Friday, March 30, 2012

uh

Monday, April 27, 2009

Visual music blog for lovers of sound and sight

I stumbled upon this sight while looking up stuff on the pairing of color and sound, there is a really interesting sight that is an off shoot of this one that gives a "history" of visual music/color and sound here:

http://homepage.eircom.net/~musima/visualmusic/visualmusic.htm

It even has stuff on color organs...which is very....very...very cool.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Waveform Bracelets

not so much into their intended purpose, but kinda cool looking anyway.....

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/03/16/the-sound-advice-pro.html


http://www.thesoundadviceproject.com/

Shareware Archives & Links

http://www.synthzone.com/softarch.htm

http://www.audioracle.com/freesoft.php

http://www.kvraudio.com/

---little note for Ableton Live:
http://sonictransfer.com/using-vst-plug-ins-in-ableton-live.shtml

Free Vst Instruments

Free Vst Instruments

A collection of Free Vst's.


http://freevst.blogspot.com/

Monday, November 24, 2008

From Belinda! (sound work published on French site)

(I reposted this from an email from Belinda!!)


Hi all,

I just wanted to share a recent publication of my sound work on a french art and sound art site. The work was published on November 16th on the Radio Village Nomade website.

Here is the link to the work
http://www.jourparjour.net/radio/daypieces/Nov/16/today.htm

And here is the main webite page.
http://www.jourparjour.net/radio/VNR_Home.htm


www.belindahaikes.com
www.lifeuniverseandart.blogspot.com/

Friday, November 14, 2008

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Darth Turntable Happy Time for yer EARS!

These are (have been) some people in your neighborhood













Killing Machine on a Sunday Afternoon...



Here is a little link to one of the installations...
http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/killing_machine.html


If you don't already have their book Killing Machine, YOU NEED!
(THERE IS A DVD in the book... I wear that shit OUT!)

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

REPENT! The end of music is at hand!

This is from a user review of Logic Studio 8 on Apple's web site:

This is tooooo easy; now all those 5 year olds and "musicians" who became DJs a few years ago have all the skills necessary to become "producers" of music good enough to make your girlfriend dump you. Apple is the new Idol, and here we present the shrink-wrapped souls of thousands, awaiting your command. If you deem yourself an innovator, you'd better think beyond the world of the senses, because this box makes "musical" innovation insignificant. Just as the federal reserve devalues our currency by putting more of it into circulation, apple has now decreased the value of music tenfold. The "musician" as recordist is now dead. Brave souls will resist this monster of manipulation and follow the only humanizing creed left for true musicians: Live Music Only, on instruments not requiring power consumption/electricity/oil/war/pollution. The weak, among whom I count myself, will spend their time alone in front of a computer screen, standing on the shoulders of giants, listening in awe to "what we've created," wasting resources getting our "creations" to the level of "broadcast quality" so we can become a bigger cog in the machine.

...

(1430 of 2277 people found this review useful)


The author is obviously half-joking, but this is something I often wonder about -- how do we value music or sound creation? Do your aesthetic sensibilities demand that some degree of work or of "original" transformative technique be evident in the text? I feel especially useless when prompted to respond critically to abstract sound -- do I respond on technical grounds? Aesthetic? Do I address the recording quality of noise? The performance value of found sound? Does responding to recorded sound as a concrete text merely displace our evaluative judgments about performance from the moment of presentation (absentation) to the time of production? That is, are we judging production as a performance?

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

A Little Midweek-Marclay

Christian Marclay:



The host who introduces and interviews Christian Marclay is AMAZING (and I mean this in the weirdest possible way!)

Thursday, September 18, 2008

FLAC!

FLAC or Free Lossless Audio Codec... Great tool to have to email large audio files. You can encode you .wav or .aiff to a .flac file which makes it eons smaller... and then it can be decoded back to it's original state once you send it through the pipeline.

Here is a free standing application to encode/decode: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16458

"FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio..." - http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Enjoy!

A

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Monday, September 1, 2008

Freee!

Check it: http://free-loops.com/

:]

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Reggie Watts - F*$K,S#%T,STACK




crazy sound weirdness of joy!

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The listening Dinner Party

Hey friends, this is the sound track to that alt-score piece I worked on last fall...



The Listening Dinner Party (2007)

The Listening Dinner Party was a performative, interactive sound installation-- and a social investigation.
I was looking at relational interaction what it means to relate according to society—AND according to me (someone who grew up moving a lot and having to learn to try to adjust and assimilate on the fly) the piece about trying to know what role is expected of me--- but attempting to turn it on its head.
It was a dinner party, that I designed and served. I wrote a menu complete with complimentary beverages then turned the recipes for the dishes into alternative music/soundtrack scores. I attached a sound to each ingredient (developing themes for all types of ingredients-- for example treating all spices in a similar way, treating all dairy in a similar way, treating all vegetables in a similar way and so on) then I reconstituted the dishes sonically, and served it to my peers.
(you want me to serve you? Sure thing! Lets eat with our ears then!)

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Pilottone

yes, they(we) are back.
Althea, Belinda, Cris, Hassan and Jennida's sound collaboration/noise band (called Pilottone) is back with a vengence. We are playing with Stephen Vitiello and some other sound artists this Sunday night 6/29 at Transmission Gallery in Richmond (where the members of The Men's Recovery Project had an art show this past fall!)
the show is at 5pm.
be there, let us tickle you in the ear.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Final presentations from class: calling all submissions!

Well its the end of the semester and the last thing you want is one last thing to do! But I think that because this semester was so fun and insightful that at the very least we might share and remember "Stephen's Class"..... :)
Here is my submission:
From the roof top of One Jennida Chase.....
Tuning Fork!? I think that's what we were going to call ourselves right? We agreed on this?
Well anyway the sound actually comes from a different presentation I've named pedalfest that Hassan an Jennida co-sponsored, but the pics are from her deck the last day of class. Hopefully Althea will have those files ready after her hell days are over(I'm just staving them off!)
Enjoy. And by all means share anything you got!
Hassan

Monday, May 5, 2008

MICHEL CHION AND THE SILENCE IN THE LOUDSPEAKERS

MICHEL CHION AND THE SILENCE IN THE LOUDSPEAKERS

by: Larry Sider


Not only did Walter Murch write the forward to Chion's Audio-Vision, but both share the same influence in musique concréte and composer Pierre Schaeffer: Chion studied and worked with him; as a ten-year-old growing up in New York, Murch heard his recorded performances on the radio. So it was serendipitous that the two should meet for the first time at the School of Sound. Their meeting was also symbolic of what the event stood for: the synthesis of film practice with film theory.

In his introduction to Audio-Vision, Murch details the American invention of sound for film and Europe's reluctant acceptance of this threat to silent film, the one form of entertainment and art that could overcome the continent's Babel of languages and dialects. Sound film can be seen in the rise of Hollywood's economic and cultural influence while the powerful European silent film studios collapsed, many of their leading directors emigrating to California. Murch reflects: 'Sixty-five years later, the reverberations of this political, cultural and economic trauma still echo throughout Europe in an unsettled critical attitude toward film sound-and a multitude of aesthetic approaches-that have no equivalent in the United States'(1994: xii).

By exploring and synthesising a theory of sound without polemics, Chion's work is accessible and of equal value to the academic or practitioner and useful to filmmakers from any culture. His ideas are essential for anyone working with film as he has formulated a practice-based theory (or, a theory of practice). His lecture allowed filmmakers in the audience to step back from their work and consider exactly what the soundtrack does. How does sound relate to images on the screen? And what is the effect of a development like Dolby? Is it an inevitable technical advance or does it fundamentally change the experience of hearing/seeing film?

