Interesting idea by Richard Reigner

Denoising Field Recordings documents an early attempt at using denoising-techniques in a creative and compositional manner. Instead of utilising noise-reduction-algorithms for their intended purpose (the restoration of damaged audio signals), these processes are applied to various field recordings of trains, streets, swimminghalls and public transport. Due to the fact that these recordings consist entirely of noises this operation transforms the originals into an uncanny hybrid of newly introduced processing artefacts, occasional silence and sporadically audible traces of the original field recordings. What kind of sound-aesthetics can emerge while denoising field recordings? Which audible parameters are able to resist this audio-erasement-process? How are these traces comparable to the visual remanences of Robert Rauschenberg’s erasure of a De Kooning drawing?

Denoising Field Recordings is released as a limited edition of see-through 12″ vinyl with an intruiging white-on-white cover designed by Hans Renzler. The digital version is available exlusively at Zero” (not free - must register to download).

Click here or here to listen to some results of applying noise reduction algorithms to noise.

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Thomas Carter has yet another musical project called Minimal States, where he explores ambient soundscapes based on collected samples and field recordings.
‘Like A Photograph‘ is the first set of a trilogy that Thomas intends to release on test tube.

This first work is heavily based on samples taken from the well known Fm3 Buddha Machine and CC field recordings taken from the Quiet American website. With 15 minutes spent with each piece - ‘Circadian Rhythms’ and ‘Stereopsis’ - Minimal States embraces the full spectrum of landscape generative ambient in its true form.

The second album in the trilogy is ‘Liberty Hoax’. Firmly based in the urban, developed and political world, far from the timelessness of the forest and natural world of the first album, it examines the vast, densely populated spaces of the inner-city and the physical and cultural wastelands that surround it.

Moreover, the album is concerned with the place of the individual amongst the masses, and with the concept of identity itself in a world where companies and the State have ever-increasing powers to access and regulate personal data. The album questions whether personal freedom is still a priority for governments and legislators, or if it is now merely a glass wall, a façade, or a mirage that will vanish when approached

Download the first part here and the second here.

Excerpts:

• from Like A Photograph
  • Circadian Rhythms

• from Liberty Hoax
  • Memory Bank
  • Ruins

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In a radio programme called Save Our Sounds, the BBC asked their listeners to upload sound recordings from where they live in order to create an audio map of the world.

Here is the call:

Help to create a snapshot of the world in sound!

We’re really excited about Save Our Sounds, but we need your help to create an audio map of the world. We’re especially keen to preserve endangered sounds for future generations.

You can get involved by sending us sounds from where you live, and then listen your way around the world with our interactive map.

Please upload your sounds onto our map.

Find out more about Save Our Sounds and follow our recording tips in order to collect the best quality sound.

So get recording and take us all on a journey through sound!

In this page you can listen to audio fragments from the whole world.

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Besides the ocean audio stream, the Alfred Wegener Institute has many recordings of underwater acoustic phenomena and ice sounds that you can listen from this page.

Among this materials, there are some sounds caused by the icebergs whose origin is not yet known. Click the image.

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The hydrophones of German Alfred-Wegener-Institut transmitting live from the Ocean below the Antarctic Ice in the Atka Bay. This project is called PALAOA (PerenniAL Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean) that means “whale” in Hawaiian.

Click here for mp3 audio stream.

Please note, this transmission is not optimized for easy listening, but for scientific research. It is highly compressed (24kBit Ogg-Vorbis), so sound quality is far from perfect. Additionally, animal voices may be very faint. Amplifier settings are a compromise between picking up distant animals and not overdriving the system by nearby calving icebergs. So you might need to pump up the volume - but beware of sudden extreamely loud events.

There is also a webcam showing images like this one (click to enlarge)

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In the August and September 1977, two Voyager spacecraft were launched to fly by and explore the great gaseous planets of Jupiter and Saturn.
Voyager I, after successful encounters with the two, was sent out of the plane of the ecliptic to investigate interstellar space.
Voyager II’s charter later came to include not only encounters with Jupiter (1979) and Saturn (1981), but also appointments with Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989).
The Voyagers are controlled and their data returned through the Deep Space Network, a global spacecraft tracking and communications system operated by the JPL for NASA.

Although space is a virtual vacuum, this does not mean there is no sound in space. Sound does exist as electronic vibrations. The especially designed instruments on board of the Voyagers performed special experiments to pick up and record these vibrations, all within the range of human hearing.

These recordings come from a variety of different sound environments, e.g. the interaction of the solar wind with the planet’s magnetosphere; electromagnetic field noise; radio waves bouncing between the planet and the inner surface of the atmosphere, etc.

In 1993 NASA published excerpts from these recordings in a set of 5 CD (30 minutes each) called Symphonies of the Planets (now out of print).

This is the CD 1.

