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.

When I was a student, there was cats on my house. I remember that, when listening to music, sometimes I observed their behavior and try to imagine their perception of the sounds and the meaning of the music for them.

I also remember that sometimes they moved a paw in front of the speaker. Not on the speaker, but in front of it, about half meter distant (speakers was on the floor), like trying to touch something.

Now I have no cats, so I can’t test it. But if someone could try and refer, it should be interesting. The songs are written in three different styles - each song style is designed to convey and evoke a particular mood. Read more here.

Listen to samples:

• Spook’s Ditty
• Cozmo’s Air
• Rusty’s Ballad

The collection is here and is broken into four categories:

• Interviews & Profiles
• Readings
• Eulogies & Remembrances
• ‘Brief Interviews’ Staged Readings

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Here is the String Quartet No. 2 [1998] played by the Kairos Quartett.
Thanks to NewMusicXX channel on You Tube.

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

To achieve the striking effect of the illuminated man, an original light suit was constructed using hundreds of feet of high-voltage LED rope lights and a translucent nylon outer shell. Michael Lambermont, executive producer at Alter Ego in Toronto, oversaw the effects-heavy post-production process, which included weeks of extensive rotoscoping and compositing in the facility’s two Flame suites, plus a final colour grade, once the effects were complete. Geoff Ashenhurst, editor at Stealing Time, was charged with bringing the thousands of digital stills to life with director Bensimon.

The joint project of Google and the Russian Railways lets you take a trip along the famous route and see Baikal, Khekhtsirsky range, Barguzin mountains, Yenisei river and many other picturesque places of Russia without leaving your house. Videos are available at very high resolution, until 1080 points.

During the trip, you can enjoy Russian classic literature, brilliant images and fascinating stories about the most attractive sites on the route.

Let’s go!

Morton Feldman’s elegant chamber work dedicated to the painter “De Kooning” and scored for horn, percussion, piano, violin, and cello was composed in 1963.

After composing works in the early 1950’s that were in graphic notation and left most of the musical parameters (pitch, duration, timbre, event occurence) to the discretion of the performers, Feldman became dissatisfied with the result because although this manner of composing freed the sounds it also freed the kind of subjective expression of the performers that could not create the kind of pure sound-making that Feldman envisioned.

He briefly returned to strictly notated works, found these too confining, and then created works in which most of the parameters were given except for duration and, consequently, coordination among the parts (”The O’Hara Songs” [1962], “For Franz Kline” [1962]). Following this, Feldman began to create works, like “De Kooning”, “False Relationships and the Extended Ending” (1968) and others, which alternate fully determined and indeterminate sections within the same work.

In “De Kooning”, there are coordinated chords (verticalities) and isolated events (single tones and intervals … verticalities stretched out horizontally or melodically) of a duration determined by the performers. The sequence of these single events is given however and players must enter before the last event has died out. These open sequences alternate with traditionally notated measures of rest with exact metronome markings, treating sound and silence in equivalent importance.

The total duration of “De Kooning” is open but tends to be between 14 and 1/2 minutes and 16 minutes. Tiny bells, tubular bells, and vibraphone are mixed with high piano tones and icy string harmonics creating a crystalline texture, that contrasts with a more muted texture of low tympani and bass and tenor drum rolls, pizzicati, low cello tones, low vibraphone notes, lower piano aggregates and sustained horn pitches. The materials are limited to a few gestures on each instrument and create “identities” of a sort (for example, the repeated “foghorn”-like horn notes, the percussion rolls, and so on) that can easily be followed by the ear. The variety of timbre combinations is astonishing and the tempo of their unfolding gives the listeners plenty of time to appreciate their quality. No particular programme is intended, but the changing timbres may spontaneous stimulate imagery for the listener. Or, for another listener, the joy may simply be in sheer richness of the sonic experience, for the sounds themselves.

[”Blue” Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide]

It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s that I stay with the problem longer.

[Albert Einstein]

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)

I know that it’s a little away from here, but see this page for drawing examples with video and audio.

Listen to Polytope de Cluny.

According to Macmillan, this will cut the price of new textbooks.

From Open Culture

The Wet Ink Ensemble is a New York-based new music collective. Our mission is to present innovative programs of contemporary music, with a focus on creating, promoting, and organizing adventurous American music.

Pendulum V - Alex Mincek - Wet Ink Ensemble from Wet Ink Ensemble on Vimeo.

A mio modesto avviso, qui qualcun’altro deve morire se proprio non riesce ad astenersi…

Vogliamo ricominciare a prendere le cose un po’ seriamente, di qualsiasi cosa si tratti?
“Sì, lo so che non so cantare, ma vado a sanremo”.
“Sì, lo so che non so amministrare, ma faccio il politico”.

Ma il termine “etica” dice qualcosa a ’sta gente? Diamoci tutti una rinfrescata qui su wikipedia (bastano le prime righe)

E poi rivitalizziamo il vecchio slogan da stadio “de-vi mo-riii-re!”. Non sarà corretto, ma…

Video segnalato da Cristina

La vicenda è ben nota agli addetti ai lavori (o almeno dovrebbe esserlo), ma vale la pena di riassumerla. In breve, Giacinto Scelsi (1905 - 1988), ormai riconosciuto come uno dei più importanti compositori contemporanei e anticipatore sia della minimal music che dello spettralismo (con i famosi Quattro pezzi per orchestra su una nota sola del 1959), in realtà non ha mai scritto materialmente una nota. Il suo lavoro, invece, consisteva nel registrare su nastro l’essenza delle proprie idee musicali eseguendole (spesso improvvisando) sull’ondiola (nome originale ondioline), una tastiera elettronica inventata dal francese Jenny, in grado di produrre anche quarti e ottavi di tono.

I nastri venivano poi passati a dei trascrittori che, in concerto con il compositore, trascrivevano il materiale su pentagramma, curando anche l’orchestrazione. Il principale fra costoro fu Vieri Tosatti (1920 - 1999) che, in verità, dopo la morte di Scelsi, creò anche una polemica con la dichiarazione “Scelsi c’est moi”, ma il cui contributo passò rapidamente in secondo piano.

E invece, secondo gli studi e i ricordi di Sciannameo, che fu violinista nel quartetto che curò la prima esecuzione dei brani orchestrati da Tosatti per questo organico, dovrebbe essere rivalutato perché il suo sodalizio trentennale con Scelsi lo pone in una posizione che va sicuramente al di là di quella del semplice trascrittore, al punto che molti critici che osannano la genialità sonora di Scelsi, dovrebbero invece ricordare che il “rendering audio” dei lavori di Scelsi è in gran parte opera di Tosatti, essendo quest’ultimo “l’arrangiatore” che ha materialmente orchestrato il materiale di base.

In realtà, anche secondo me, è giusto affermare che i nastri originali andrebbero stampati e diffusi (mi dicono sia in corso un lavoro di catalogazione e “pulitura” del suddetto materiale da parte della Fondazione Scelsi) perché sono proprio questi ad essere storicamente testimoni dell’idea originale di Scelsi, mentre la musica stampata dovrebbe essere considerata come una “trascrizione approvata dal compositore”.

Ma mi chiedo anche se sia proprio così. Il problema è: in che misura i nastri sono depositari dell’idea compositiva? Rappresentano la composizione in quanto unica testimonianza originale, oppure sono soltanto un ulteriore elemento di passaggio verso la formalizzazione di una idea musicale?

Sciannameo ha portato alla luce una corrispondenza risalente agli anni ‘30 fra Scelsi e Walter Kline (descritto spesso come allievo di Schoenberg, ma, secondo Sciannameo, amico di Schoenberg, forse allievo di Berg) che testimonia come l’impostazione compositiva di Scelsi sia stata da sempre un po’ particolare, basata com’era sulla produzione di una idea musicale, lasciando a dei collaboratori il compito di orchestrare e a volte anche di sviluppare il concetto originario.

Questo metodo di lavoro, forse derivante anche dalla condizione aristocratica di Giacinto Scelsi, a mio avviso non ne sminuisce la genialità, ma induce a riflettere sulla genesi e sulla effettiva paternità dell’opera d’arte che, nella tradizione occidentale, è considerata un prodotto del tutto individuale, mentre spesso (e attualmente sempre di più) si rivela essere il prodotto dell’interazione di più di una mente.

Personalmente, devo aggiungere che, alla fine, quello che mi dispiace un po’ in questa vicenda è proprio il fatto che, a causa di un pregiudizio legato alla tradizione individualistica della composizione, il sodalizio Scelsi - Tosatti sia stato tenuto nascosto per molto tempo e sia ancora fonte di studi e polemiche, mentre, secondo me, sarebbe stato vissuto molto meglio dai protagonisti (soprattutto da Tosatti) se fosse stato trasparente e socialmente accettato come una collaborazione perfettamente normale fra due persone, ognuno con il proprio ruolo.

A side effect is that only the legitimate customers can see the FBI warnings.

The same (or worse) happens with the games. I bough a PC game to play on the train (I move 2/3 days a week) and I must carry the original CD-Rom with me to start the game, at high risk.

Of course the pirated copy starts without any CD. The customer pay to buy the game and must suffer all the annoyances. A pirate don’t pay and has no problems. It’s a no win situation…

Neil Dawson’s Horizons, made of welded steel, is an imposing 15m high and 36m long.

Anish Kapoor’s Untitled is 25m long, 8m high and made of mild steel tube and tensioned fabric.