Using sound in film creatively is usually suggested with romantic overtones as an ideal, some sort of unattainable cinematic artistry. For seventy years, filmmakers have played with sound but usually within the confines of dialogue-based productions: sound effects are decoration; music is the predictable explanation of a narrative's emotional subtext. All this is added after the film is edited and its themes and rhythms determined. The editors, composers and technicians 'collaborate' separately, working against any unity of sound. Post-production sound is considered, by and large, as a technical chore.

The crux of Chion's discussion is to de-emphasise the importance placed on the soundtrack's components - the effects, dialogue, music, etc. - by mapping out a physical landscape (the confines of a Dolby Surroundsound cinema, the sensory relationship between the audience and the film) where these elements merge. Just as environment and ambience can transform a meeting between two people, the soundtrack alters the relationship between viewer and film.

Through Chion's ideas, any editor or sound designer should have a clearer idea of how (s)he affects that space. Far too often the editor/designer concentrates on building an amazing artifice, understanding the individual components and the technical complexity of achieving an effect; but what is not taken into account is what these effects say, how they modify the film or how they are perceived by the audience.

The overriding characteristic of this acoustical space is intimacy. Where the acoustic limitations of pre-Dolby, monaural tracks created a unity of sound, the precision of Dolby presents sounds discretely, accentuating the silence between them. This intimacy and the emotional intensity of silence present a challenge to filmmakers used to relying on continuous dialogue or ubiquitous music. For it is this silence that must be filled by the audience creating, in Murch's words: 'a purposeful and fruitful tension between what is on the screen and what is kindled in the mind of the audience - what Chion calls sound en creux (sound 'in the gap')' (1994: xix). Intimacy makes the individual image more prominent and allows the viewer to take in the separate elements of sound and vision, interpreting them in his or her own time. More often than not, this calls for less dialogue, longer shots, more considered composition - all of which means the soundtrack impacts on areas of filmmaking not confined to post-production sound.

Whereas film images have come out of painting and graphic arts, film sound has never had a creative mentor. Its advances have been largely technical, making it louder and clearer but rarely altering its role or composition. Chion has reinterpreted film sound's technical developments as a conceptual evolution. He defines and makes tangible the dynamic space created by filmmakers and technicians, inhabited by images and sounds and, most importantly, experienced by the audience. His thesis challenges the editor, director, et al, to use their new technology - particularly Dolby - to fill or empty this space skilfully and artfully.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larry Sider is an editor and sound designer, who has extensively worked with Koninck Studios and Keith Griffiths, on the films of the Brothers Quay, Patrick Keiller and Simon Pummell. He is the director of the School of Sound.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References

Chion, Michel (1994) Audio Vision: Sound on Screen New York: Columbia University Press.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(link this is reposted from):
http://www.frameworkonline.com/40ls.htm

Audio in the 21st Century

Here is a basic little sound article:
Audio in the 21st Century
http://www.audiodesignline.com/howto/audioprocessing/193303241

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Althea's Candidacy Exhibition this Friday Night!

Announcing: Firing Jets.

A one night exhibition performance (and candidacy review) of the recent work by Althea Georgelas of Virginia Commonwealth University - School of the Arts - Kinetic Imaging - M.F.A graduate student. The event is paired with a website featuring a preview... < www.firingjets.com >. This site will be updated after the event to encompass more of the event... Stay tuned. You are all invited to join us in Richmond, Virginia during the First Friday Artwalk on May 2nd, 2008.

Please see attached document for more information or visit: www.firingjets.com

I am definitly attending this! Who else is in??

Noise Pioneer Bebe Barron Passes Away

Stephen forwarded this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/movies/25barron.html?ref=arts

About Bebe Barron's death...

Thursday, April 24, 2008

nix the wifi!

CPU overload got you down? Pops, clicks and mangle not what you're after this bright and sunny morning?

Well before you touch that finicky buffer! ... Point a resolute hand at the apple airport!

