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Acoustic Flotsam
Just returned from a lovely evening of comtemporary music played by a string quartet and a percussionist on various acoustic and electronic gadgets at C3-Festival at Berlins notorious club Berghain. There seems to be a "trend", by some called "neo-classic" or "modern classical/electronic music", that follows the intercourse of classically trained musicians and composers with club culture and electronically produced music. My friend Me Raabenstein recently released a compilation of such endeavours under the name "XVI Reflections on Classical Music" together with Universal Classics, who established the "Yellow Lounge" already in 2001 and brought together stars of the classical music scene and well-known DJs. » more
The first podcast I heard from radiolab, a programme at New York based public radio station WNYC, was called staying alive. When it comes to the point where a scientist claims that he can play back voices from thousand years ago captured in the grooves of ancient pottery with a stylus like an old grammophone-type recording, I had to burst out laughing. » more
Is this the Beginning of the End of the conventional Loudspeaker as we know it? There is a fetish for each musical genre: rock has the guitar, DJ culture the turntable and sound artists the loudspeaker, if they create installations. Only few sound artists have sound generating devices that do not need a loudspeaker at some stage to fill the space with sound... » more
Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto talks about his work and a new book called "grid index" in an interview on Gestalten TV. The grids he presents in his publication remind me partly of the Penrose tiling and particularly the islamic ornaments of 15th century buildings such as the Darb-i-Imam shrine in Iran... » more
New York Times reports that in Florida the mating calls of a fish species called black drum resonated through the homes of retirees in Cape Coral, leading to the neighbors to push the City Council to eliminate the noise... » more
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The german Alfred-Wegener-Institute is transmitting a MP3 live stream from Antarctica. They put four hydrophones 70 m underneath the shelf ice and 90 m above the ocean ground through drilled holes in the thick ice sheet... » more
Dutch mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens observed 1673 that two pendulums mounted on the same beam will come to swing in perfectly opposite directions, an observation he referred to as odd sympathy which in modern times is known as resonance... » more
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There is a small group of musical instruments that operate without human interaction, the aeolian harp or wind chimes are commonly known as such unintentional sound producers. The Sea Organ based in Zadar, Croatia, is another example... » more
Gustave Flaubert searched with exhaustive care for evidence, documents and testimony to authenticate the account of France’s social classe and the political uproar through the revolution of 1848 that was expressed in his highly influencial novel “Sentimental Education” in unrivalled manner... » more
If you are into superlatives, here are two dealing with anechoic chambers. The acoustic anechoic chamber has an absorbing surface and is shielded from the outer world in order to investigate sound waves with all reflections being removed... » more
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In China there is an old tradition to attach little light whistles to pigeon’s tail-feathers that produce a pleasant sound during flight. They have simpler forms like pan-flutes and more sophisticated ones with a body of ornamental gourd-shells, separated in two compartments producing a deeper “male” tone and a higher “female” tone at once... » more
On a symposium about experimental radio art in June 2008, I learned about the conceptual work of german artist Christoph Korn. Since three years he deals with automated audio erasing processes... » more
I saw Gus Van Sant's movie "Paranoid Park" on TV recently. Van Sant is well known for his controversial cinematic endeavours between mainstream success like "Good Will Hunting" and arthouse cinema as in his "death trilogy" comprising "Gerry", "Elephant" and "Last Days"... » more
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