Audio-Prosthesis

The Panasonic Emotions Testing Line, by “nomadic” development designer JIŘÍ ČERNICKÝ, is a conceptual SD audio-prosthesis that aims to grasp the issue of the emotional deficits in society.

The device is a substitute, personal container for the emotions of users who are not able, or do not want, to experience life through their own emotional perceptions. It looks like a Walkman-type device with headphones that does not play music inside, but rather outside, of the head. The device facilitates the user’s emotional communication with the world around him. It is not designed for his/her personal use only but is equipped with a tiny amplifier.
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Two New Commissioned Audio Works

Concert, June 30, 2006, 8:00 p.m.: A live stream of the June 30th concert is available at this link under SPIKED.

Guy van Belle (Bratislava): “slashtops”: The concert program “slashtops” consists of real time manipulations with sound transforming light to sound and sound to light in three parts to investigate the relationship between sound and image, audio art and the visual, a persistent tension in the arts for generations. The first part of the program is a trilogy of arrangements between synthetic and real sounds the source material and inspiration based on recordings made in Quebec based on the movement of the artbots that comprise ‘thoughts go by air’. A second source of audio content comes from Munich based on sounds from the city environment and a third from Bratislava, around Zlaty Piesky (an industrial – recreational – commercial area). The second component of the program is based on a translation of light into sound using the computer as an instrument. The third part of the program is a concert version of the installation TICS, which is a translation of light into sound and back to light, with a score based on the novel ‘istanbul’ by the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (2006).
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Talent-Spotting in Virtual Worlds

“…At Radio 1 we want to bring a new level of social interaction to our virtual broadcasts. We are hoping that the bands featured on-air will have their own custom-built avatars, playing in the virtual world. So if we have the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing a gig, visitors to a Radio 1 virtual space will see avatars of Anthony Kiedis and Flea, mimicking the action in the real world.

We also believe it is crucial that the virtual audience can interact with the event. It is about replicating the “liveness” of an event, not just broadcasting it. Additionally, Radio 1 wants to find ways of allowing the audience in these worlds to actually affect the real event. I see no reason why they cannot be asking their musical heroes questions, alongside virtual Radio 1 DJs, either via Instant Messenger or VoIP. This deeper social interaction, that mirrors real world events, would do much to enhance the ripples that resonate around digital communities.” From Talent-spotting in virtual worlds by Daniel Heaf, BBC.com.

Past Remixed with Present

“Our experience of reality is strongly dependent on the synchronicity of our senses. We must, for instance, hear or touch what we see while we see it, in order to be able to determine reality and in order to decide what to do or how to react. The decoupling in time of sight and sound – like when we first see the lightning and then hear the thunder – can create a disturbing irritation when it affects our immediate surroundings: imagine that you would only hear the cars passing you on the street after they have already past, or that you hear conversations which were held minutes ago in a different location from where you are.

Sonic Interface experiments with human perception by amplifying and manipulating the synchronicity of auditory environment. Equipped with a portable hearing device made of a computer and headphones, the user is invited to walk around the city’s public spaces such as squares, shopping malls, and underground stations. The random urban sounds that he hears are first transmitted to the headphones without modification, but then the computer programme begins to create an artificial sonic environment from the sounds that it picks up.
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PHOTOGRAPHING ACOUSTIC SPACES

“The American Loren Chasse is one of the most important international artists working in the areas of environment and sound. His ability to listen and to transform an object into “musical instrument” is the most identifying feature of his work.

If field recordings are more and more common in “experimental” music, then Loren Chasse does not only have a different way of using sound, but he manages to “photograph” with his microphone the acoustic spaces in which he works.

Chasse shifts the traditional frontier of art by blurring the differences between music and sound art, if it can even be assumed that they exist. Beyond his activities as a musician and his several collaborations, he is a teacher in the San Francisco School District where he organizes workshops on skilled and creative listening.” From INTERVIEW: LOREN CHASSE, PHOTOGRAPHING ACOUSTIC SPACES by Luca Bergero. This text is republished in collaboration with Digicult.it. It was released on March 2006, and has been edited for republication on newmediaFIX.

Geo-tagged musical graffiti

Chia Ying Lee’s Sonic Graffiti invites urban artists to collaborate and create music together, while allowing the passersby to enjoy it as well. A system of devices enables graffiti artists to create and geo-tag music in the urban space with real spray cans:

– The sound cap has to be snapped on the top of spray cans to spray out sounds and do simple sound manipulations with gestures. Users create music by overlaying/remixing various paint/sounds from the caps. Each cap can store up to 4 sounds in its memory card. They can be loaded from computers or portable devices like iPod, mobile phone, etc. Gestures to manipulate sound include fade in/out and scratch. Several artists spraying at the same time can create a sound composition.
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A Monument to South African Youth

On 16 June 2006, South Africa celebrates the 30th anniversary of Youth Day. The act of remembrance is shaped by a multitude of senses ranging from sight, sound, physical touch and smell. This year Gallery MOMO invites you to join us in commemorating Youth Day through the experience of sound. Nathaniel Stern, João Orecchia, Shane de Lange, Johan Thom and Dinkies Sithole will work together to create a Memento – a sound sculpture to commemorate Youth Day. At 16:00, one hour performance, drinks served. 52 7th Ave, Parktown North, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The artists will draw from their own, particular experience of life in contemporary South Africa to formulate a personal, aural response to the celebration of Youth Day. For example, both Shane de Lange and Nathaniel Stern are best known as artists working with digital media to create art: de Lange creates experimental sound by appropriating and sampling sounds from various sources including music, the body and even the sounds of a paper bag; Stern is known as a new media artist who uses interactive digital technology, often drawing the viewer and the artwork together in a new interactive, symbiotic whole.
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Ziptease

Zipper Orchestra is an interactive video installation that combines the Conductor Musical Score as a physical controller and the Zipper Actions Collage Video as musical display.

The screen is filled with 9 video clips from different people zipping and unzipping their clothes. By moving 9 physical sub zippers and 1 main zipper attached in a canvas, users can control the individual zipper motion in the screen as a conductor. The main long zipper will control 9 motions all together. As the audience zips and unzips zippers on the musical score different pitch of string instrument come out from the speaker.

A work by Joo Youn Paek (who also made the polite umbrella!), in collaboration with Gabe Barcia-Colombo (sound design) and Leif Mangelsen (software tech). [blogged by Regine on we-make-money-not-art]

You Make It

Jeppe Hein’s Invisible Maze installation is just what its title says: invisible. The promised maze is there but it only materialises as we move around in it. Visitors are equipped with digital headphones operated by infrared rays that cause them to vibrate every time they bump into one of the maze’s virtual walls. Thus, the exhibition is perceived as a both minimalist and a spectacular playground. The maze structure spans six different variants, all of them referring to labyrinths from our common cultural history. From the medieval labyrinth in Chartres to Stanley Kubrick’s fateful dead end from the film The Shining to Pac-Man. The maze changes from day to day, inviting visitors to make repeat visits.

Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen will present Jeppe Hein: Invisible Maze 10 June – 27 August 2006. The exhibition represents a further development of the exhibition Invisible Labyrinth which attracted 50,000 visitors during its two-month run at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris last year. Via Art Daily. Thanks Joshua. Other work by Jeppe Hein: Distance.
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