Truth:

Pro tools logged multiple CPU overloads and Abelton Live was a cranky popping jerk still ... even after a couple of hours of buffer tweaking ... point by point. Then a lovely german named Nico from the Ableton staff responded to my slightly anxiety ridden email yesterday... first in complete german and then another email was sent:

"Hello,

Apple's latest airport update can cause CPU spikes and audio dropouts. What happens when you turn off airport?

Best regards,

Nico Starke
Ableton Technical Support"


AND LOW AND BEHOLD... crisp clean audio playback! All the better to mangle myself... but with a steady hand, my friends.

So nix the airport... cut off yer wifi and all will be golden.

Cheers.

A

Monday, April 14, 2008

Bent Fest....






This is a repost off of the website for the circuit bending festival (BENT) happening NEXT week in NYC.....

FUN TIMES...

Anyone wanna go on Sat?

http://www.bentfestival.org/

Thursday, April 10, 2008

blog link from Stephen

Here is a blog link:
http://theartofmemory.blogspot.com/2008/04/robert-bresson-given-by-eyes-of-john.html

Friday, April 4, 2008

Stuff

Birdie Talk again. this is a flash piece by Maria Mencia
I think it is my favourite translation, remediation of sound.

Here' the link
Birds Singing Other Birds' Songs

And I found this free sound place. I am mad happy. I don't know if it is already on the blogroll, but I am just too excited about my discovery! Free sounds galore!

sound snap

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

FIELD TRIP!

DIAPASON GALLERY


Do you all want to make plans to go sometime this summer???


A

Monday, March 31, 2008

NASA VLF audio

hey everybody - here's the nasa VLF receiver information i was talking about in class.

Friday, March 21, 2008

sort of unrelated, but speaking of jennida!

http://blog.sixwise.com/blogs/vaszily-brian/archive/2007/03/21/dining-in-the-dark-now-you-can-eat-in-a-pitch-black-restaurant-where-the-waitstaff-is-blind.aspx

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Alesis Photon X25 dirty cheap!

After much searching and browsing I stumbled upon the Alesis Photon X25 at :
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Alesis-Photon-X25-USBMIDI-Keyboard-Controller-with-Audio?sku=705525
for "under $100" (read $99.95) with free shipping! So there you go...don't say I never told you nutin' ;)

Monday, March 3, 2008

Christian Marclay and sound on Treo


Here's a link to piece done on Christain Marclay that Treo did. Check it out. A lot of it focuses on his use and abuse of vinyl records. I wish it told more about how he pieces the records together....super glue anyone?!
Hassan

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

OPEN-ENDED FESTIVAL OF TIME-BASED MEDIA

There is a media fest at Solvent Space/plant zero this weekend....
(seems to be mostly video... but still-- we are PRO-MEDIA here right?)


"Open-Ended," a Festival of Time-Based Media will take place on
Thursday to Saturday, Feb. 28-March 1, at 7p.m. at VCU's Solvent
Space, located at 4th and Hull Streets, next to the Plant Zero Arts
Center. Thursday and Friday nights will feature video work by 24
international artists addressing issues of identity, cultural
hybridity, and new cosmopolitanism, including work by Sonali Gulati,
Grace Ndiritu, Steve Reinke, Shelly Silver, John Smith, and Ryan
Trecartin. Saturday night will present a screening of "Operation
Atropos" by Coco Fusco, followed by an open discussion with the
artist.


This event is free to the public. For more information go to
www.artandhybridity.com

"Open-Ended" was curated by Jeremy Drummond, Assistant Professor of
Studio Art, Department of Art and Art History, and N. Elizabeth
Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University
Museums, University of Richmond.




I'm going! Anyone else?

Graphic Notation

Here is the link to the article Stephen mentioned about graphic scores...

http://newmusicbox.com/article.nmbx?id=5462

FREE!

PC software... for all you audio editing madness.

