Vertical Studies at Sonic Acts

The theme for this year’s biannual Sonic Acts festival (23-26 February, Amsterdam) is “The Noise of Being”. The festival generally focuses on contemporary and historical developments within art, music, science and technology. Over the last decade, the festival’s focus has shifted more and more from the universe to planet earth. This edition, it hits a little closer to home, speculating on the strange and anxious state of being human.

One of the commissioned works this year is the collaboration between Espen Sommer Eide and Signe Lidén. The two have worked together in the past during Sonic Acts’ Dark Ecology programme, recreating the historic soundscapes of the Russian settlement Nikel in the work “Altitude and History”. Through working with the local communities, they brought back the sound of wood being chopped, the lighting of the morning stoves, the sounds of animals and birds in the forest, which has since been burnt away. Vertical Studies builds upon this work.

For Vertical Studies, they reimagined the beautiful water tower in the Dutch settlement Sint Jansklooster into a vertical field-lab, where Eide and Lidén are introducing their ongoing investigations into connections between sound, history, wind and weather. For this, they use several specially constructed instruments, created for the recording and playback of sounds in the vertical dimension. By recording sounds using instruments with strings resonating with certain wind speeds, they created an archive of sounds of wind at various heights.

By using this material in the 46m high water tower, they are able to let the audience experience the effect of sounds at different altitudes in different ways, creating a kind of concert hall for vertically recorded sound. It’s quite the trip from Amsterdam (a 1.5 hour bus drive), but the building alone is already worth it, and to hear the ongoing research of Eide and Lidén in this unique space is quite the experience. It can take quite some time to get used to the space- I kept slowly going up and down the stairs, trying to find the right position to be able to fully take in all of the interventions in the space, which is logical with a piece in a new context like this. The artists use various ways of making the space resonate beautifully: by using glass resonators and very physical low resonating tones, they create a very diegetic work consisting of their archive of sounds. While the piece is about using the sounds recorded at different heights, the piece is also very much about the beautiful architecture of the water tower itself.

“Vertical Studies” can be visited during the upcoming Sonic Acts festival, which is from the 23rd until the 26th of February in Amsterdam. The excursion leaves on the 23rd from Amsterdam, at 12PM and 02PM. The installation in the water tower can also be visited on 4, 11, 18 and 25 February. Have a look at the website for more information.

Looking Forward: Sound during the Dutch Design Week

It’s already October, and that means the Dutch Design Week is almost upon us. During this nine-day event, the best of Dutch design is exhibited, and there are lots of workshops, seminars and parties to attend.

For a sound artist, the DDW used to be quite uninteresting. Last year, experience designers Arvid Jense and Marie Caye thought up Bizarre Sound Creatures: an exhibition space for sound art creations in the heart of the DDW.

This year, Bizarre Sound Creatures is back with another edition. Amongst the installations exhibited are the Dato Duo, the Pigstrument, but also other exciting interactive installations. See an impression of last year’s edition below:

Additionally, I am involved in organizing a small symposium on sound design for the everyday life, together with other institutions, which is being organized at the Bizarre Sound Creatures venue as well. We hope this will grow, and will become a larger symposium next year.

Next to Bizarre Sound Creatures, artist duo Strijbos & van Rijswijk is also curating a selection of interactive sound works that can be experienced at the DDW Music Lab. It’s safe to say that sound in design is becoming a hot topic. Now let’s just hope the boundaries between disciplines will blur, and different designers will work together towards a world where things not only look and feel better, but also sound more fitting.

Pigstrument

Marie Caye is a French design researcher, experience designer and artist who’s currently studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. For one of her latest projects, the Pigstrument, she’s researching what the possible musical culture of pigs could be.

To know what sort of music culture and instrument would fit the pig way of life, she spent a lot of time finding out what it is like to be a pig. She made a Pig Empathy Suit to be able to live between pigs for a day. From their farmer, Marie found out that the pigs seemed to enjoy spitting stones on the metal fences because of the sound it created. To get the most out of the instrument she worked together with experience designer Arvid Jense, who sound designed the tubular bells on the instrument.

The instrument Marie created seems a logical choice: it can tumble and fall over and will still function, is suited for multiple “players”, and doesn’t rely on anything electronic. On her blog she writes, early on in the project: “One big question is, how to make the instrument affordances suited to pig behavior? I have seen that they will push relentlessly any object. I was thinking of trying to prevent the object to be turned around by pigs when my teacher Wieteke pointed out, it’s better to use this attitude of the pig in the way of playing the instrument.” I think the fact Marie documented her process so well adds to the viability of the project.

I like Marie’s idea to actually try and live like you’re in the skin of another species, to experience what might be an ideal music instrument. Her research blog got me interested in music for cats, “virtual reality” free range chickens and more. Very interesting and mostly untapped design areas. We might never know what the pigs actually think of it, although looking at the footage, it seems like they really enjoy it.

Dato Duo

At Everyday Listening, we try not to get distracted by fancy looking gadgets. We do however, love things that are playful. The Dato DUO is a small synthesizer, simple enough to be used by kids. And while the act of making electronic music can be quite lonely experience, the Dato DUO is aimed at playing with two people.

The DUO has two sides, one with a simple sequencer and pentatonic keyboard, and one with a filter and a waveform. This creates a way to sculpt the sound as a duo: a very original way of playing together!

What Dato have done in a very smart way, is tweak the playable parameters in a smart way so there’s still a lot of freedom, but it will never sound really unattractive. An interesting approach for an interesting and difficult target audience. They’re doing a Kickstarter-campaign at the moment.

Noids

For his final bachelor project Noids, interaction designer Cas Zeegers created four small rhythmical instruments, small entities creating different patterns.

