"Myconnect" by Saša Spačal

Myconnect is an interspecies connector that emerged as an aspiration to enable human beings to transgress their own species and connect with them on perceptive and physiological level. By entering the installation one is in becoming with the otherness, another multiplicity i.e. the fungal mycelium.

Saša Spačal is a media artist from Ljubljana, Slovenia. website

Bastl Rack: Anything to Modular

Now it is coming official! We are going to make some eurorack modules, but not ordinary ones. The exact specifications of the modules still remain a little secret. The engineering behind the modules which are coming soon into our production is influenced by the diploma project of our main researcher Václav Peloušek: Basic research in translating biological, mechanical and chemical principles into electronic musical instrument language and vice versa. This was done at Art & Science department of Univeversity of Applied Arts Vienna. Along with the prototypes of various translators across real world principles and modular synthesizer using CV to communicate, brief theoretical study was conducted.

website | artist

Data Violin by glui

This is a MIDI-controlled music robot. While labelled as a violin it is actually a hybrid instrument, with its viola body, but guitar-like frets, and a circular bow as in a hurdy-gurdy.

Martin Riches has been building similar instruments for a long time, but we decided to team up on this one in order to improve upon the control electronics and software design. All solenoids and motors have now continuous control where separate envelopes can be assigned to all elements at a high temporal resolution, allowing for refined articulation.

website

noids by Cas Zeegers

noids is a collection of rhythmic instruments placed throughout a room. Each instrument has its own rhythm, sound and movement. Together they create a composition, with the room as their sound box. By playing with the phases and tasks of the four instruments, the musician is able to create a composition, like a drummer playing his drums. During his performance, the audience is invited to walk through the room and encounter with the music composed by the musician. Because the instruments are scattered through the space, the audience is able to engage and recognize the different layers, patterns and tasks of the rhythmic phase music – by simply moving through space.

website

Mechanical Techno by Graham Dunning

Originally a studio project for making recordings, I now also perform live using the Mechanical Techno method. Several looping records spin on the same axle, ensuring they stay approximately in time with each other. I layer up locked groove records, audio triggers to analogue sytnhs, mechanically played percussion such as a cowbell or a cymbal, and mechanically triggered drum machines. I take all these inputs and perform a live dub, mixing down to two channels live in one take.

Lee Scratch Perry described Dub as "the ghost in me coming out" – Using Mechanical Techno set-ups I aim to release the Ghost in the Machine. Each set-up is unique. The technique is inherently clumsy and delicate, leading to frequent and multiple mistakes and accidents. The chance elements and unpredictable aspects lead to compositions I would never think to deliberately make.

website

Ear Accessory workshop by SounDoesnTravel

Ear Accessories, a workshop for HEAD Geneva by Antoine Bertin (sound artist) and Hélène Combal-Weiss (Material and Visual Designer) from SounDoesnTravel (a sound-driven creative studio).

website

New metamaterial manipulates sound

Materials science is advancing in leaps and bounds, creating what was previously impossible.

Metamaterials are simply materials that have been engineered to exhibit properties that are not found in nature. In this case, the structural design of the metamaterial gives it qualities that make it a “hyperbolic” metamaterial. This means that it interacts with acoustic waves in two different ways. From one direction, the metamaterial exhibits a positive density and interacts with acoustic waves normally – just like air. But from a perpendicular direction, the metamaterial exhibits a negative density in terms of how it interacts with sound. This effectively makes acoustic waves bend at angles that are the exact opposite of what basic physics would tell you to expect.

article | paper

"The sound of empty space" by Adam Basanta

The sound of empty space explores relationships between microphones, speakers, and surrounding acoustic environments through controlled, self-generating microphone feedback.

Amplifying and aestheticizing the acoustic inactivity between technological "inputs" and "outputs" - stand-ins for their corporeal correlates, the ear and mouth - the notion of a causal sound producing object is challenged, and questions are posed as to the status of the "amplified".

By building flawed technological systems and nullifying their intended potential for communication, the ear is turned towards the empty space between components; to the unique configurations of each amplifying assemblage.

In each of the interrelated works - pieces which are equal parts banal, inventive, and absurd - sound is revealed not as a distinct object or autonomous event, but rather as a mutable product of interdependent networks of physical, cultural and economic relations.

"Variation, Piscines" by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot

An installation in Sao Paulo (2009).

Nebulae by qu-bit

Nebulæ is a granular sample player/DSP platform in the Eurorack modular synthesizer format. It uses sound files as the source material for creating loops, melodies, granular clouds, drones, pads and otherworldy textures. Ships with a flash drive containing a copyright free sample library recorded and mastered specifically for Nebulæ.

