FINE COLLECTION OF CURIOUS SOUND OBJECTS from Georg Reil on Vimeo.

With thanks to Catie Vaucelle at Architectradure.

Canadian design student Geof Ramsay has invented a MP3 player for unborn babies - the “BLABY”. By wearing the device, pregnant mothers will be able to play their favourite music to their children. The player consists of a contoured belt that wraps around a mother’s waist with three inbuilt vibration speakers playing music into the womb. Its inbuilt speakers transmit the vibrations of music and voice through to the baby in a safe manner, and the mother wearing it can also benefit from three tiny massage mechanisms.

To run the client software properly you need to have Java installed and a Standard MIDI Synthesizer. The Public Sound Objects Software is Open Source under a GPL Licence. Source code can be downloaded. A video essay can be found here.

The project was created by Álvaro Barbosa during his visiting research period at the Music Technology Group (MTG) in Barcelona. The Music Technology Group (MTG) of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona, part of its Department of Information and Communication Technologies and of its Audiovisual Institute, is specialized in sound and music computing. With more than 40 researchers coming from different and complementary disciplines, the MTG carries out research on topics such as sound processing and synthesis; music content description; interactive music systems; computational models of perceptual and music cognition; and the technologies related with music social networks.

The latter has been used in two live performances by the Sicilian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima. Using the sequencer Sollima is able to record audio or voice samples and organize them in variable length loops. These samples are associated with physical objects (a few simple blocks of wood) while the interface is an interactive surface bounded by a sheet of paper. Moving the blocks of wood on paper (each of which is labeled with specific signs), the musician is able to “play” his own instrument (the cello for Sollima), without a monitor: the orientation is determined by the position of the object on the sheet. A standard computer “watches” the position of objects with a webcam while the d-touch vision system (entirely coded in C++ under Linux) is able to localize them precisely. The information about the position and orientation of blocks of wood is used to control a digital audio synthesis, thus, ultimately, to give voice to a musical instrument or a virtual singer. In live performances a closer shooting of the interface is projected on the screen behind the artist, allowing the audience to share the performer’s interaction with the odd objects designed by Costanza. Another interesting element is the use of extremely cheap components, which characterize the Physical Sequencer performances to a greater extent. — Vito Campanelli, Neural. Video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEW2g4vNK7Y

The Cubes à sons / bruits / babils (Sonic Cubes) are pleasant-to-touch wooden objects containing a multitude of sounds and composing together an acoustic vocabulary. By holding them in your hand and turning them in all directions, you discover their contents and, in the course of manipulating them, unexpected and unpredictable associations and entanglements occur that you can model as you wish. Sighing, coughing, sneezing, leaves rustling, thunder, car humming, water gurgling in metal pipes, door banging — brief and fleeting stories thus unfold and fold, each time reinvented, starting from a tactile, visual and sound object. Each cube contains an electronic device having six independent channels — on per side — of digitally amplified sound memory and an accelerometer that reads its position. Wireless and energetically self-sufficient, the cubes are multifaceted and multichannel objects that allow for omnidirectional, unidirectional or pluridirectional spatializations.

Visitors are invited to explore and engage with this environment by manipulating the cubes distributed in the space. The order or disorder in which the visitor experiments with these sound objects create individual / collective, linear / non-linear sound paths that constantly enrich one another.

The Sonic Cubes are an exploration in miniature of the world’s immensity and address notions such as inside / outside, open / close. They speak of a memory that forgets, remembers and imagines, and of being here now.

Catherine Béchard and Sabin Hudon form a duo of multidisciplinary artists who live and work in Montreal. Working in the fields of sculpture, audio art and new media, the duo is particularly interested in phenomena linked to acoustically generated sounds/noises, their propagations, the impressions they give as well as the “things” and “empty spaces between things” that compose our perceptual fields. In piling up fleeting tensions between sight, touch and hearing, they endeavour to make audible trivial elements of our everyday microcosm and turn them into a genuine environmental experiment. They seek to occupy space by creating a form of synesthesia—seeing with one’s ears, listening with one’s hands and projecting oneself in a space-time between silence and noise, motion and stillness.

The duo’s installations put into perspective the impermanence and mobility of things as well as our direct presence in the world. They propose a lasting moment where internal time and external time are brought together.

Their work has been shown nationally and internationally.

This installation is based on a program which analyzes, in a given place, the frequencies that makes the objects and elements it contains entering in vibration. This first phase is realized by the broadcasting in the place of a test sound signal that is simultaneously recorded and analyzed. Every frequency producing an activation of the whole or any part of the place is registered. In a second phase, the listed frequencies are used as a composition material which is activating the various present elements (structures and objects) according to a complex and changeable temporal organization.

CORPUS #3 (LEDOUX CORPS) from art of failure on Vimeo.

CORPUS#1 2007 from art of failure on Vimeo.

Nicolas Maigret, has been developing an experimental practice of sound and electronic images (performances, installations, programming, radio) since 2001. Researcher between art and science, his work takes the shape of a laboratory, decomposing technological tools to generate specific sonic or visual language from them. He tends to place audience in the situation of psychic and physical experience. Ex-member of the laboratory Locus-Sonus, he teaches the Intermedia at the fine arts School of Bordeaux at present.

