Mobile Sound
Sound, Mobile Media, Art & CultureArchive for mobile phone
iPhone Musical Instrument by Mouse on Mars
As you know I’ve been writing about Mobile Phone musical instruments for quite some years so it’s nice to see another Mobile Music iPhone app in the pipeline:
“WretchUp is a unique handheld effect and instrument for the iPhone that anyone can play. Developed by Mouse on Mars, it’s easy to learn, but also sophisticated enough that it’s heavily used in their live shows and new albums – on vocals, on drums, with feedback, and more. Now with your help, we want to bring it to everyone as an open source project.”
However, there have been quite a few mobile music apps around – you might want to check out Atau Tanaka’s iphone concert at tedX today or you can read up about many other examples in some of my publications on the topic over the last 8 years:
The chapter ‘Musical Telephones Old and New: A Media Archaeology’ in Mobile Sound. Media Art in Hybrid Spaces. (2010) PhD Thesis. University of Sussex.
Kirisits, Nicolaj., Behrendt, Frauke, Gaye, Lalya., & Tanaka, Atau. (eds.). (2008).Creative Interactions – The Mobile Music Workshops 2004-2008.Vienna: University of Applied Arts. Download pdf. See
http://www.mobilemusicworkshop.org/
Mobile Music Technology: Report on Emerging Community. Gaye, Layla, Holmquist, Lars Erik, Behrendt, Frauke, Tanaka, Atau. In Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME-06). Paris, France: 22-25
Handymusik. Klangkunst und ‘mobile devices’, Osnabrück: Epos. 2005. Monograph.
Klingeltöne laden war gestern/Mobile Musik
in: de-bug. Zeitschrift für elektronische Lebensaspekte. November 2004
You can also click on “mobile phone“, “music” or “instrument” in the tag cloud on the right to find some more blog posts on this topic.
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.
Mobile Phone Music and Electric Vehicle Art in Paris
A few of impressions from a recent trip to Paris.
A Jazz trio on a Paris street corner…with the piano player also playing his mobile…
Atau Tanaka is driving Hehe’s Métronome – electrical vehicle art at “Clignancourt danse sur les rails” in Paris
An orange monk meets Gerhard Richter at the Centre Pompidou
And of course lovely Paris cafes…
See you in Copenhagen next week? Talk at Reconfiguring Radio PhD Summer School
I’ll be in Copenhagen next week at the ‘Reconfiguring Radio‘ PhD Summer School, organised by the LARM Audio Research Archive and The PhD Programme in Cultural Studies, Literature and the Arts at the University of Copenhagen. The session on ‘Radio, Mobility and Artistic Practices’ is on Friday 8th July.
Hope to see some of you there – let me know if you are around!
The session includes:
9.00 Keynote: Frauke Behrendt
– Beyond Mobile Listening: Engaging with Phones, Sounds and Art
10.00 Paper presentation
- Miya Yoshida: Radio Art and negotiations of intimacy
- Anja Kanngieser: A Convivial Politics for Distributed Radio
- Klaus Nielsen: Radio Literature and the (im)material Document
- Kristoffer Jul-Larsen: The Literary Address in Early Norwegian radio
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: Sounds like Mobility: A Mobile Media, Sound and Music Event’ on 17th May 2011 at CoDE, Cambridge
I’m organising ‘Sounds like Mobility: A Mobile Media, Sound and Music Event’ on Tuesday 17th May 2011 at CoDE: The Cultures of the Digital Economy Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. It would be great if YOU as one of my blog readers might be interested to submit your work and/or attend the event!
Please find more information below and on the website www.anglia.ac.uk/soundslikemobility
I look forward to hearing back from you! It would also be great if you could circulate this email widely. Thank you!
Sounds like Mobility: A Mobile Media, Sound and Music Event
Tuesday 17th May 2011, CoDE: The Cultures of the Digital Economy Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
Sitting down motionless, staring at screens, and focusing on the task at hand are becoming much less common than using media on the go, touching and listening to a device, while also being involved in other activities. In mobile media contexts, alternative sensory modalities increasingly replace the largely visual paradigms of the (both physical and virtual) desktop era. This one-day event examines the role of sound in media interactions as an especially pertinent example of our post-desktop world. It features invited speakers, performances, demos, pecha-kuscha-style short presentations and poster presentations. It takes place in Cambridge (UK) and is organised by CoDE: The Cultures of the Digital Economy Research Institute at Anglia Ruskin University.
There is much more to this than iPods and alert sounds. Interactions between various physical contexts, social networks, mobile bodies and networked devices can be mediated in an almost infinite number of ways by sound – and also Read the rest of this entry »
App goes art//Art goes App contest by ZKM: 10,000 Euro
An idea many of us have talked about over the last few years, for example at the Mobile Art&&Code event, and the Mobile Music Workshops, is now happening in Germany: The ZKM (Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe) collaborates with a few partners to present the International AppArtAward 2011. They “select the best works of art in app format that have advanced to artistic applications and/or have distinguished themselves as technically outstanding software solutions.” I’m hoping that we’ll see many sound and music apps in this contest!
They encourage applications from “software developers and artists, as well as all fans of app with creative and innovative applications”. The deadline is The submission deadline is Read the rest of this entry »
Call: ‘Online & Mobile Media, Everyday Creativity and DIY Culture’ – Transforming Audiences Conference in London in 09/11
This is the call from the website, the deadline is 21 April 2011:
After decades preoccupied with what people do when sitting down, media studies is suddenly on its feet. The rise of computers in our pockets – still called ‘phones’, but used more for accessing a world of online communication, information and entertainment than for making telephone calls – coincides with the growth of DIY culture and people making their own media. Video games are now about actually running and Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
Sustainable Travel – Mobile Media Examples?
Can anyone recommend mobile media projects that encourage sustainable travel behaviour? I’m looking for examples where artists, designers or activists have used mobile phones (or any other mobile devices) to encourage people to walk/cycle/use public transport/share cars/etc.
(The photo is from a trip to Helsinki in the summer – liked the sound-mobile-media-cycling graffiti very much.)
Any creative or inspiring ideas welcome! I’m attending an interdisciplinary event on “how to change transport behaviours” this week, and would like to show some examples of how mobile media might be able to do this.
If any of these projects would use sound (in addition to images, maps and text maybe) that would be a bonus, obviously!
Thank you in advance for any suggestions (as comment or email to f dot behrendt at sussex dot ac dot uk)!
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