Mobile Sound
Sound, Mobile Media, Art & CultureArchive for listening
‘Bridging Sound’ event at the University of Sussex, 23-24 November
The ‘Bridging Sound’ event is of interest to the mobile sound community as it “launches an interdisciplinary research forum dealing with 21st century soundscapes and auditory environments, which have become an exciting focus for artistic, technological, and sociological research.” The focus on bridges puts mobility at the heart this sound studies event, as we tend to encounter bridges while in motion, and many artistic projects in the area have also explored our mobile interactions with bridges. It’s organised by Professor Sally-Jane Norman and Dr Michael Bull.
The event info continues:
“Our urban surroundings and the sites we frequent for work, leisure, consumption and transportation offer scaffolds for new kinds of acoustic architectures. Sonic designs employ and mix platforms ranging from public address systems to intimate messaging. Roles of artists, urban planners, commercial stakeholders, state authorities, and “local bodies” are mobilised by the steadily expanding, yet never-quite-real estate inhabited by sound. Bridging Sound promotes and debates this burgeoning area of contemporary practice. It convenes practitioners and theorists from a range of disciplines to investigate figuratively, metaphorically and theoretically the intersections between sound, architecture and culture.”
The event runs 23-24 November, and I’ll be chairing a session on the Saturday – so would be great to see some of you then!
Here is the program from their website:
A two day event consisting of an internal workshop on Friday followed at 4pm by a series of public lectures and presentations which continue all day Saturday.
Friday 23rd November
10:00-15:30: Internal Workshop (post-graduate students and staff)
Oeyvind Brandstegg, Will Schrimshaw, Rupert Cox/Angus Carlyle
16:00-18:00: Public Lectures followed by discussions
Salome Voegelin, Will Schrimshaw
Saturday 24th November
9:30-17:00: Public Symposium introduced by Michael Bull, Sally-Jane Norman
Presentations:
Oeyvind Brandstegg
Bridges Panel chaired by Frauke Behrendt (Brighton University)
School of Media, Film and Music:
School of History, Art History and Philosophy:
Synthesis, Future Bridges
Registration appreciated by mail to M.J.Knight@sussex.ac.uk.
The sound of locative media: out now
My journal article The sound of locative media has now been published by Convergence. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this article! The full reference is: Frauke Behrendt (2012) The sound of locative media, Convergence 18 (3): 283-295.
Screenshot from the video of The National Mall app
One of the case studies I discuss in the article is ‘The National Mall’, an iPhone app (released in 2011 by musicians Bluebrain) where users listen to specific music depending on their location.
Here’s the abstract:
This article develops an alternative perspective to the visual bias in locative media discourses by focusing on the role of sound in locative media and related discussions. This sonic perspective allows us to understand the temporal, situated and embodied aspects of locative media. Informed by debates from sound studies and mobile media studies, a locative smart phone application where users experience specific sounds depending on their locations, is discussed. The concept of ‘Placed Sounds’ is introduced for a more detailed analysis of locative sound experiences. A framework for analysis is developed to discuss how locative sound engages with the auditory aspects of our spatial perception, how immersion operates for locative media and sound, and also to consider the role of situated experience, the role of walking as remixing, and how agency and exclusion operate in locative sound. This framework explains how walking operates in terms of interacting with locative media, and how we experience being immersed in physical and media contexts at once via sound.
You can get the full article here.
Photos of Sounds Like Mobility: A Mobile Media, Sound and Music Event
Photos from Sounds Like Mobility: A Mobile Media, Sound and Music Event that took place at The Cultures of the Digital Economy (CoDE) Research Institute, Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge) on 17th May 2011, organised by Frauke Behrendt, are now online (photos by Ann Evelin Lawford) and some by myself are here and there are more by Julio D’Escrivan. Please let us know if you also have pictures form the event to share!
A big thank you to all speakers, performers and chairs – Georgina Born, Atau Tanaka, John Williamson, Steve Symons, Julio D’Escrivan, Rachel O’ Dwyer, Lalya Gaye, Enrique Tomas, Adam Parkinson, Richard Hoadley, Ashley Elsdon, Nick Bryan-Kinns – for making this a great event!
Call: ‘Mobile Mediated Audiovisuality’ at conference on ‘Audiovisuality: the experience of audio-visual art, artefacts, and media texts’ in Denmark, May 2011
My colleague Ansa is calling for contributions to the conference ‘on the experience of audio-visual art, artefacts, and media texts’ and one of their tracks is on ‘Mobile Mediated Audiovisuality’. The other tracks are ‘Sound Styling in Film and Television Genres’, ‘Strategic Communication’, and ‘The Audiovisual exhibited – Sound in the (fine) Arts’. The event takes place from 26-28 May 2011.
Here is some more information the ‘mobile’ track, and then about the the conference in general, all from their website.
Mobile mediated audiovisuality
Keywords: mobility, audiovisuality, mp3-files, mobile telephones, lap tops, experience, soundwalks.
We naturally associate sound with the source that produces it. We instinctively look for a bird when we hear chirping or for the truck when we hear its roaring, and we are in some sense aware of the orchestra playing the concert we are enjoying whether it is live or recorded. Since the invention of Read the rest of this entry »
Public Listening to Umbrellas hanging from Trees+ Raindance+ Umrella.net
When I was in Helsinki recently, I spent my last few hours in the city at the Night of the Arts. The piece ‘Kolme kirjettä (Three letters)’ Liisa Tervinen and Saana Uosukainen.
The simplicity of the installation was really beautiful. Transparent umbrellas equipped with small speakers were broadcasting the recordings of three love letters read out. These umbrellas were Read the rest of this entry »
Listening Exercises and Soundwalks at the Product Sound Design Summer School at Aalto Design Factory, Helsinki
A few weeks ago I was teaching at the Product Sound Design Summer School at Aalto Design Factory in Helsinki. It was great fun and here are some pictures from the event.
The module I was teaching focused on Listening Exercises and Soundwalks and was part of stage 1 ‘Sensitising’ of the summer school.
To be able to work with small groups of students I trained Stephen Barras, Inger Ekman and Sylviane Sapir. Stephen also wrote about this on his blog. It was very interesting to share how we use soundwalks in our teaching. Here are Read the rest of this entry »
13-16 Sept: 4-day workshop exploring architecture and the city through listening and recorded sound (London)
If anyone happens to be free in a few weeks time, check out this summer workshop Field Studies 2010 (and enjoy the sound recordings on the website):
A four-day summer workshop exploring architecture and the city through
listening and recorded sound, led by Marc Behrens, Justin Bennett and John
Levack Drever.
London, 13-16 September 2010 Department of Architecture and Spatial
Design, London Metropolitan University
Introduction
Field Studies 2010 is a four-day field-recording workshop led by three
acclaimed sound artists and composers. It aims to explore recording as a
creative and practical tool for artists, architects and urbanists, and the
possibilities of working with sound as a means to engage with places and
people.
Fees and registration
The cost of Read the rest of this entry »
Apply now for Product Sound Design Summer School, August 23-26 2010
The Sonic Interaction Design group I have been involved with over the last few years is running a Summer School on Product Sound Design, in collaboration with Aalto University, ‘Design Factory‘ and industry partners in Helsinki. This will be highly valuable for PhD students in their first years or Master students in their final year. Places are limited so apply as soon as possible!
More information from the website:
Future products will rely on our natural capabilities of continuous and physical interaction. Moreover, for the best experience in their use, they need to stimulate, but not saturate, all our senses. Our sense of hearing is quite advanced; yet only a few product developers, engineers, marketing teams, and designers know how to make use of it properly. The COST-SID action, over the years, has developed a growing body of methods, tools, and techniques to get you started.
Our mission in this summer school is to educate the future product design and development team members with a specific competence on interactive sound. The training school is strategically positioned as a first step in a longer research and training on the integration of SID product sound design methods with Product Design and Development, as thought at the Aalto University and MIT, for Read the rest of this entry »
Call: “Sound as Art – Sound in History. Sound as Culture – Sound in Theory” Conference
Ansa Lønstrup who I met at a conference a few years ago, is organising a sound studies conference titled “Sound as Art – Sound in History. Sound as Culture – Sound in Theory” with her colleague Morten Michelsen and others. The conference takes place September 23–25, 2010 at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. The submission deadline is 1st April 2010 (see below). The event is organized by the Danish “National Research Network on Auditive Culture’, the Aarhus University research project “Audiovisual Culture”, and the Nordic Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.
This is the call for papers, including some very interesting questions:
Today, sound studies provide an important framework for furthering cultural research related to a broad range of historical and contemporary issues. Also, Read the rest of this entry »
Histories of Mobile Sound Media
Another example for the history of mobile sound media (that needs writing) was featured on Modern Mechanix today and has been reblogged on bongboing as “Paleo-walkman of 1957“:
The 1957 newspaper clipping from here reads:
Headwork in the Garden
The chic hat Paul Johnson of Jacksonville, Fla., wears while gardening may not keep off the iun, but it will bring in all local radio stations. The one-tube radio headset operates on two dry cells to enable him to keep up with his favorite programs while doing outdoor chores.
Erkki Huhtmao gave a great keynote “History of Mobile Technology” at ISEA 2004 (the website iis sadly not online anymore), with a general overview of the history of mobile media. Some of this has been published in in receiver. I keep collecting examples for a music and sound history of mobile media. Hopefully I’ll have time to put it together in a coherent form one day. If anyone has more examples I’d love to hear about them!
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