ChordPunch is a record label dedicated to algorithmic music: sound generated by or inspired by automated processes. Continue reading

Transcripts are now available for Radio MACBA’s Composing with Process: Perspectives on Generative Systems Music (the podcast series by Mark Fell and Joe Gilmore on generative approaches to composition and performance):

Transcript episode #1.1. Continue :: Transcript episode #2.1. Systems :: Transcript episode #3.1. Determinacy and indeterminacy :: Transcript episode #4.1. Time :: Transcript episode #51. Duration

Generative music is a term used to describe music which has been composed using a set of rules or system. Continue reading

Artists!

The US Congress is about to pass an internet censorship bill written by the copyright and corporate music and film lobbies, claiming that this bill is written in your name to “protect creativity.” The law would allow the government or corporations to censor entire sites — they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

In fact, PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are backed and largely written by the Hollywood film industry, namely the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is trying to sell goods and ideas that are already free. Continue reading

Researchers link patterns seen in spider silk, melodies:: a December article in Physorg.com by Denise Brehm

Graphic: Christine Daniloff

Using a new mathematical methodology, researchers at MIT have created a scientifically rigorous analogy that shows the similarities between the physical structure of spider silk and the sonic structure of a melody, proving that the structure of each relates to its function in an equivalent way.

The step-by-step comparison begins with the primary building blocks of each item — an amino acid and a sound wave — and moves up to the level of a beta sheet nanocomposite (the secondary structure of a protein consisting of repeated hierarchical patterns) and a musical riff (a repeated pattern of notes or chords). The study explains that structural patterns are directly related to the functional properties of lightweight strength in the spider silk and, in the riff, sonic tension that creates an emotional response in the listener. Continue reading

After a 10 month hiatus the SoundTransit project is back, hosted by Turbulence.org.

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. Continue reading

From eastbayexpress.com: The Fall of Pirate Cat Radio by David Downs.

The Bay Area’s biggest pirate radio station is off the air, fined $10,000 for illegal broadcast, and its owner threatened with arrest if he returns. But Pirate Cat Radio isn’t going quietly into the night.

Not only is the thirteen-year-old San Francisco station still quasi-legally streaming to half a million listeners online per month, but the 1,200-watt station formerly broadcasting at 87.9 FM is fighting the Federal Communications Commission in federal court. While the station is raising funds to pay its fine with local events this month, it has joined a historic battle under way in Washington, DC over local control of the airwaves. Station owner Monkey (aka Daniel Roberts) says terrestrial radio has failed to serve the public interest, and Pirate Cat is fighting for consumer rights alongside pirates and politicians across America. Read more here .

Maryanne Amacher (1943-2009)

[From: Post Classic, Kyle Gann on Music After the Fact at www.artsjournal.com]

The music world lost one of its most bizarre characters today, and I say that with the utmost affection. Maryanne Amacher was an amazing composer of sound installations, who occasionally taught courses at Bard. I first encountered her in 1980 at New Music America in Minneapolis. She had, as was her wont, fitted an entire house with loudspeakers, and the staff was in a state of jitters because at opening time she was still obsessively running around and changing things. She was a tireless perfectionist. Continue reading

Birdcage and The Invisible Generation present News for Tomorrow by Yan Jun — curated by: Daniele Balit :: October 9 – November 13, 2009 :: Beijing Youth Weekly, 8A, Julong Garden, Xinzhongjie, Beijing.

News For Tomorrow is a commissioned piece by Beijing-based artist Yan Jun for the Birdcage itinerant sound gallery. The artist picked one of the desks in the editorial office of Beijing Youth Weekly and placed recording devices, mp3 players and cassette walkman in it. The devices either reproduce the interview recordings of the magazine’s editorial staff, or record the soundscape of the office, which will be simultaneously played and processed in real time through headphones while creating feedback noise. Continue reading

The British Library has made 23,700 rare music and sound recordings from its massive collection, reputed to be one of the largest sound archives in the world, available for free online.

The Library announced that 2,000 hours of material — just a fraction of its entire catalogue of sound — are now available on its website. The material represents everything from children’s skipping songs to rare recordings of Ugandan royal musicians, who stopped performing in 1966 when the country’s king was exiled. Continue reading

The Edith Russ Site for Media Art awards work stipends has awarded a 2009 stipend to The Sine Wave Orchestra (Ken Furudate, Kazuhiro Jo, Daisuke Ishida, Mizuki Noguchi)

The fundamentals of our networked, global and technological culture and our resulting means of interaction are connected by the sine wave. We dance to them on our mp3 players, watch TV because of them and surf their peaks and troughs while making long distance phone calls. Sine waves form an ethereal and omnipresent framework, which become the tactile material the SINE WAVE ORCHESTRA (SWO) sculpts and manipulates through unique participatory sound events. Continue reading