FREE PC AUDIO SOFT

XOX

A

Friday, February 22, 2008

ilovethis

go here now.

so beautiful.

hypersonicsound

So I was thinking about Nia's dillema with the sound component in her installation. And then I thought, what about directed sound? Last year I had read an article on this very thing, I think it may have been in Wired. The basic technology allows the audio to be focused in a specific spot, and if someone stands there, they can hear it, but the person 2 feet away cannot. But here are some sights dealing with it.it also goes by the name of Hypersonic sound

Audio spotlights


And A company that sells this product.

American Technology Corporation

The thing that is kinda scary about this product is the military and the advertisers are totally embracing it in a big way.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

tim hecker

and some of his top 10.
i also recommend this album, by christian fennesz and ryuichi sakamoto, for people who were into hecker. fennesz's solo stuff is noisier, more like hecker; sakamoto is very mellow and ambient and quiet. this album combines the two somewhat...
i can hook people up with copies if you want.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Sound Installation?


So even though im not in Vitello's class im still extremely interested in sound and thats pretty much all im doing right now. I have a few concerns, which i will now dump on all of you:

For my candidacy exhibit, right now i plan on having an installation piece with sound, photo/sculptural objects and maybe some moving image, but i want to focus to be on the sound, with everything else coming second.
Soooooooo, do any of you have any suggestions on how to install without those awesome dome things (which we dont have, i dont think), without a room of my own to install in, and without having my work bleed into someone else's space, AND without tacky-ass headphones. i hate those, and they wouldnt work with the whole idea of "installation".
shiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
any help, suggestions, links, references to the actual installation of sound, artists who have used it in an "alternative" (dare i say) way.
thanks guys, i love you!

Monday, February 18, 2008



The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving and rotating physical objects on a luminous round table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

Reactable

The instrument was developed by a team of digital luthiers under the direction of Dr. Sergi Jordà. The "Interactive Sonic Systems" team is working in the Music Technology Group within the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain. Its main activities concentrate on the design of new musical interfaces, such as tangible music instruments and musical applications for mobile devices.

The reactable intends to be:

* collaborative: several performers (locally or remotely)
* intuitive: zero manual, zero instructions
* sonically challenging and interesting
* learnable and masterable (even for children)
* suitable for novices (installations) and advanced electronic musicians (concerts)

The reactable hardware is based on a translucent, round multi-touch surface. A camera situated beneath the table, continuously analyzes the surface, tracking the player's finger tips and the nature, position and orientation of physical objects that are distributed on its surface. These objects represent the components of a classic modular synthesizer, the players interact by moving these objects, changing their distance, orientation and the relation to each other. These actions directly control the topological structure and parameters of the sound synthesizer. A projector, also from underneath the table, draws dynamic animations on its surface, providing a visual feedback of the state, the activity and the main characteristics of the sounds produced by the audio synthesizer.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

hollow earth radio

here's an internet radio station based out of seattle that i just found. seems like there's an emphasis on both experimental radio and sound and music too. coincidentally i know two of the dj's from two very different times of my life!

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

upcoming Kinetic Imaging Department Visiting Artists

Here are a couple of basic links to.....

Artist--- Derrick de Kerckhove http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_de_Kerckhove
(visiting 2/14 10am in the AFO department-- Bowe St. Building)


Artist--- M. Dot Strange http://www.wearethestrange.com/
(visiting 2/21 3pm in the VCU Student Commons)




contact us/me if you need more info/directions

DIY mics

Here is a the link to a pdf on making your own mics.... Stephen recently sent this out as an email-- It is info via an engineer who spoke at Solvent Space this weekend about home-made hydrophones (I think at Hope Ginsberg's "Sponge Space")