Nicolas Montgermont, researcher and artist, studies the relations between art and sciences using the computer as a workshop. After a formation in signal processing, he studies sciences applied to music at the IRCAM center, being specially focused on real time control of synthesis. Currently, he carries out a PhD thesis on the analysis of the flutist playing at the Laboratory of Musical Acoustics (LAM) in Paris. His creating work is the search of a numerical aesthetics, using and developing personal tools to explore the specific possibilities of a computer. He works mainly on performances with the chdh collective and on installations in duo with Nicolas Maigret (Festival du Cube (Issy les Moulineaux), Nuit Bleue (Arc et Senans), Elektricity (Reims), Pixelache (Helsinki, FI), Scopitone (Nantes), NIME (Paris), Kassel DokFest (Kassel, DE), vision’R (Paris), simultan 03 (Timisoara, RO).

When the papers are folded along the crease lines, a circuit is closed and a sound is emitted. Each fold is assigned to a different human vocal sound so that combinations of folds create harmonies. Users have to bend multiple Fold Loud sheets together to produce a chorus of voices. But in order to generate a harmonic sound, users need to carefully fold and repeat their gestures, focusing on a slow and patient process. Adding sound to the origami practise, Joo Youn Paek explores the potential of electronic music production outside of the machine dependency paradigm, taking it back to a more organic environment. As she says, “Fold Loud invites users to slow down and reflect on different physical senses by crafting paper into both geometric origami objects and harmonic music”. There is a Taoist principle in which it is suggested that the differences among things are only apparent. Origami can be thought of in this way “the creative act both shapes the object and the idea. Similarly, both are subject to deterioration, as with everything in nature. It is thought that the act of reproducing the world through paper folding encourages comprehension and enlightenment” a notion associated with Zen illumination. — Valentina Culatti, Neural.

Different objects, manufactured and natural, through their molecular structures, or their shapes or the resonant properties of their volumes, provide an infinite variety of sounds which can be delightful to those who have developed a taste for them. Gesner and Johnson will play solos that exploit these materials; sandwiched between the solos will be a duet .

It is no longer novel to listen to non-musical sounds as music. Different objects, manufactured and natural, through their molecular structures, or their shapes or the resonant properties of their volumes, provide an infinite variety of sounds which can be delightful to those who have developed a taste for them. Gesner and Johnson will play solos that exploit these materials; sandwiched between the solos will be a duet .

(SURformalism, ((INSTRUMENTISM), Lower Consciousness) examples; Eleven Brick-Flip Compositions Lewis Gesner

This solo performance gives examples that are derives from three principles I developed and continue to refine as performance guidelines. The words of the title have specific unique meanings within a system. SURformalism is a principle in which a vacuum is ideally generated- form and concept supersede material and action- action and material are open and subject to circumstance and setting at performing- open to infusion- rather than performing directed outward. This confronts issues of relevance in terms of performing language and subjective content- in structure, content becomes as matter, and, an INSTRUMENTISM method of actions and choice continue the open channel principle- for the invitation to local infusions. The motivation of SURformalism is a drive toward a universality and complete adaptability of all parts of the performing process, from inception to preparation and to “performing”- with a special emphasis on the broader envelop of performing, inclusive of all of these, as the body of performing. INSTRUMENTISM involves materials as they lend themselves best to use as “instrument”, circumstance, and act- all consider equally and evenly distributable to fulfill any required aspect of a “composition”, be it previous composed, or spontaneously rendered. Lower Consciousness is a term referring to the state best applied to explore the simple principle of INSTRUMENTISM. Lower Consciousness is being in the moment, with materials present- acting on them in a way without reference to previous knowledge, memory, or predetermined desire for a result. The eleven compositions here ( eleven, pointing to one more, or one less- so, suggesting movement- like the lines going to the edge of the canvas on a Mondrian painting- continue off the canvas- the brick-flips- are previously composed graphic plans- this seeming inconsistency with Lower Consciousness is allayed by my desire to give examples that are ideal- of my principles- so, they are an artifact- of the performing, which was the act of their writing.

Duet- using fabricated raw material- which could be applied to many uses- I further explore with INSTRUMENTISM- which is in conjunction with Lawrence Johnson’s use of objects at the same time, sharing the space- and, interacting- while my method will be specific, it is consistent and sensitive to Lawrence’s use of materials and objects- and, responsive to it. I will work with predetermined sets of material- in a non-returning series. This will give my end or side of the performance a sequence from beginning to end, and a relatively fixed set of sounds to which Lawrence may or may not choose to respond.

Lapis: solo by Johnson. A phallic stone and a Victrola-like horn from a nineteenth century scientific device provide the means for various evocations. What does each object or material wish to say?

This upcoming performance of Gang Clan Mafia unravels over 1,440 minutes. Performance actions become sonic rhythms; soundscapes dictate the flow of video information; sound becomes objects which inform the actions that transform the physical, sonic, and psychic space of the location.

Gang Clan Mafia creates improvised, live sound. It is a sound collage, landscape, journey and conversation. Video, installation, and performance actions are used as a visual Transportation Pod.

Gang Clan Mafia is:
Vela Phelan (turntable, knobs, mic, tapes, etc.) and Dirk Adams (found sound, constructed sound, mic, effects) and occasional collaborators.

Contact GCM : vela@templeofmessages.com / mrdirky@yahoo.com

Mobius, founded by Marilyn Arsem in 1977, is known for incorporating a wide range of the visual, performing, and media arts into innovative live performance, video, installation and intermedia works. Mobius has produced hundreds of original works that have attained critical acclaim in Boston, nationally and internationally. Works created at Mobius have been presented throughout the North and South America, Europe and Asia.

Mobius has long been committed to creating artist exchange projects bringing artists from different geographic regions to work together. The international exchange projects with artists from Macedonia, Croatia, Poland, and Taiwan have focused on site-specific and publicly-sited work. Mobius has presented work involving thousands of artists over its 30-year history and is recognized as one of the seminal alternative, artist-run organizations in the U.S.