Artists Mendi and Keith Obadike describe the Stereo Helix for Sally Hemings, part of their American Cypher project, as a sonic drawing created for the lobby of the ELC. The primary sound source for this work is a small antique bell that belonged to Sally Hemings, given to her by Martha Jefferson (her half-sister and Thomas Jefferson’s wife).

This sound recording has been manipulated in order to derive multiple textures, pitches, colors, and effects from this source. The bell sounds have been mixed in the installation in real-time with ambient field recordings from Jefferson’s Monticello plantation. The sound plays from moving speakers in the stairwell, emitting an extremely narrow beam of sound in a spiraling double helix-like pattern. This project uses the genetic code of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson as a musical score input into custom software to generate an original evolving soundscape.

Mendi and Keith Obadike are interdisciplinary artists whose music, live art, and conceptual Internet artworks have been exhibited internationally. Their album The Sour Thunder was released on Bridge Records. Their work generated much discussion online and offline when they offered Keith’s blackness for sale on eBay in 2001. In 2002 Mendi and Keith premiered their Internet opera The Sour Thunder, which was the first new media work commissioned by the Yale Cabaret and they launched The Interaction of Coloreds (commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art). Keith received a BA in Art from North Carolina Central University and an MFA in Sound Design from Yale University. Mendi received a BA in English from Spelman College and a PhD in Literature from Duke University.

The sonic environment is an indicator for the quality of life: One crucial aspect, however, remains open and leads to a multitude of questions: Is this, what our hearing is exposed to, satisfying and enhancing our individual, social, functional, biological, economical, aesthetic and existential needs and endeavors? If not, which concepts exist to “orchestrate” everyday life’s cacophony? Which methods exist to successfully evaluate the quality of soundscapes? Which criteria and values have to be developed, which practical constraints and habits to be dismissed in order to design the everyday as a “Hörenswürdigkeit”, which means: as something worth listening to?

How to improve the Global Composition to make the world more liveable?

Within this process: What role does media play and relation to its commodification of sound? Are there valid approaches to or even successful examples of shaping the soundscape in ways that are beneficial or at least acceptable for a majority? Are there strategies for overcoming the societal, political and economic hindrances that inhibit the inclusion of auditory considerations in the making of a sustainable society? What is the role of art in developing paradigms for auditory solutions applied to our living environments?

How to foster listening abilities within the concert of the senses?

Last but not least, what educational concepts and methods exist for integrating listening abilities into the concert of the senses, and develop auditory faculties as important tools for understanding, criticizing, shaping and designing the global environment?

Proposals are invited for roundtable discussions, workshops, papers/posters, applied and artistic contributions, relating, but not limited to the conference’s main focus. The conference’s official language will be English.

Providing a specially positioned “Next Generation”-thread, the conference is very interested, to create a forum for young scholars, scientists, artists as well as for students, and encourages them to send in their proposals. Please send abstracts for roundtable discussions, papers/posters, workshops & proposals for compositions or other artistic contributions by March 1,
2012.

As keynote presenters we expect Bill Fontana, R. Murray Schafer, Hildegard Westerkamp et al.

Please note, that our venue is situated not far from Frankfurt airport in beautiful historic surroundings, providing not only the productive frame for an interesting conference, but also attractive landscapes, very good wine, culinary highlights, therefore good conditions for exchange and conviviality. All this makes, too, a central starting point for your summerbreak, be it locally, nationally or internationally.

9.11.01_Scapes by Helen Thorington, 2002 (16:54)

Read Helen’s beautiful text (with links to more of my images).

Sound Credits: The sound score makes use of materials from Thorington’s 20-year collection of recorded materials, processed found sound, and sounds from the 9.11 event recorded by New Yorkers and archived on the web site SonicMemorial.org With thanks to SonicMemorial.org and those who have contributed to their collection.

If you’d like to contact Helen, her email is newradio at turbulence dot org.