The module is also capable of running Csound and Pure Data files. An expansive library of Csound and Pure Data instruments are available for download with more constantly being added.

website

"Sound Cactus" by Adrienne Adar

Adar, who lives and works in LA, studied photography and new media in New York and has been exhibiting her work and curating that of others across the world in a huge range of shows ever since. By connecting them to small speakers, Adar transforms potted cacti and succulents into musical instruments that release pops, crackles, beats and strums when touched by human hands. The Sonic Succulents not only invite people to touch the spines of cacti, but also to imagine the silent sounds the plants are making when being caressed and question our audio visual and sensory relationship with plant-life. "By using sound to further activate the plant's alive qualities, our relationship to them is heightened," Adar says. "I have constructed a sensor that translates the touching of a plant into being able to hear what it is physically feeling on the inside when it is being touched or affected by wind, rather than what we usually hear when we hear leaves rustle in the wind for example."

website

Bird automaton (1556) by Karl Griesbaum

Bird automaton (1556), made by Karl Griesbaum. Courtesy Douglas-Fisher of London.

Bird automaton (1890) by Blaise Bontems

Bird automaton (1890), made in Paris by Blaise Bontems. Refurbished by Michael Start at The House of Automata.

Sound / Image colloquium

Michel Chion is the special guest at the FREE Sound / Image colloquium at Greenwich, London on Saturday 7 November 2015.

The Sound / Image colloquium is interested in exploring the relationships between sounds and images, and the images which sounds can construct by themselves. Through a series of complementary strands – talks, screenings, loudspeaker orchestra concerts – we will bring together artists and experts to investigate sound and sound-image phenomena.

website

"Music from Nature" by Diego Stocco

To celebrate Earth Day 2012 Burt's Bees asked me to create a video performance in the style of my Music from a Tree. To expand the concept I also included as "instruments" some of the ingredients used in their products, like honey, almonds, rice, and coconuts; also bees had a musical role in this piece. I performed the whole composition by playing these natural elements, no synthesizers, samplers or additional sounds have been used.

Diego Stocco is a California-based sound designer and composer.

The Macaulay Library - video too

The Macaulay Library is the world's largest archive of animal sounds. The archive includes more than 175,000 audio recordings covering 75 percent of the world's bird species, with an ever increasing numbers of insect, fish, frog, and mammal recordings as well. The more recently established video archive includes over 50,000 clips representing over 3,500 species.

That's right, this wonderful bioacoustics resource at Cornell has video as well as audio. Click through the above to see the Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas), recorded off Hawaii.

Scanning Electron Microscope of vinyl being played

There's a short GIF of a record being played making its rounds on social media. This is the full-length video showing how the Scanning Electron Microscope image was made. It's extraordinarily well explained and fascinating!

This also contains an explanation of a Capacitance Electronic Disc, an incredibly obscure analogue video playback format, released by RCA in 1981.

Earth Return Distortion (ERD) module

ERD/ERD puts a small block of forest earth into the Eurorack circuit, allowing control and audio signals to be distorted and amplified as they pass through the earth block. It can be viewed in conventional terms as an earth conditioned VCA (amplification factor by knob control or CV) and distortion. Local electrical and atmospheric signals can condition and distort the earth signal. Two jack connections are also included, optionally switching out the local earth block in favour of routing through local earth piles and forest sites. Discounts are available in return for earth samples (eg. Edgar Allen Poe earth from Baltimore, vampire earth from Transylvania or Whitby).

It sold out at 165 Euro. Details and other modular components here.

"Tipping Point" by Kathy Hinde

Tipping Point invites us to consider our relationship with water, and the necessity of balancing how we use the world’s water resources. This audio-visual installation explores the sonic complexities and possibilities of combining glass vessels with shifting water levels. Sound tones are produced live via a microphone that feeds back inside each glass vessel. As the water levels change, the feedback is tuned to different pitches based on the resonant frequency of the remaining space in each glass vessel. The work forms both a sound sculpture and the basis of a live performance.

This project is a collaboration with John Rowden at the Scientific Glass Workshop in the School of Physics at the University of Bristol with software designed by Matthew Olden.

More information on Hinde's website.

"Rawr! A Study in Sonic Skulls" by Courtney Brown and Sharif Razzaque

What did dinosaurs sound like? Maybe we can find out by hollowing out their skull and blowing into it. This project got an Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica 2015 in the category of "Digital Musics & Sound Art"