Andy Goldsworthy’s Arches was created in 2005. It is partly submerged at high tide. It consists of 11 5m-high sandstone arches.

George Rickey’s Column of Four Squares Gyratory III is 15m high.

Richard Serra’s 257m-long, 6m-high Te Tuhirangi looks delicate from above, but up close become as imposing as the wall of a full dam.

From The Australian

NB: dovete cliccare play due volte perché prima appare la pubblicità di Megavideo, dove risiede il file.

Segnalato da Ermes

You would instead trigger a “series of devices,” as Byrne describes them: hammers and dampers distributed throughout the building in which you sat. Distant windowpanes and metal cross-beams, hooked up to wires, would begin to vibrate, tap, and gong. Imagine someone like this sitting in the darkness beneath Manhattan, causing haunted musics and unexplained knocks inside rooms and abandoned buildings around the city. Now, even urban infrastructure will be musicalized.

The Ocean of Light project explores the creative and immersive possibilities of light-based visualisation in physical space. It uses bespoke hardware to create dynamic, interactive and three-dimensional sculptures from light.

Surface is the first artwork to be exhibited using the Ocean of Light hardware. It uses minimal visuals and sound to evoke the essence of character and movement. Autonomous entities engage in a playful dance, negotiating the material properties of a fluid surface.

The Ocean of Light project is a collaborative research venture, led by Squidsoup and supported by the Technology Strategy Board (UK). Partners include Excled Ltd and De Montfort University. Additional support and resources have been provided by Oslo School of Architecture and Design (Norway), Massey University, Wellington (New Zealand) and Centre for Electronic Media Art, Monash University (Aus).

Squidsoup is a digital arts group specialising in immersive interactive installations within physical 3D space. Their work combines sound, light, physical space and virtual worlds to produce immersive and emotive headspaces. They explore the modes and effects of interactivity, looking to make digital experiences where meaningful and creative interaction can occur.

From the Musica Viva Festival
Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Lucas Vis
Recorded January 27, 2008
Muffathalle, Munich

The essential aspect of MIXTUR is, on one hand, the transformation of the familiar orchestra sound into a new, enchanting world of sound. It is an unbelievable experience, for example, to see and hear string players bowing a sustained tone and to simultaneously perceive how this tone slowly moves away from itself in a glissando, the pulse accelerates, and a wonderful timbre spectrum emerges. Orchestra musicians are astonished when they hear the notes they play being modulated timbrally, melodically, rhythmically, and dynamically. All shades of the transitions from tone to noise, noise to chord, from timbre to rhythm and rhythm to pitch come into being from such ring modulations, as if by themselves.

Finest micro-intervals, extreme glissandi and register changes, percussive attacks resulting from normally smooth entrances, complex harmonies (also above single instrumental tones), and many other unheard-of sound events result from this modulation technique and from the variable structuring.

Secondly, the ring modulation adds new overtone- and sub-tone series to the instrumental spectra, which can be clearly heard, especially during sustained sounds in MIXTUR. Such mixtures do not occur in nature or with traditional instruments. Through these mirrored overtone harmonies, one is moved by alien, haunting sensations of beauty, which are completely new in art music.

Only such renewal in how music affects us imbues new techniques with meaning.

– Karlheinz Stockhausen

From ANABlog

L’applicazione è stata rimossa grazie all’intervento dell’istituto che possiede i diritti sul video e l’audio. La minaccia di una causa per violazione di copyright è servita ad indurre il suo creatore, tale Luigi Marino, 25 anni, di Napoli, a ritirarla.

Se ne parla anche sulla stampa estera (NY Times, BBC News), oltre che su quella locale (Corriere).

Imaginary Landscapes is a profile of a modern artist at the cutting edge of technological change and popular taste. It brings into an intensely personal focus Brain Eno’s seemingly disparate work in sound, vision and light, and explores his music in visual terms, based on landscapes and images that have shaped his life as an artist.

The film is in 4 parts. Here is the first

and the followings

The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you’d be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate - history’s moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.

The whole interview is published on the Guardian’s site.

Nella fattispecie si vede una foto in cui pezzi di folla sono stati chiaramente duplicati al fine di far apparire più gente intenta ad osannare il nostro. Anche il mazzo di fiori è disegnato gran male. In realtà è probabile che questa immagine sia il montaggio di tre foto: Berlusconi, la folla, piazza Duomo. Il fatto che la menzogna sia utilizzata come normale strumento di propaganda dovrebbe far pensare.

Qui l’immagine ingrandita.

Il commento di Photoshop Disasters:

Oh Silvio. I have no problem with your mafia connections, your masonic lodge business, the tax fraud, the false accounting, the bribing of judges, embezzlement, seducing young girls, etc. We all do that kind of thing. But when you start pumping up your crowds with Photoshop you cross the line, mister.