Locustream Promenade is a sound art installation composed of sonic beams ( 10 parabolic dishes equipped with sound speakers and small computers). The parabolas are suspended in the public space in such a way that a visitor only hears the sound from the beam when he or she is directly underneath it. Each beam plays a different stream from the Locustream project. The live streamed sounds are soundscapes coming from remote locations through the Internet. The space where the paraboles are hung is virtually connected to geo-distant spaces. By moving from one beam to another the audience walks through audio windows opening out onto a worldwide soundscape. Invited to take part in this experience the listener becomes conscious his or her immediate surroundings in a new way, perception of the local audio environment is modified.

Locus Sonus Lab: Julien Clauss, Stéphane Cousot, Alejo Duque, Scott Fitzgerald, Jérôme Joy, Anne Laforet, Grégoire Lauvin, Anne Roquigny, Peter Sinclair.

Concept & production: Nicolas Bralet, Julien Clauss, Alejo Duque, Scott Fitzgerald, Sabrina Issa, Jérôme Joy, Nicolas Maigret, Anne Roquigny, Esther Salmona, Peter Sinclair, Lydwine Van der Hulst.

Production team: Etienne Fortin, Stéphane Cousot, Grégoire Louvain, Lorenz Schori, entreprise APPLES Marseille, Chabaud et cie.

Partners: Délégation aux Arts Plastiques and Mission Recherche et Technologie from the French Minister of Culture and Communication, CNRS and Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche and in co-production with Transcultures/City Sonics, Mons, Belgium, l’Ecole Supérieure d’art de Aix and Seconde Nature

Streams from: Alejo Duque and Jean-Pierre Dautricourt (CASSIS - camargo), Miguel Eduardo Venegas Monroy (ENSENADA - ksa), Avatar, association de création et de diffusion sonores et électroniques (QUEBEC - avatar), Björn Eriksson, sound artist (SOLLEFTEA - miulew), Marc McNulty (BOSTON - boston), Nicolas_Bralet compositeur d’espace sonore, micro- paysagiste d’intérieur… (PARIS - gouttedor), peter sinclair for locus sonus (MARSEILLE - cap15), daniel schorno (AMSTERDAM - jordaan), KRN (incident.net) (DAKAR - amitie), cyrille henry (PARIS - home), Ragnar Helgi Olafsson [Lorna] (REYKJAVIK - komplex), cedric maridet // (HONGKONG - sw), Jerome Joy (Locus Sonus) (NICE - mouans), Esther Salmona (MARSEILLE - pasdufaon), Eric Leonardson, artist, Director of World Listening Project, founding member of Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (CHICAGO - westside), marieheuln (VESINET - cerceris), Kristian Paul (BUGA - valle), Mikhail Iliatov (BROOKLYN - brooklyn), Timothy Nohe (BALTIMORE - nohe), Chad Clark (CHICAGO - rogerspark), Alain Renaud (BOURNEMOUTH - dec), emeka ogboh (LAGOS - ikoyi), John Kannenberg artist and curator of Stasisfield.com —– (ANN ARBOR - AnnArbor), brett ian balogh (CHICAGO - wicker_park), Koganecho Area Management Center (YOKOHAMA - koganecho), The Fibers (YOGYAKARTA - honf), max and julian stein (MONTREAL - cote-des-neiges), Rhizome Lijiang Art Center (LIJIANG - rhizome), john grzinich, moks.ee (non-profit artist run organization) (MOOSTE - moks), un/locker (MAMM - medellin), Timothy Nohe (BALTIMORE - Baltimore), un/loquer, jardincosmico (MEDELLIN - san_lucas), Cimatics (BRUSSELS - cimatics), Vijayendra Sekhon (MUMBAI – currentfrequency), (MUMBAI – currentfrequency), P&D Audio Productions, Inc. (GREENSBORO - Greensboro_NC), london soho (LONDON - soho), Grégoire Lauvin http://gregorth.net (AIX_PROVENCE - st_jerome), Locus Sonus (AIX_EN_PROVENCE - Ecole_art_Aix), alejo duque + dock18 (CH - roambox), Phil Edelstein (PORT WASHINGTON - philed), udo noll radio aporee (COLOGNE - aporee), august black (SANTA_BARBARA - california)

Locus Sonus is at http://locusonus.org

Com­puter net­works and cities both are so­cial spaces that have emerged as ma­te­r­ial spaces where lives are lead and work gets done. They are su­per­struc­tures for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, net­works of chan­nels where in­for­ma­tion and goods are trans­ferred. Both spaces have their par­tic­u­lar acoustic prop­er­ties and qual­i­ties, and while ex­ten­sive stud­ies of en­vi­ron­men­tal acoustics and the sound­scape of our en­vi­ron­ment have been emerg­ing in the last 40 years, net­work spaces are still con­sid­ered to be spaces with­out sound, acoustics or any sonic prop­er­ties.

The panel on Sound­wwwalks will ex­plore this from mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives: In­ves­ti­ga­tions to­wards an Acoustic Ecol­ogy of Net­works, and web browsers and media stored on the web as in­ter­face and ma­te­r­ial for live sound per­for­mance. The in­vited artists and re­searchers pre­pare lec­ture per­for­mances within the stan­dard pre­sen­ta­tion setup of the con­fer­ence.

Per­for­mances by:

Bern­hard Gar­nic­nig, ex­plor­ing the tran­si­tion of the built and “nat­ural” en­vi­ron­ment to the net­work space as the defin­ing sonic en­vi­ron­ment of our lives.

Ceci Moss, play­ing a “dense, care­fully arranged Sound­wwwalk com­po­si­tion using record­ings of the human voice found on the web. Beat­box­ing in­struc­tional videos, vocal med­i­ta­tion ex­er­cises, on­line singing lessons will all find their way in this eclec­tic cho­rus, one that fore­grounds the warmth and dex­ter­ity of the human voice.”

Jamie Allen will per­form a sound­wwwalk which ref­er­ences and mines the vast func­tional audio archives of the in­ter­net. A sound walk for hard­ware, through hard­ware, on hard­ware.

As well as im­prov, re­mote and tape per­for­mances Peter Moos­gaard, Con­stant Dul­laart, Ju­lian Palacz, Joel Holm­berg and Will Schrimshaw.

Bios of the Par­tic­i­pants

Ceci Moss is a free­lance writer, mu­si­cian, DJ, and cu­ra­tor. She is cur­rently pur­su­ing a PhD in Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture at NYU. Her re­search ad­dresses con­tem­po­rary in­ter­net-based art prac­tice, dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy and per­cep­tion, the ma­te­ri­al­ity of media, post­mod­ernism and dig­i­tal art preser­va­tion. From 2007-2011 she was Se­nior Ed­i­tor of Rhi­zome, where she is presently a Staff Writer. She writes and edits the on­line con­tem­po­rary art and music blog A Mil­lion Keys. For the past ten years, she’s pro­grammed the weekly radio show Radio Heart on KALX and East Vil­lage Radio. She stud­ied So­ci­ol­ogy, His­tory and French at UC Berke­ley, and Crit­i­cal The­ory in Paris, France at the Uni­ver­sité Sor­bonne Nou­velle, Paris III/Cen­tre parisien d’études cri­tiques.

Jamie Allen makes things with his head and hands. These things most often in­volve peo­ples’ re­la­tion­ships to cre­ativ­ity, tech­nol­ogy and re­sources. They often at­tempt to give peo­ple new, sub­ver­sive and fun ways to in­ter­act with all of these. As some­one who works at the in­ter­sec­tion of art, so­cial the­ory and tech­nol­ogy, Jamie is an artist, a de­signer and a tech­nol­o­gist, as well as a teacher, re­searcher and ex­per­i­menter. His work has been fea­tured in a num­ber of media out­lets, in­clud­ing Wired.​com and the New York Times.

Bern­hard Gar­nic­nig is an artist and cu­ra­tor based in New­cas­tle and Vi­enna. In 2011 he grad­u­ated with an M.A. in Dig­i­tal Arts from the Uni­ver­sity for Ap­plied Arts Vi­enna. He has been re­search­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween sound and its spa­tial con­text from dif­fer­ent as­pects. In Crav­ing (with Got­tfried Haider) they de­vel­oped a GPS based bin­au­ral sound sim­u­la­tion en­gine for urban spa­tial sound nar­ra­tives in 2006. After that he started play­ing and or­gan­is­ing elec­troa­coustic im­prov con­certs at c17 Vi­enna, an art space he co-founded with Albért Bernàrd. After that he fo­cussed on sonic ac­tion in the field of browser and net­work based art, started to com­mis­sion browser based Sound­wwwalk per­for­mances with WORM/vi­enna and re­leased “Three Re­cur­ring Ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties”, a web­site that’s part feed­back in­stru­ment, part net­work field record­ing de­vice.

Peter Moos­gaard is a media artist and writer, work­ing in Vi­enna and Hels­ing­borg. In his work he deals with top­ics like pain, na­tion­al­ity, mythol­ogy, sci­ence and dig­i­tal media. Moos­gaard’s am­bi­tion is “..​to ex­ploit the nev­er­land be­tween art and tech­nol­ogy,” as he once said, “be­cause I´m not sure that cul­ture is my friend.”

Joel Holm­berg is a Los An­ge­les-based artist, one of the found­ing mem­bers of the Nasty Nets surf­ing club, and the cre­ative force be­hind Chillsesh. Com­bin­ing orig­i­nal per­for­mance and video with mash-ups of all kinds, Holm­berg’s site makes the line be­tween what he’s found and what he’s orig­i­nally au­thored dif­fi­cult to de­ci­pher. Se­lected works in­clude Palm Tree Palin­drome, a video that fea­tures a mes­meric pro­ces­sion of palm trees on ei­ther side of the frame, evok­ing film sprock­ets and the no­table ab­sence of nar­ra­tive in a piece with a seem­ingly for­ward thrust; BwO, which hi­lar­i­ously el­e­vates the soft-fo­cus ef­fects in a scene from the movie My Life star­ring Michael Keaton to the meta­phys­i­cal by over­lay­ing a read­ing of A Thou­sand Plateaus, a fa­mous book by the­o­rists Deleuze and Guat­tari; and Log roll, which lit­er­ally shows the artist rolling across an empty stu­dio, a repet­i­tive ges­ture am­pli­fied by a tech­nique that rolls the video back and forth in per­pet­ual mo­tion.

Con­stant Dul­laart (NL 1979, Ri­etveld Acad­e­mie Am­s­ter­dam, Rijk­sakademie Am­s­ter­dam): Trained as a video artist, his work has re­cently fo­cussed on the In­ter­net and re-con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing found ma­te­r­ial. Work­ing as a so called ‘in­ter­net aware’, or ‘post in­ter­net’ artist, his work shows the chang­ing ver­nac­u­lar of the con­tem­po­rary com­puter user, and how global cor­po­ra­tions (google, adobe, apple) con­trol that new lan­guage. In net­worked per­for­mances, cu­rated salon evenings, pho­to­graphic prints, youtube video’s, do­main name works, blog­posts, lec­tures, Dul­laart finds a way to em­pha­size the value of chang­ing in­ter­na­tional dom­i­nant (image) di­alects. His works are widely seen and dis­cussed on­line on blogs such as vvork.​com, rhizome.​org, artinamerica.​com, todayandtomorrow.​net, trendbeheer.​com etcetera, and his re­cently fea­tured in the Me­trop­o­lisM. Dul­laart taught at the Ri­etveld acad­e­mie, and (co)cu­rated sev­eral events in Am­s­ter­dam, Berlin and New York, such as the pe­ri­od­i­cally held Lost and Found evenings (with his final event in the New Mu­seum), the Cy­clus DVD for PARK4DTV / Mr Mot­ley, ‘Con­tem­po­rary Se­man­tics Beta’ in Arti et Am­ici­tiae, and re­cently the ex­hi­bi­tion “Ver­sions” in NIMK. His work is shown in­ter­na­tion­ally in places as the MASS MOCA North Adams USA, Cen­tre Pom­pi­dou in Paris, Art in Gen­eral and MWNM gallery in New York, ICA Lon­don, NIMK, de Appel, W139, the Stedelijk Mu­seum, Ellen de Brui­jne pro­jects, and Gallery West. Dul­laart lives / works in Berlin and Am­s­ter­dam.

