, 2008 the project will present a 2-part preview of its work at clubtransmediale.08. At the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse on Saturday 26.1. international theorists from the fields of music and architecture will introduce various aspects of the project and outline the main issues to be addressed at the conference. On the following day, Sunday 27.1. sound performances preoccupied in unusual ways with the interrelation of architecture, urban space and sound will be presented in Maria am Ostbahnhof under the title Tuned Space.

(1) TUNED CITY - SYMPOSIUM

Date: 26.1.2008
Time: 12 - 19h
Venue: Ballhaus Naunynstrasse
Tickets: 5.- EUR

The lectures and presentations at this symposium introduce the different aspects of the topic and outline the key points of the planned conference. Sociologist Detlev Ipsen will open up the symposium with some basic thoughts on recent urban developments, followed by the philosophical position of Gernot Boehme defining space through the aesthetics of athmospheres. The architectural historian and theorist Ulrich Winko will give an introduction of the history of music and architecture and will hand over the topic of sound art to the writer and artist Brandon LaBelle. Coming from a critical sound and space discourse himself, LaBelle is going to question one of the pioneers and major figures of sound art, Max Neuhaus. Between the single lectures artists participating in the project in July 2008 will give short presentations of their work.

Lectures:
Prof. Dr. Detlev Ipsen (D)
“City - Mega-City - Urban Landscapes: Volatility of Sound?”

Prof. Dr. Gernot Boehme (D)
“Architecture and City Planning - and Acoustic Atmospheres”

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Winko (D)
“Of the Sound of Spaces - Architecture, Music and Sound Art in the 20th Century”

Brandon LaBelle (US)
“Sounding Spaces”

Max Neuhaus (US)
“Site-specific Sound Work” - Max Neuhaus in discussion with Brandon LaBelle

Project presentations:
Nik Hummer (A)
“Social Sound Systems”

Mark Bain (US/NL)
“Sonic Architecture”

Zimoun & Pe Lang (CH)
“Untitled Sound Objects”

Lola Landscape Architects & Geer-Jan Hobijn (NL/D)
“Composed City”

(2) TUNED SPACE - PERFORMANCES

Date: 27.1.2008
Time: 21h
Venue: Maria am Ostbahnhof
Tickets: 12.- EUR

For the Tuned Space program, artists from across the sound-art spectrum have been invited to make their own sonic investigations, deconstructions and provocations within the architectural space of the Maria club itself, taking the audience from the quiet minimal world of found objects and sounds through to the body- and building-crushing power of subsonic rumblings.

The UK’s Dallas Simpson will undertake a detailed and intimate binaural sonic investigation of the urban wasteland around the club, putting the audience directly inside the performer’s head via wireless microphones and headsets. Swedish field-recordist BJNilsen has teamed up with Icelandic cello player Hildur Gudnadottir to explore the minute architectural and structural resonances of the viola and cello instruments and their so-called Wolftones, played out over a multichannel speaker setup. Basque noise-aktionist Mattin declines to state the trajectory of his performance for the evening, as this anti-laptop Body & Linux performer prefers the element of surprise to any other. Daniel Menche, hailing from Portland Oregon, US, similarly involves his body in the production of an overwhelming sound which seeks the limits of both physical tolerance and structural restraint. And finally, Netherlands-based US expatriate Mark Bain will demonstrate his Vibrasonics system, a set of subsonic devices designed to inject sound waves into the foundations of a building, challenging our notions of architectural stability and perhaps even bringing the walls crashing down upon us.

sound performances by:
Dallas Simpson (UK)
BJNilsen & Hildur Gudnadottir (SE/IS)
Mattin (Basque Country)
Daniel Menche (US)
Mark Bain (US/NL)

Tuned City was conceived and 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 preview weekend was produced in cooperation with CTM.08.

Tuned City received generous funding from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds and Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung.

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. This medium informs the audience by visualizing the different aspects of the crowd that is otherwise anonymous to each other. The audience listens to a sound collage made of the voices of people telling where they are from and if they can go back or not. As users of the system, we hear words as they are explicitly spoken to the system. The information is used to create a visual representation (based on audio analysis) for designing visuals that display patterns of activity at these location.