From the interview:

Why did you choose to work with mosquitoes?

Male mosquitoes serenade potential mates with a ‘love song’ by vibrating their wings. They synchronize their wingbeats with those of the females to mate in mid-air. … The constant glissandi — gliding from one pitch to another — and ‘tuning in’ of mosquito wingbeats reminded me of dhrupad, an ancient form of Indian classical music often sung by brothers in unison. My collaborator Ali Momeni and I played male mosquitoes some dhrupad and, sure enough, they tuned in.

SoundTransit is a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography. Phonography is the art of recording sounds from the environment around us, with an emphasis on the unintentional sounds which often go unnoticed in our daily lives. An international community of phonographers collect and share their recordings, with interests ranging from recordings of natural or urban environments to improvised situations or soundwalks, to the resonance of solid objects or the Earth’s atmosphere.

In the BOOK section of this site, you can plan a sonic journey through various locations recorded around the world. In the SEARCH section, you can search the database for specific sounds by member artists from many different places. If you are a member of SoundTransit, you can also CONTRIBUTE your recordings for others to enjoy. The Creative Commons Attribution license encourages the sharing and reuse of all sounds on the website.

During 2010, SoundTransit’s previous host in the Netherlands quadrupled the rent for the SoundTransit server, forcing it to move or consider closing. Turbulence.org offered its support and during 2011 has been working together with SoundTransit to get everything up and running again

To listen to over 2,000 recordings by 471 artists from around the world, experience a unique way of traveling via sound, and to find out how you can contribute to the SoundTransit project, please visit http://turbulence.org/soundtransit/.

Helen Thorington
Jesse Gilbert
Jo-Anne Green
Turbulence.org

The Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology and World Listening Project continue their partnership with the National Park Service to present a concert by Chicago Phonography and a Miller Woods soundwalk at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore’s Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education. All ages, free and open to the public.

Explore the natural soundscape of Miller Woods trail with a soundwalk led by the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology. Enjoy a surprising concert of environmental sounds by Chicago Phonography, a collective of artists who gather audio recordings of Chicago and Gary soundscapes. Using a four-channel playback system, Chicago Phonography members collectively mix their recordings in live, improvisational performances. In a sense, Chicago Phonography substitutes microphones and field recordings for musical instruments to create new and dramatic soundscapes that surround and engage listeners in surprising ways—using only real world sounds. Chicago Phonography will host an “open mic” session for new members, and this performance will also feature sounds archived by the National Park Service—such as whale songs recorded in Glacier Bay, a dawn chorus of Isle Royale in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and forests of the Great Smoky Mountains.

http://www.nps.gov/
http://mwsae.org/
http://www.borderbend.org/chicago-calling.html

The sounds come from the star Procyon in Canis Minor. With the help of astrohysicist Daniel Huber, Talman has transposed the sounds so that we can hear them. The program is available on National Public Radio: hear Talman talk about his Bavarian forest sound installation, and listen to the sounds: here.

You can learn more at Talman’s website.

Artist-technologist Honor Harger listens to the weird and wonderful noises of stars and planets and pulsars. In her work, she tracks the radio waves emitted by ancient celestial objects and turns them into sound, including “the oldest song you will ever hear,” the sound of cosmic rays left over from the Big Bang. Related.

Sounds of Nature

In a rare, world-class opportunity, two of the best sound recordists in the world will team up to teach this workshop based at Earthfire Institute with its rescued wildlife. We will be going out into the pristine wilderness areas near Grand Teton National Park and surrounding areas around Teton Valley, Idaho. We will learn how to record the sounds of nature and understand nature in a totally new and deeper way. Bernie and Martyn will share the insights gained from a lifetime of recording in the wild – insights that will forever change your understanding of the natural world. This 4-day course will take place both indoors and in the field as we learn to listen and record with an emphasis on the holistic soundscape and what it reveals. After each field session we will exchange samples of our discoveries in enjoyable and informative formats. Weather permitting, participants will learn to record everything from insect larvae to amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and arthropods (ants) in areas surrounding the Tetons, hearing how all the voices in a particular habitat interact with one another. Please contact Linda at linda@earthfireinstitute.org for details and reservations.

Minimum required equipment: Digital stereo recorder; microphones and earphones.

Recommended reading: Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World by Bernie Krause.
Some quotes from Bernie’s writings:

“Seeing the natural world as a reserve of resources continually erodes an essential sense of being, thereby keeping the human psyche and spirit off-balance, afraid, angry, depressed and defensive (and selfish).”
“There is such precision and richness in the insect and frog orchestration, such a tight fit of creature voice harmonies.”

“To comprehend the relevance of birdsong, we must come to know the voices of insects, frogs, and mammals vocalizing at the same time and learn the myriad complex ways in which they all relate to one another. Otherwise the “facts” we have learned will not necessarily provide the insights we need. We can no longer separate creatures from the complex structure where they live and vocalize in and hope to learn very much about them.”

“We are just beginning to discover that the keys to our musical past and the origins of complex intraspecies connection are still found in the unbroken acoustic fabric of these wonderful places.”

“It seems that every change of altitude and every few hundred meters of travel results in a different sound, as each microhabitat generates its own sonic fingerprint.”

“When a bird sings or an amphibian or mammal vocalizes, the voices appear to fit in relation to all of the natural sounds of the immediate environment in terms of frequency and the rhythm patterns in which sound is delivered. The combination of creature voices is a “biophony”, the combined sound that whole groups of living organisms produce in any given biome . . . a complex and vital beauty emerges hearing the sounds in context with each other . . . the sounds of each of these zones are so singular and important to creature life in a given location that if one creature stops vocalizing, another immediately joins the chorus to keep the acoustical integrity of the habitats intact . . . “

Blue Morph is a site-specific interactive installation that uses nanoscale images and sounds derived from the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Harvestworks is pleased to present this art-science collaboration between media artist Victoria Vesna and nanoscientist James Gimzewski.

Nanotechnology explorations are changing our perceptions of life in the world around us and this is symbolized by the newfound reality of the Blue Morpho butterfly. With the use of advanced optics it is recognized that the beautiful blue color of this butterfly is not pigment at all but rather patterns formed by nano. Blue Morpho has intrigued scientists for generations because of its subtle optical engineering that manipulate photons in amazing ways. The lamellate structure of their wing scales has been studied as a nanoscale model for the development of fabrics, dye-free paints, and anti-counterfeit technology such as that used in currency.

The optics are no doubt fascinating but the real surprise is in the discovery of the way cellular change takes place in a butterfly. The amplified sounds reveal the process both to be halting and violent contradicting our imagination of a gradual peaceful metamorphosis. In reality the cellular transformation happens in sudden surges of activity interspersed with stillness and silence. One could relate these surges to the current ups and downs of the financial markets, the social upheavals around the globe as well as the environmental bursts of earthquakes, floods and fires.

There are eight pumps or “hearts” that maintain a constant beat throughout the metamorphosis creating a pumping rhythm in the background. During the transformation through emergence each flattened cell of the wing becomes a nanophotonic structure of black protein and free space leading to iridescence. Thus the vibrations of change precede the visual and material manifestations.

Nano is not only making the invisible visible but also changing our way of relating to “silence” or making the in-audible audible. With all the noise of chattering technologies and minds, Victoria Vesna and Gimzewski propose the interactivity to be stillness. In this empty space of nano we can get in touch with the magic of continuous change and learn how to accept our own bursts of metamorphosis.

Victoria Vesna is a professor of design | media arts at UCLA and visiting professor at Parsons NS. James Gimzewski is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA, and the faculty director of the Nano & Pico Characterization core lab at CNSI. The two lead the UCLA Art | Sci Center, a collaboration between CNSI and the department of Design | Media arts that is exploring the intersections between art and science.

This version of the installation would not be possible without the generous support of the Bermant foundation and the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI) in collaboration with Harvestworks.

Surround sound and interactivity: Paul Geluso. Installation design and coordination: Aliki Potiris. Head piece: Silvia Rigon. Interactive seat: Romie Littrell. Sound processing: Gil Kuno. Danaus plexippus chrysalis recording: Andrew Pelling and Paul WilkinsonButterfly wing imaging: Butterfly wing imaging: Marc Castagna, Senior Application Engineer, SEM operator. Thanks to Don Kania, CEO of FEI Corp. for permission to use the Scanning Electron Microscope. Morpho peleides and Danaus plexippus wings and pupa provided by Dr. Richard Stringer Department of Math, Science and Allied Health, Harrisburg Area Community College.

http://www.harvestworks.org or http://www.nyeaf.org with the latest news and schedule updates.

World premiere of an 80 channel immersive concert based on a decade of natural sounds recorded in the world’s rain forests.

Rainforests are inhabited by an incredibly rich variety of sounds—much like a piece of electronic music: the astonishing variety of sounds comes from sources that are concrete yet overwhelmingly invisible.

Hyper-Rainforest is a monumental sound piece, both in duration and in how the sounds are projected to the Concert Hall. All music in this performance stems from field recordings—but it does not simulate the natural reality of the original locations. Instead, the work creates a sonic hyper-reality, a virtual world of sound and music that goes beyond a trip to a rainforest. The original materials are observed, analyzed, and composed to create a piece that surrounds the audience, moving deep into the sounds themselves and toward new sounds still rooted in their origins.

This world premiere commission was developed in residence at EMPAC.

Francisco López is an internationally recognized sound art and experimental music artist. He has 30 years of experience in sound creation and environmental recordings, and has been involved in hundreds of sound installations, field recordings, and concerts in over 60 countries. His extensive catalogue of sound pieces (with collaborations with more than 130 international artists) has been published worldwide by more than 200 recording companies. He has received three honorary mentions at the Ars Electronica Festival (Austria) and is the recipient of the Qwartz Award 2010 (France) for best sound anthology.

+ Website: http://www.franciscolopez.net/
+ Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_López_(musician)

Evelyn’s Café will open at 7 PM. Parking for this event is available in the Rensselaer parking lot on College Avenue.
Additional event information can be found on the EMPAC website: http://www.empac.rpi.edu/. Questions? Call the EMPAC Box Office: 518.276.3921.