Will Schrimshaw is an artist-re­searcher from Wake­field based in New­cas­tle upon Tyne. Often work­ing with sound amidst a larger vi­bra­tional con­tin­uum, his work is broadly con­cerned with the sub­lim­i­nal in­flu­ence of back­grounds, am­biances and at­mos­pheres, with the often im­per­cep­ti­ble de­ter­mi­nants of space and place. These con­cerns are man­i­fest in an ex­per­i­men­tal prac­tice com­bin­ing earth, text and code.

Ju­lian Palacz is an artist and pro­gram­mer based in Vi­enna, Aus­tria. He grad­u­ated with an M.A. in Dig­tial Arts from the Uni­ver­sity for Ap­plied Arts Vi­enna in 2010. His piece “Al­go­rith­mic search for love” has re­cently re­ceived a Prix Ars Elec­tron­ica Hon­orary Men­tion and the In­ter­ac­tive Art Prize from the Fes­ti­val In­ter­na­cional Mul­timédia, Por­tu­gal.

This is the second edition of stillspotting nyc, a two-year multidisciplinary project that takes the Guggenheim Museum’s programming out into the streets of New York City’s boroughs. Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and U.S. and Norway-based architecture firm Snøhetta create urban soundscapes around Lower Manhattan that explore the relationship between space and sound. To a Great City, the Manhattan edition ofstillspotting nyc, will be open to the public for two extended weekends on September 15–18 and 22–25, 2011.

While the vitality and stimulation of the urban environment can be pleasant, those living in or visiting densely populated areas such as New York are often unaware that their ears continually need time to adjust to strong differences between the sounds that surround them—just as the pupils of the eyes only gradually accommodate to the change from light to dark.

Pärt (b. 1935, Paide, Estonia) has described his music as a frame for silence and uses reduction of sound rather than augmentation to create his compositions. Pärt’s concept of tintinnabuli (”little bells” in Latin), which forms the basis of most of his work, was born from his vision for an extremely nuanced aural environment that could not be measured, so to speak, in kilometers or meters but only in millimeters. His pieces often revolve around a central tone that reappears consistently throughout the work.

The Guggenheim Museum organized a collaboration between Pärt and Snøhetta in which the architects have selected—and in some cases subtly altered—urban spaces that embody the concept of a central tone and extend the perception of sound into the realm of space. Visitors will experience this confluence of music and architecture at five separate locations downtown that quietly celebrate the city, ten years after the September 11 attacks. Traveling through sites along the periphery of Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, participants in stillspotting nyc may encounter a green labyrinth created by the Battery Conservancy, reflect in an underground chamber at Governors Island National Monument, and enter otherwise inaccessible spaces in landmark skyscrapers. The stillness and seclusion of these spaces heightens awareness and recalibrates one’s senses. Over the course of a day, participants may visit each space multiple times at their leisure to understand how their perception changes based on circumstances such as time, stress, appetite, and sleep. Listeners become increasingly sensitized as they are drawn in and ideally will be transformed to a focused and still state.

Visiting To a Great City
To a Great City is presented around Lower Manhattan among five locations with a starting point at Castle Clinton National Monument inside Battery Park (between Battery Place and State Street, Manhattan Hours are Thursday, September 15–Sunday, September 18 and Thursday, September 22–Sunday, September 25 from 11 am–7 pm with the last tour starting at 4pm. Visitors will receive a map and directions and access for one day to each of the stillspots for a self-guided tour. A full visit including each of the sites takes approximately three hours and visitors may opt to customize their route. Advance registration is required. To register and purchase tickets, find directions, or learn more visit stillspotting.guggenheim.org.

Stillspotting nyc is organized by David van der Leer, Assistant Curator, Architecture and Urban Studies, with Sarah Malaika, Stillspotting Project Associate, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Support for stillspotting nyc is provided by the Rockefeller Foundation NYC Opportunities Fund and a MetLife Foundation Museum and Community Connections grant. The second edition of stillspotting nyc is supported in part by the Royal Norwegian Consulate General in New York. The Leadership Committee for stillspotting nyc is gratefully acknowledged.

