Japanese artist Mamoru creates ‘sound art’ by using normal, everyday objects and placing them in an abnormal situation. He calls these art works “Etudes”. 

Mamoru invites his audience to deeply listen to what is around them. In one piece the audience is asked to eat together with the artist, thus becoming part of the artwork itself. A great example of ‘Everyday Listening’. 

For Etude No.13 we listen to ice melting. Ice cubes are hung from the ceiling, and we hear the dripping of the ice melting. Next to that the sound of melting water in small glass tubes filled with frozen water is amplified by even smaller glass funnels. There is a sound example on Mamoru’s website.

condemned_bulbes is a sound and light installation created by digital creation studio artificiel. The installation was first exposed in 2003 but is still shown at festivals around the globe.

The installation is made of 1000W incandescent light bulbs, controlled by a custom made light dimmer that can bring the bulbs in "a state of excitation that is clearly audible and controllable". I especially like the crackling sound in between the noisy parts.

What we hear and what we see are equally important, that is my opinion. Even while watching a movie, the right sound and the right music at the right moment can make us cry or make us laugh.

Sound artist Janek Schaefer creates sound installations that not only sound great but also look wonderful. Even the color and intensity of the light is carefully chosen.

Extended play is a very personal conceptual sound installation in which the unsynchronized sound of nine vintage turn tables is combined. The concept is best described by the artist himself. To hear the story behind Extended Play, watch the video on his website.

You can visit a retrospective of Schaefer's sound based work at the Bluecoat gallery, Liverpool, until January 17th, 2010.

Three Piece is a three piece 'band' - two guitars and a bass guitar. The sound is generated by moving them around, so the air gently plays the strings of the instruments. The speaker is located on the other end of the installation. 

Visitors are encouraged to walk between the instruments (but don't come too close to the moving arms!). The sound of this installation created by Stephen Conford can best be described as a haunting soundscape.

(via Noise for Airports)

Staalhemel (steel sky) is an interactive installation created by Christoph de Boeck. Using a wireless device for capturing brain waves, the participants brain activity influences the activity of the installation.

The steel sky itself is made up of 80 steel plates, and the sound is generated by pins hammering on the plates. I guess the most interesting experiment would be to try to keep the installation as quiet as possible.

As we have seen previously, we can use our old tapes to weave a fabric. In Analogue Tape Glove v1 though, the tape is used in an interactive sound installation. Using a tape head embedded in a glove, participants can explore the recordings on the randomly selected tapes. 

The sound installation is created by artists who call themselves Signal To Noise. It brings back memories from the days before we could all carry a complete music studio under our arm. A nice reminder of how fast technology evolves.

The vertical movement of the fishes in these five aquariums is captured by a video camera and this data is used to influence the sounds we hear. So in this sound installations it is the fishes who conduct the music.

Quintetto is an installation by Quiet Ensemble in collaboration with Aesop Studio. They attempt to reveal what they call "invisible concerts of everyday life". As the fishes (most probably) do not know what their movement results in, the live concert they create will never be exactly the same.

After sharing Woodworms I with you, I have to show you this one too. In Compilation Video 1.0 Swiss artist Zimoun shows us a nice selection of his wonderful, aesthetic sound installations and sculptures.  

I love the way these constantly moving installations seem to come alive, clumsy and mechanical. The sonic result isn't earth shattering, but the noise created by multiplication of one tiny machine is impressive!

Woodworms I is a sound installation in which we can listen to the live sound of woodworms in a piece of wood. Swiss artist Zimoun created this piece of art.

I like the contradiction between what we see - a lifeless chunk of wood in a motionless setting - and what we hear - a hard working army of worms, making their way through the tough wood.

A "self-organizing evolutionary musical organism", that's how the makers of Bacterial Orchestra define this sound installation. The cells in this organism are made of speakers and microphones, listening to the sounds that are surrounding them.

Visitors interact with Bacterial Orchestra by simply making a sound. I like the idea of having a system that takes your input and gives it back in a new form. The installation is created by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke.

Soundspace Yogya is a sound installation by Cilia Erens. She creates sound art without processing and manipulating the sounds. Recordings of Yogyakarta are filtered and selected to create the content for this installation.

There's no preview of the sounds available, so I don't know what it sounds like. It was the image that caught my attention. These listening stations look wonderful. Wouldn't it be great to find them on your way, to just stick your head in one, let the sound surround you and leave the real world for a while?

It's great to see how an artists work can be re-discovered through the internet. Take for example this one: Sound Looking by Kim Kichul. I wasn't there at the exhibition, but since it was uploaded to YouTube yesterday, it's again presented to a large audience, even though it would have been more impressive when seen live.

Sound Looking creates another visible representation of sound, but other than Cylinder, it shows us what happens in real time in stead of a static snapshot. We all know sound is basically moving air, but it's quite fascinating to see what really happens!

Does your Facebook follower count or the amount of Twitter messages you receive influence your mood? It does for Cybraphon, an interactive sound installation by Edinburgh-based artist collective FOUND.

Cybraphon is like a mechanic band in a closet which plays everything between very sad and very happy music, depending on its ‘mood’. This mood is determined by things like Facebook friends, or website visitors.

Cybraphon is an interesting attempt to link the physical with the online world through music. It actually sounds quite nice! What I do miss is a live stream of some kind which shows the effect of the online activities.

Cybraphon will be unveiled at the Edinburgh Arts Festival today, 5 August 2009. Here are some demos of the music it plays: