The Invisible Bell Tower – Open air by Hans Tutschku :: Eglise du Gesù Church, 1202 de Bleury Street, Montréal, Québec.

The first Bell Tower is a general installation for people on the street. In the north tower of the Eglise du Gesù church, loudspeakers will diffuse the sound of the bell chimes every hour. Installing an invisible bell tower where there usually is none arouses the curiosity of the people walking by on two levels. First, they notice “bells” that they have never heard before. And, a few days later, they discover that there are not only « new bells » but also a plethora of sounds from far-away cultures.

At all times, bells have been used at special occasions (religious holidays, fire, mourning, …). Bells are part of the special soundscape of cities and expressions of their diverse cultures. This installation presents recordings of a wide range of different cultures that have been captured all around the world. The installation outside the church aims at creating a bridge to other places, including all the questions connected to the encounter with foreign lands and the unfamiliar. Continue reading

Variable 4 by James Bulley and Daniel Jones :: May 22-23, 2010; noon-noon :: Dungeness, Kent, TN29 9ND.

Since the earliest civilizations, a complex relationship has existed between human society and the weather systems that define the world around us. We make sense of seasonal cycles through rituals and folklore, passing down ways of harnessing the natural elements whilst constructing defenses against those which threaten our existence.

Variable 4 transforms these weather patterns into a living musical composition with the same unpredictability as the elements themselves. Using meteorological sensors connected to a custom software environment developed by the artists, the wild weather conditions of the Kent coastland act as composer, navigating through a map of 24 specifically written movements. Every aspect of the piece, from broad harmonic progressions down to individual notes and timbres, is influenced by changes in the environment: wind speed, rainfall, solar radiation, humidity, tropospheric variance, temperature, and more. Continue reading

Turbulence.org Presents Two World-Premiers at Issue Project Room: The Occupants by Stephan Moore + Moments of Inertia by R. Luke Dubois, with Todd Reynolds :: April 9, 2010; 8:00 pm :: Issue Project Room, At the Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, NY :: Admission: $10 — Tickets.

The Occupants — by Stephan Moore — is a generative composition with some aspects that can be influenced through single- or multi-user interaction. Moore has used the piece to search for answers to both profound and insipid questions, such as: What does it mean to compose a “site-specific” composition when the site is the internet? Can a generative algorithm be imparted with a sense of long-term form that is also not pre-determined? How successfully can humans be programmed to be good collaborators with software algorithms, towards the latters’ goals? Continue reading

Adam Nash is a new media artist, composer, programmer, performer and writer. He works primarily in networked real-time 3D spaces, exploring them as live audiovisual performance spaces. His sound/composition and performance background strongly informs his approach to creating works for virtual environments, embracing sound, time and the user as elements equal in importance to vision. Adam’s work has been presented in galleries, festivals and online in Australia, Europe, Asia and the Americas, including SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Venice Biennale. He also works as composer and sound artist with “Company in Space” (AU) and “Igloo” (UK), exploring the integration of motion capture into real-time 3D audiovisual spaces. He is currently undertaking a Master of Arts by Research at the “Centre for Animation and Interactive Media” at RMIT University, Melbourne, researching multi-user 3D cyberspace as a live performance medium; and he’s a Lecturer in “Computer Games and Digital Art” in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University. Continue reading

AC [Institute Direct Chapel] presents Tone and Temperament :: June 18 – July 18, 2009 :: Opening: June 18; 6:00 – 8:00 pm :: AC [Institute Direct Chapel], 547 W. 27th St, 5th Floor, #519-529, New York, NY.

Tone and Temperament is a group-exhibition that considers the temporal and expandable material of sound. Curated by Sophie Landres and in collaboration with the eight participating artists, this exhibition concentrates on sound as a condition for personal, social, political and metaphysical experience. In addition to the permanent fixtures in the gallery, performances will be scheduled to occur throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Tone and Temperament was conceived as an opportunity to explore literal and conceptual ideas of harmony versus discordance and innocence versus criminality that subsist within the framework of conflicting social norms and art historical precedents. Continue reading

Under Voices: Les Voix de la Tour Eiffel — by China Blue — is a CD compilation of sound pieces based on actual vibrations and binaural recordings of the Eiffel Tower. In addition to 8 songs, there is a limited and signed edition thumb drive that includes 23 sound files for you to play with. You can make something and submit it for possible inclusion on the next CD. The thumb drive is presented in a cool steel box that can also hold 5 CDs. You can listen to samples here.

The organization in charge of running the Tower gave us access to the monument to document it’s ambient acoustics and vibrations – the intrinsic sounds of 7300 tons of 2,500,000 rivets and 18,038 pieces of steel moving in the wind and in response to environmental changes, as well as the sonic environment of the 30,000 people who visit it daily as they move from the ground to the pinnacle. Continue reading

FILTER and ONOMATOPEE at P40 in Hamburg present Shotgun Architecture at P40 — A sound and light installation by Justin Bennett :: until 11th of January 2009 :: Alte Pathologie/P40, Friedrichsberger Strasse 32, D-Hamburg.

Can one make sound visible? What happens to our thought processes and emotional perception when sound and its movement is performed or even manipulated in space? Mapping urban space and its architecture through the sound of a gunshot, the method Justin Bennett is currently using, entails numerous domains of expression.

P40 is a turn of the century building with an ornamental red brick facade, a cupola roof and spaces with high ceilings. Built as pathology department for the Eilbek hospital until its privatization, the space has been used and redefined for different purposes over the last decade. Bennett analyzed this piece of architecture with a gunshot and recorded its echoes. Continue reading

LAb[au] presents Binary Waves :: November 28 – 29, 2008; 2:00 – 10:00 pm :: Opening: November 27, 6:00 -9:00 pm :: Gesu Church, Rue Royale 165 Koningstraat, Brussels, Belgium.

Binary Waves is an urban and cybernetic installation based on the measuring of flows and their transposition into luminous, sonic and kinetic rules. The installation is constituted by a network of rotating and luminous panels of 3 meter-high and 60 centimetres wide, forming a kinetic wall. Their rotation is controlled by microprocessors, allowing to determine precisely the rotation speed and angle, while their networking allows to synchronise the movement of the panels. The microprocessors are connected to infrared sensors, capturing the movement of passer-by’s. Continue reading

OSRAM Art Projects presents SEVEN SCREENS – Bjørn Melhus’ Screensavers – an Interactive Multimedia Installation on LED Screens :: until April 22, 2009 :: OSRAM Haus, Hellabrunner Straße 1, 81543 München, Germany.

Screensavers is the name the internationally acclaimed media artist Bjørn Melhus has given his digital clones. With his sound reactive computer animations, whose images and texts are generated from an actual radio program, the artist renders the everyday language of mass media visible. Continue reading

TINA B – The Prague Contemporary Art Festival presents Stefano Cagol: Un-Secret Signals :: October 9-13, 2008 :: Janovského 23, Prague 7, Czech Republic.

Mass communication and Babilonia. Fragmented communication and freedom of expression. Secrecy and disclosure. Locked and open. Black and white. Morse Code and Light. Hallucinatory flashes of light from the top of the Petrin Tower in Prague illuminate and disorient the nocturnal cityscape of this historical and fascinating place. Sound sequences play intermittently night and day, concurrently accompanying light signals that simultaneously spell out cryptic messages in Morse Code. Continue reading