Here are several possible ways to participate:

Organize a soundwalk :: Organize a performance event that explores soundscape and how we can listen to our sonic environment :: Participate introspectively by simply paying attention to your soundscape :: Facilitate an educational event that relates to acoustic ecology, field recordings, or a similar topic ::

The level of participation in 2010 was amazing. We would like to see if we can double or even triple the number of participants worldwide this time. If you would like to participate in the 2011 World Listening Day, please download and fill out the 2011 World Listening Day participation form. You can find it here: http://www.worldlisteningproject.org/?p=1037 Then email it to worldlistening@gmail.com with “World Listening Day” in the subject line.

The first World Listening Day was co-organized by the WLP and MSAE. July 18 was chosen as the date for World Listening Day because it is the birthday of Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, who established the World Soundscape Project in the late-60s at Simon Fraser University. Schafer’s 1977 book, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World was a culminating publication about the research of the WSP that provided a foundation for the interdisciplinary field now known as Acoustic Ecology.

The 2010 World Listening Day includes numerous organizations, projects, and individuals. You can find the names here: http://www.worldlisteningproject.org/?p=1037

Image: Photo courtesy of the Purdue College of Agriculture/Tom Campbell, via ScienceDaily

Sound, Pijanowski suggests, is a kind of ecological indicator: an audible symptom of other, sometimes literally invisible changes in a living network or ecosystem. Sound, for instance, can “be used to detect early changes in climate, weather patterns, the presence of pollution or other alterations to a landscape.” As Pijanowski explains one example of this approach, “The dawn and dusk choruses of birds are very characteristic of a location. If the intensity or patterns of these choruses change, there is likely something causing that change. Ecologists have ignored how sound that emanates from an area can help determine what’s happening to the ecosystem.”

So far, unfortunately, it seems that a great flattening of the acoustic field has been the primary discovery: “One of the most significant findings was that as human impact in the landscape increases, the natural rhythms of sound created by the diverse wildlife population are replaced by low and constant human-produced noise.” The great machine-drone of human life fills forests once ringing with birdsong.

Of course, this is at once slightly redundant—there is already acoustic ecology, for instance—and fantastically cool, throwing the door wide-open for future acoustic research (and institutional funding).

Read more: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/soundscape-ecology-or-archive-fever-of.html

However, one point of immediate limitation, I’d suggest, comes with Pijanowski’s apparent focus on sounds produced by animals. Indeed, I’m reminded of an old essay by Francisco López, called “Environmental Sound Matter,” from La Selva: Sound Environments From A Neotropical Rain Forest.

There, López seeks to remind listeners that “there is also a type of sound-producing biotic component, present in almost every environment, that is usually overlooked: plants.” He then makes one of my favorite sonic observations of all time, which is that “what we call the sound of rain or wind we could better call the sound of plant leaves and branches.” Quoting at length:

“If our perspective of nature sounds were more focused on the environment as a whole, instead of on behavioral manifestations of the organisms we foresee as most similar to us, we could also deal with plant bioacoustics. Furthermore, a sound environment is not only the consequence of all its sound-producing components, but also of all its sound-transmitting and sound-modifying elements. The birdsong we hear in the forest is as much a consequence of the bird as of the trees or the forest floor. If we are really listening, the topography, the degree of humidity of the air or the type of materials in the topsoil are as essential and definitory as the sound-producing animals that inhabit a certain space.

So, add the sounds of plants, molds, and root networks, of soil itself and groundwater, of shifts in air pressure and humidity and even the underlying deep geologic structures that support all that living terrain in the first place, and an intensely interesting sonic portrait of terrestrial ecosystems takes shape, mutating through complex blurs and inflection points over time, its parts weaving in and out symphonically.”

Again, this is functionally identical to acoustic ecology—with equal parts acoustic geology thrown in, perhaps—but it will nonetheless be interesting to see if a slight change of name (and some news buzz) results in more opportunities for funding and research.