http://www.marinetech.org/rov_competition/Hydrophone.pdf

Monday, February 11, 2008

Matmos and the gateway to the Transmodern

Well, I'll tell you all and gather 'round...Our trek ended in a small warehouse looking apartment building in Baltimore, MD.
With one press of the buzzer we were let into the building and ascended to the sixth floor. There we were met by jugglers and a woman that explained to us that we could buy tickets for a raffel and that all proceeds would go towards benifiting the Transmodern Festival taking place in April. The Transmodern Festival will be an interesting mix of performance art, sound/music and video/film presentations. Unfortunately, the photo kids will be in NYC from the 3rd of April until the 5th/6th, so we will miss it but I encourage any of you, my fair readers to carpool and art it up! guaranteed to not be stodgy.
The fundraising event that we attended on Saturday was full of art noise, performance, and recitals. All around were adhock buskers who would do any task for a dollar or convey/participate in a kiss. The latter of the two held a sign held high that read "kiss a tranny!"
One of the highlights of the evening was a person dressed as a long lamprey like worm who sang a haunting tune against a white sheet. Following this set was Matmos who you can read more biographical info in Jennidas post. The set was pretty amazing! What with all the strange videos of cigarette burns and drumming with bouquets of roses one might not think that a haircut was on the menu. Their set of constructed sound musical stuff included the sounds of hair shearing as it cruzed off the head of an onlooker. I think that is what impressed me the most. It certainly was the most audibly pleasurable haircutting I have ever witnessed. Just to let you know!
Peace

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Saturday, February 9, 2008

high fidelity?

BLEEP

Neat alternative to iTunes.

A

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Podcasts

Because I am a major nerd, I thought I would upload some links to podcasts dealing with art, sound and all things wonderful.

Art Radio Podcasts


Radiolab on Sound. These are really awesome.

And of course, what podcast list would ever be complete without This American Life.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Matmos show this Saturday (02/09/08)

It would seem (my heros) Matmos are playing this Saturday night in Baltimore MD at Floristree, a venue I am not familiar with... but I am going to try to make it. Anyone know much about that place, or attending the show? I have never seen Matmos live and am totally anxious and excited to go!! (who's in?)



ok.... here is the link to the show on Saturday as per Matmos website...
http://brainwashed.com/matmos/news.html

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Great review

Sound art... an excellent review of a recent show, "Sound in Art / Art in Sound" that happened last year. This review does an excellent job of describing the work... its construction, content, intent and subjective reaction. I get so tired of reviews that just say things like: speakers mounted on wall... sound emitting. Bogus. So check this out. There are a few really interesting artists and it is awesome to read how the gallery chose to construct the exhibition.

Some Assembly Required

A

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

I googled music hosting sites and came up with these:
http://www.iwebmusic.com/
http://www.supload.com/free-audio-hosting
Now, I'm a novice so I'm not sure exactly what to look for in a "good" hosting site...
Anyone heard or know anything about them? Anyone tried them before?
If anyone has found other or heard of other sites please post!

Audio Infidelity

Here is a link to the article on Mastering that Stephen was speaking of in class today!

headphones

buy yourself some headphones and live the world through them!



Jenn asked me to post this paper... I wrote it last year... Please excuse any blaring grammatical and spelling errors that I may have missed in the 9 hundred times I have re-read it. Enjoy!

all in your head

A

Role Call

Jump into the Comments and introduce yourself!

Monday, January 28, 2008

my first......



......first post. first sound piece. i <3 thremin.
this is a good idea. 

Well, Can You?

Can You Stick It In Your Ear--- is a Blog is intended for the promotion, advocation and open domination of inner, outer and middle ear. This is a call for the surge of sound based art. (Yes, brethren, we strive for the overall betterment of the cochlea and its neighbors!)


Please feel free to post interesting work, and/or links to other interesting auditory pleasures... including sound bites, snip-its, essays, commentary... information about shows, articles, theories, programs, software, editing software, shocking auditory breakthroughs, strange rumors, sound-artists, noise enthusiasts...




sound.
thrills.
(I think it will fit!)