• Voyager recordings - Symphonies of the Planets 1

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The World Soundscape Project (WSP) was established as an educational and research group by R. Murray Schafer at Simon Fraser University during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It grew out of Schafer’s initial attempt to draw attention to the sonic environment through a course in noise pollution, as well as from his personal distaste for the more raucous aspects of Vancouver’s rapidly changing soundscape. This work resulted in two small educational booklets, The New Soundscape and The Book of Noise, plus a compendium of Canadian noise bylaws. However, the negative approach that noise pollution inevitably fosters suggested that a more positive approach had to be found, the first attempt being an extended essay by Schafer (in 1973) called ‘The Music of the Environment’, in which he describes examples of acoustic design, good and bad, drawing largely on examples from literature.

Schafer’s call for the establishment of the WSP was answered by a group of highly motivated young composers and students, and, supported by The Donner Canadian Foundation, the group embarked first on a detailed study of the immediate locale, published as The Vancouver Soundscape, and in 1973, on a cross-Canada recording tour by Bruce Davis and Peter Huse, the recordings from which formed the basis of the CBC Ideas radio series Soundscapes of Canada. In 1975, Schafer led a larger group on a European tour that included lectures and workshops in several major cities, and a research project that made detailed investigations of the soundscape of five villages, one in each of Sweden, Germany, Italy, France and Scotland. The tour completed the WSP’s analogue tape library which includes more than 300 tapes recorded in Canada and Europe with a stereo Nagra. The work also produced two publications, a narrative account of the trip called European Sound Diary and a detailed soundscape analysis called Five Village Soundscapes. Schafer’s definitive soundscape text, The Tuning of the World published in 1977 [trad. it. “Il Paesaggio Sonoro”, Ricordi/Unicopli], and Barry Truax’s reference work for acoustic and soundscape terminology, the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology published in 1978, completed the publication phase of the original project.

Excerpts from The Vancouver Soundscape 1973:

• 01 - Ocean Sounds
• 03 - Entrance to the Harbour

The WSP group at SFU, 1973; left to right: R. M. Schafer, Bruce Davis, Peter Huse, Barry Truax, Howard Broomfield

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Walter De Maria (nato ad Albany, in California, nel 1935) è uno dei principali esponenti della corrente artistica detta Land Art alla quale è passato dopo un’iniziale esperienza di scultore nell’ambito della Minimal Art (alcune sue opere di questo periodo, come “Balldrop” del 1961, si trovano al Guggenheim Museum di New York).

Tra gli anni ‘60 e ‘70 inizia a intervenire direttamente sul territorio con le sue monumentali earth sculptures: nel 1968, per esempio, disegna con la calce delle linee parallele all’interno del Mojave Desert, in California, mentre nel 1977, in occasione di documenta, la grande rassegna di arte contemporanea che si svolge a Kassel, in Germania, ogni cinque anni, fa penetrare nel terreno un’asta metallica per un chilometro.

La sua opera più famosa, però, rimane senza dubbio “The Lightning Field” (1977): in questa monumentale installazione posta in un angolo remoto del deserto del New Mexico De Maria cerca la complicità della natura per mettere in scena un evento sempre straordinario. Dopo aver conficcato in verticale nel terreno 400 pali metallici appuntiti su un’area di circa 3 chilometri quadrati, ne sfrutta l’effetto-parafulmine durante i temporali raccogliendo e moltiplicando la potenza dei fulmini a servizio di un grandioso spettacolo di luce (nell’immagine).
[da Wikipedia]

Non tutti sanno, però, che De Maria ha anche firmato alcune opere sonore in cui lui stesso suona la batteria e la mixa con field recording, ora disponibili su UbuWeb.

Walter De Maria

• Ocean Music (1968)
• Cricket Music (1964)

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Sempre nel campo del field recording, ecco Sounds of the Everglades, una cassetta di circa 30 minuti registrata nelle paludi della Florida. Nel 1990 era in vendita a $3.99.

• Sounds of the Everglades: streaming audio, mp3

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Il titolo dice tutto. Quello che vi propongo oggi è un esempio di field recording che risale al 1986.

Si tratta di una registrazione di 22 minuti, effettuata in una foresta tropicale (dai suoni si direbbe localizzata in America del Sud, prob. Brasile), distribuita negli anni ‘80 su cassetta da Moods Gateway Recording. Nessun trattamento, né montaggio sembra essere stato fatto. La qualità è quella dei registratori portatili a nastro dell’epoca, comunque buona, qui digitalizzata e convertita in mp3 a 128 kbps.

La varietà dei suoni e delle loro combinazioni è fantastica. La potete ascoltare in streaming o scaricare in mp3 (att.ne: è circa 21 Mb).

• Tropical Rain Forest: streaming audio, mp3.

NB: attualmente esistono vari cd con questo titolo disponibili via internet. La registrazione non è questa. Questa non è più in distribuzione. Spesso quelle attuali sono registrazioni di sottofondo con musichetta applicata sopra, oppure sono divise in brani (uccelli, animali vari, indigeni, etc). Qui, invece, c’è la registrazione della foresta, pura e semplice, con la pioggia che va e viene, per 22 minuti.

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