On a slightly unrelated note, meanwhile, Britain’s superlative music and sound art magazine The Wire reported on something called Field Studies 2010 in an issue published last autumn. Field Studies “provide[d] an environment for architects, artists and urbanists to explore the relationship between architecture and sound, and to ’see’ sound not as a scientific, acoustic event, but as a sometimes inexplicable, poetic and place-specific phenomenon.” In a sense, then, specifically in terms of the discipline described above, Field Studies was a kind of urbanized anti-soundscape-ecology: more emotional and poetic than scientifically diagnostic.

But one of the workshop leaders, Marc Behrens, makes the interesting point that there is “a tech version of Moore’s Law,” quote-unquote. “In other words, as recording devices get smaller, more sophisticated and cheaper, opportunities increase and the art of sonic field studies evolves accordingly.”

This seems to resonate well with Pijanowski’s work, that, as acoustic sensors and deployable sound-capture networks become easier and cheaper both to install and to monitor (which, of course, includes for surveillance purposes), we’ll hear, at the very least, a massive quantitative increase in the amount of archived sonic information available for later study. An archive fever of the ear!

The UrbanRemix platform consists of a mobile phone system and web interface for recording, browsing, and mixing audio. It allows users to document and explore the obvious, neglected, private or public, even secret sounds of the urban environment. Participants become active creators of shared soundscapes as they search the city for interesting sound cues. The collected sounds, voices, and noises provide the original tracks for musical remixes that reflect the specific nature and acoustic identity of the community.

In collaboration with the Times Square Alliance Public Art Program, UrbanRemix will host a series of events in Times Square. Throughout April and May 2011, the public is invited to capture and contribute sounds from Times Square using the free UrbanRemix apps for iPhone/iOS and Android. Then, using the web site, anyone-anywhere can explore the contributed sounds online, view them on a virtual map of Times Square, and mix and share their own soundscapes. On May 12, New York-based electronic musicians Travis Thatcher and Damon Holzborn will perform live remixes of the collected sounds in a free performance in Times Square.

We look forward to your participation!

Urban Remix from Matt Gilbert on Vimeo.

1. DOWNLOAD the free mobile app:

iOS App: http://bit.ly/gWxGoO

Android App: http://bit.ly/esEuIe

2. LAUNCH the app and sign-in

(username: TimesSquare and password: TimesSquare)

or create your personal user account at http://urbanremix.gatech.edu

3. GO TO TIMES SQUARE, record sounds and take photos, then hit “upload” to share them.

4. Visit http://urbanremix.gatech.edu to see what others have shared and to make your own remixes online.

IF YOU CAN’T GET TO TIMES SQUARE, you can still use our web site to explore and remix the sounds that have been contributed: http://urbanremix.gatech.edu/content/times-square

Registration is now open for the workshop in Acoustic Ecology curated by the Italian Soundscape Archive, AIPS (Archivio Italiano Paesaggi Sonori) and coordinated by musicians/sound designers Francesco Giannico and Alessio Ballerini.

The aim of this workshop is to create a sonic representation of an urban soundscape, in this case the sound map of the Pigneto area in Rome, that will be also presented as an electroacoustic performance.

This event is part of a wider project, the Roma Soundscape Project, that aims at collecting an archive of the sound maps of the city of Rome.

A wide range of topics will be covered, from Sound Ecology to Acoustic Design, including the methodology of soundwalks, and the analysis, aesthetics and practice of the soundscape. The workshop starts on March 21, 2011, at 5:00 p.m. in the newly inaugurated site of ‘€˜Forte Fanfulla’€™ in via Fanfulla da Lodi nº5 in Rome. It will be possible to register at the same place, by presenting your personal data, between 3 and 6pm, from Monday to Friday until March 18th.

The maximum number of participants is 30. The workshop has a duration of 30 hours over a period of two and a half months, with three hours of sessions per week. The participants will engage in both theory and practice, and will produce a final project consisting of a performance/installation based on the collected materials and work developed during the workshop, as well as the creation of a dedicated website and video art clips.

The fee is 300 euros. A certificate in Sound Ecology and Acoustic Design - Roma Soundscape Project - will be issued at the end of the workshop.

For more information: http://www.archivioitalianopaesaggisonori.it ; or info@archivioitalianopaesaggisonori.it