Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University is hoping to start a new research discipline that he calls soundscape ecology; it will “use sound as a way to understand the ecological characteristics of a landscape,” as ScienceDaily reports.

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.” Continue reading

The First Computer Musician by R. Luke Dubois :: an article in the New York Times: 06/08/2011 ::

If the difference between 1911 and 2011 is electricity and computation, then Max Mathews is one of the five most important musicians of the 20th Century. – Miller Puckette

photo by Roger Linn

In 1957 a 30-year-old engineer named Max Mathews got an I.B.M. 704 mainframe computer at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N. J., to generate 17 seconds of music, then recorded the result for posterity. While not the first person to make sound with a computer, Max was the first one to do so with a replicable combination of hardware and software that allowed the user to specify what tones he wanted to hear. This piece of music, called “The Silver Scale” and composed by a colleague at Bell Labs named Newman Guttman, was never intended to be a masterpiece. It was a proof-of-concept, and it laid the groundwork for a revolutionary advancement in music, the reverberations of which are felt everywhere today….

Read more: here.

New York Electronic Art Festival :: Victoria Vesna‘s and Jim Gimzewski‘s Blue Morph :: Opening Reception: Sunday, June 19, 2010 from 3:00 -5:00 p.m. :: St. Cornelius Chapel, Governor’s Island, NY :: Exhibition Dates: May 30 – September 25, 2011 — Hours: Friday 11:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m., Sat/Sun 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and by appointment ::

Blue Morph is a site-specific interactive installation that uses nanoscale images and sounds derived from the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly. Harvestworks is pleased to present this art-science collaboration between media artist Victoria Vesna and nanoscientist James Gimzewski. Continue reading

Following on yesterday’s post… Here is a 2009 Leonardo Music Journal (vol 29) article on Eliane Radigue, “The Mysterious Power of the Infinitesimal” . You can download the article here: http://www.leonardo.info/lmj/ :: Introduction by Joel Chadabe ::

In the 1960s, Eliane Radigue began to move away from her earlier work in musique concrète as Pierre Henry’s assistant, with its focus on the juxtaposition of self-contained “musical objects,” and towards an exploration of sound as an evolution with subtle transformations.

… In a concert, her music floated in the air, coming from everywhere as music without a source, just a natural part of our world, just there, and without effort.

Triptych: The Music of Eliane Radigue :: June 12–26, 2011 :: Concerts at Christ Church Spitalfields and St Stephen’s Walbrook , London :: Sonic Bed Exhibitions at Rich Mix and Watermans, London

Sound and Music presents the first major UK retrospective of Eliane Radigue (born Paris, 1932), one of the major living figures in contemporary music.

Radigue studied with electronic music pioneers Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer and has been likened to American minimalists Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Steve Reich and Philip Glass, but her meditative works, often monumental in duration, have taken a singular path, transporting the listener on a journey into the very heart of sound. Continue reading

Turbulence Commission: You Don’t Know Me by Liangjie Xia [Needs Software Download]:

You are not always who other people think you are; you even hear your own voice in a different way. By recording and manipulating a recording of your voice with You Don’t Know Me, you will be able to restore your real voice and share with people how you hear yourself. This is a unique task that nobody else in the world can do. You Don’t Know Me provides a toolset and an online voice gallery. We are looking forward to hearing your true voice.

You Don’t Know Me is a 2010 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. for its Turbulence web site. It was supported by the Jerome Foundation. Continue reading

BIORHYTHM: Music and the Body :: June 2, 2011 – August 6, 2011 :: Opening Reception: June 3; 6:00 – 9:00 pm :: Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, 540 W. 21st Street, New York, NY.

Why does a minor chord sound sad? Is there a formula for the perfect hit? Whistling, dancing, finger-snapping, and toe-tapping — what makes us do it? Find out when music and science join forces in an interactive bazaar of beats, sounds, and rhythm in the exhibition BIORHYTHM, created by the Science Gallery and presented at Eyebeam as part of the World Science Festival. Learn what drives sound manipulation and discover how different types of music evoke different emotions. Trace the power of an impactful pop hook in a song, measuring the way our brains and bodies react, down to the responses in our fingertips. Continue reading

Radius:: June 2011 :: Episode 08 will host Osvaldo Cibils :: Radius will transmit h88h for two consecutive Friday afternoons on June 3 and 10 at 2:00 p.m. CST.

Osvaldo Cibils is a visual and sound artist born in Montevideo, Uruguay now living and working in Trento, Italy. He works with drawing, computer-generated sounds, and short videos.

Radius will broadcast h88h. h88h was made using radio field recordings (Rovereto, Italy, 2010), desk recordings (Trento, Italy, 2011), cassette (POLE music fragment, 2001), CD-R (computer sounds experiments, 1997-2001), software sounds (Linux MultiMedia Studio, RolloSonic, Mixxx, Acid v1.0.), and a Midi keyboard controller.

Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform based in Chicago, IL, USA

More of the Same by LoVid [Start slowly with 1; close each popup window before launching the next] – More of the Same extends LoVid’s investigation of electrical irregularities and human interactions. After it loads copies of a single sound sample, fissures in the digital veneer are explored as the spoken communication is played back repeatedly. Though each instantiation of the speech is identical, physical constraints affect the timing. This allows the nature of the medium to peek through the cracks in the voices. Continue reading