From a research perspective, Zeegers was interested in making the sound source more intuitive. Noids does this by simply showing how sound is physically produced by it’s mechanical movement. Being able to see the sound being created strengthens both the audio- as well as the visual aspect in the perception of the viewer.

The musician or interaction can change the speed of the patterns create a composition. The four patterns are all different, shifting over each other, creating polyrhythms. During the performance, the audience is invited to explore the space where the instruments are set up. Because the instruments have their own rhythm and movement, the audience can start to recognize patterns and see how a certain sound is created.

Neo

During the Dutch Design Week that’s on this week in Eindhoven (Netherlands), designers exhibit their latest works. Very often, there’s also newly graduated students present. Such as Lola Gielen, who graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven this year with her instrument Neo.

Gielen calls Neo “A music instrument everybody can play”, and is designed out of her own will to be able to play an instrument, but getting fed up with practicing or simply not having the time for it. I myself, being a sound artist/designer, can definitely relate to this. Often it is just easier to create or code the tool that you need to fulfill your needs.

Neo is a circular sequencer that combines the tactile, sensory experience of making music with a time-based sequencer-like design. Neo loops over the circular matrix, playing notes when there’s a marble, not unlike pins on a barrel organ. Furthermore Gielen created a collection of external modules, that you can influence while the sound is playing, creating a tactile, interactive sequencer. Inside, there’s a Raspberry Pi running Python scripts getting in the sensor data, converting it to OSC and sending it to a Puredata patch, creating the sound.

Five Sound Questions to Lesley Flanigan

Lesley Flanigan is an experimental electronic musician living in New York City. Inspired by the physicality of sound, she builds her own instruments. Performing these instruments alongside traditional instrumentation that often includes her own voice, she creates a kind of physical electronic music. In her two-day “Residue” performance in the Guggenheim (below), she performs on minimal electronic instruments built from speakers and microphones. Periodically Flanigan enters the room and adds new elements to the system. As the textures react and build on each other, the space reverberates with subtle sonic imperfections, creating a physical sense to the sound in the space.

I found out about Lesley as she is playing some gigs in Europe, alongside sound artist Tristan Perich (whose Microtonal Wall we’ve featured before). One of them being the Fluister concert series in The Hague, the Netherlands on April 3rd. Furthermore they’ll be playing France, Switzerland and Germany as well in the coming days. Check out her website for more dates.

1. What sound from your childhood made the most impression on you?

First, is the sound of my mother’s voice resonating within her body. This is a sound I would hear with my ear was pressed to her chest as she sang or read to me. Her voice was so warm, like a blanket. Second, is the sound of my own voice. There was a hallway in my childhood home that had a natural reverb, and I used to sing in that space when no one was home. It was not a large space, but when I sang, my voice would soar and fill the air like I was in a cathedral. 

2. How do you listen to the world around you?

When I actively listen, I am usually taking a long walk outside or sitting with my eyes shut. 

3. Which place in the world do you favor for its sound?

Oddly, when I think of places that I favor for sound, they are all very quiet places… where sound is almost, but not entirely, absent. 

4. How could we make sound improve our lives?

I think it’s about listening.  I feel that when we take time to truly listen — to actively engage in listening to another person, to music, to sounds in nature and in cities, to all the many sounds in world around us — we give ourselves time to be present in our lives. That’s very meaningful to me.

5. What sound would you like to wake up to?

Ocean waves. Birds. Trees blowing in the wind. My husband and daughter laughing. 

Thanks Lesley! See answers by other artists in the Five Sound Questions section, and be sure to check her out on one of her tour dates.

Ruratae

Always wanted to play with virtual physics-based objects in a playful way? Andrew Stewart Allen is a programmer, researcher and composer based in San Diego. His recent work is mainly focused on researching and programming physically-informed real-time interactive audio systems. His system Ruratae, which he also wrote his dissertation on, is exactly this. Ruratae is a collaboration of him with visual artist Susanna Var, who created the unique visual style and UI.

For some reason, procedural audio is still not widely used. In software and games, the same sample is often loaded and played, making for quite static behaviour. Procedural audio can make a simple interaction seem like a living, breathing thing, even if it’s just another tidbit of code. George Lucas, Danny Boyle, etcetera, they’ve all been known to say that sound is a very important part of a film. In interactive media, interactive audio has been scarce, which is a shame. The effect is very clear in Ruratae, where the smallest change makes for a totally different sonic beast!

People like Drew are pushing the boundaries and opening up lots of new possibilities with something like Ruratae. Being able to create your own instrument from scratch in a virtual world, according to physical rules, with no DSP knowledge whatsoever is a very interesting new take on audio in games and other software. If you’re a Windows user, you can try out Ruratae yourself!

As Drew is not only a technical guy but also a composer, we’ve invited him for the Five Sound Questions next week!

Carileon

On Everyday Listening we hardly every post about novel instruments. I don’t exactly know why. Is it because most instruments are not as aesthetically pleasing to the eye? Do they not get documented that well?

In any case, this half-instrument, half-installation is definitely pleasing to the eye. New York-based sound artist Sebastien Leon created the Carileon, which can be played by the wind and a performer simultaneously. In the video you see multi-instrumentalist Loup Barrow (who plays some awesomely strange instruments) with the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop.

Some say wind chimes are the most basic form of generative music. In this installation, the generative nature and performance come together, which I think is quite interesting.

FS/Partial

Teaching Music Technology brings back additive synthesis, year by year. For some students the concept of every harmonic sound being a multitude of frequencies is hard to grasp. Visualizing it is always a good way of crarifying things. FS/Partial would come in handy during those lessons. 

FS/Partial is an instrument created by Dogo Tudela and is meant as a visual way to perform additive synthesis in live contexts. Eight partials can be controlled by the user, by pushing the columns up and down, increasing and decreasing the volume of the sine waves: