Newsletter – July 2007
Welcome to the third issue of Networked Music Review Newsletter, a monthly review of some of the many events archived on Networked_Music_Review [to receive this via email, subscribe here].
From soundscapes to sound sculptures, to a festival of found sound, and works that reproduce the microscopic sounds of plants and trees and the micro-activity of the body, sound played a significant role in this month’s entries.
Digital Art Weeks, Zurich, Switzerland ran a soundscape competition with soundscapes submitted in three categories: the Real World, the Virtual World and Mixed Worlds.
July also saw the opening of Greylock Arts, a new gallery in Adams, MA (USA) with a show of interactive audio sculptures by Gregory Shakar called Mood Vectors, where participants may encounter melodic bolts of lightning, giant sonorous metronomes, and enormous undulating pixels.
Robin Rimbaud (aka Skanner) produced a new sound installation for TONSPUR in Vienna that explores an idea of the ensemble voice and makes significant use of breath and pauses. And Adam Nash has created an interactive audio-visual sculpture called A Rose Heard at Dusk for Second Life that is played by avatars walking, flying and jumping through the space in the gallery below the Opera House, on Big Pond’s Ponderosa Island. You will need free Second Life software to enjoy it.
The two works that make use of microscopic sound are Jen Boyd’s recordings of plants and animals, and Jacob Kirkegaard’s Labyrinthitis. Working with contact microphones and a flash recorder, Boyd constructs stereo soundscapes to give depth to the delicate sounds of trees and plants. In Labyrinthitis, which will premiere at the Art and Biomedicine: Beyond the Body conference in Copenhagen in September, Kirkegaard has turned his listening ear inwards–to his own ear–and by using specially developed listening equipment, has captured the micro-activity which the hair cells of the ear broadcasts.
For New Yorkers, there will be Public Sounds, a Festival of Sound Art presented by Roulette that will take place throughout downtown Manhattan from August 11-19. It will include artists Kabir Carter, Jessica Feldman, Kaffe Matthews, Leslie Ross and Stephen Vitiello.
Otherness (CD & Booklet) is now available. This is the ninth implementation of the series curated by the Sonic Arts Network, a British organization dedicated to studying, spreading and pondering non-conventional sound experiences. It is curated by David Cotner.
Finally, this month’s entries also included a long and intriguing interview with Scot Gresham-Lancaster, a member of the historic computer network group, the Hub; and a composer, performer, and instrument builder dedicated to research and performance using the expanding capabilities of computer networks for musical and cross-disciplinary expression.
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