Mobile Sound
Sound, Mobile Media, Art & CultureArchive for music
Apply now: PhD Studentship ‘Notating Digital Sound: Designing or Composing for Mobile Media’. Supervisors: Dr Thor Magnusson, Dr Frauke Behrendt, Prof. Jonathan Woodham (by 11th April 2013)
Applications are invited for a PhD Studentship ‘Notating Digital Sound: Designing or Composing for Mobile Media’ (valued at £58,500) at the University of Brighton, supervised by Dr Thor Magnusson, Dr Frauke Behrendt and Prof. Jonathan Woodham.
The application deadline is 4pm, 11th April 2013.
The context of music production and dissemination has drastically changed with digital media and mobile computing devices. Interactivity and screens have become an essential part of how sound is represented and controlled, and creative algorithms are used to analyse or generate sonic patterns.
We seek proposals for a PhD project that will engage with interface and interaction design in digital sonic interfaces. The ideal research proposal would intersect areas of digital sound, human-computer interaction, graphic design, data representation, and software/media studies. Of particular interest are Read the rest of this entry »
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…
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!
Sound Pairs, Music adjusting to your jogging pace, Sonified Social Networks and more at Haptic Audio Interaction Design 2010
Last week I attended part of the Haptic Audio Interaction Design 2010 (HAID) workshop
http://media.aau.dk/haid10/ and these are some of the interesting projects and papers I experienced:
A Master’s student project (please send me her name if you know it – I lost her card!) that impressed me was this set of memory games: ‘tactile pairs’ and ‘sound pairs’ where you play this traditionally visual game with a focus on touch or sound.
D-Jogger: a multimodal music interface for music selection based on user step frequency by Read the rest of this entry »
Design Contest: Call for proposals for future mobile music
This Design contest for mobile music is part of the EU-funded SAME project (Sound And Music Everyday Everywhere Everyway). Deadline is 30th of September. Check out the website:
Design Contest: Call for proposals for future mobile music
Making and enjoying music for the users of tomorrow
PRIZE
The Winners of the contest will be invited for a two-day stay at the 2010 Science Festival in Genova (Italy) http://www.festivalscienza.it (all expenses covered by the SAME project), will present their work to key players as well as to a general audience, and will be awarded by a representative of the European Commission.
DEALINE FOR PROPOSALS
September 30, 2010
The European ICT project SAME (Sound And Music for Everyone, Everyday, Everywhere, Everyway) promotes Read the rest of this entry »
ZOOZbeat: Mobile Music ReCreation
Gil Weinberg, Mark Godfrey and Andrew Beck won an award at ACM CHI 2010 for ZOOZbeat.
Their website reads:
ZooZBeat is a gesture-based musical studio, simple enough for non-musicians to immediately become musically expressive but rich enough for experienced musicians to push the envelope of mobile music creation. Start playing with just a click or select among background beats in a variety of styles. Use shake and tilt movements, tap the screen, or press the keypads to create and modify rhythmic and melodic lines. Based on years of research, our musical engine will interpret your actions into beautiful music that fits your style.
Download ZOOZbeat for free here
Learn more here
Mobile Music People Atau Tanaka, Jo Kazuhiro and Jamie Allen at RISD and Brown
Atau Tanaka, Jo Kazuhiro and Jamie Allen, all from Culturelab Newcastle (UK), have all worked with mobile sound and music in their practice. Most recently, Jo Kazuhiro and Jamie Allen have started their Chiptune Marching Band. Atau Tanaka’s many mobile music projects are well-documented and he has been co-organising the Mobile Music Workshops with Lalya Gaye and myself for many years. All three are visiting the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University in Providence, RI this upcoming Monday, April 13th. It’s all organized by Todd Winkler at Brown and Lalya Gaye and Teri Rueb at risd D+M. The announcement is here.
Jo Kazuhiro and Jamie Allen at the Mobile Technology Workshop, Digital+Media Department:
Monday 13th April 9am
Digital+Media, RISD
CIT Mason/Fletcher building, 3rd floor, room 305
169 Weybosset Street
Open to the public
Culture Lab talk at Brown:
Monday 13th April. Time and location TBC
Open to the public
Culture Lab in Concert at Brown:
Monday 13th April, 8pm
Music Department. Brown University
Orwig Music Building, 1 Young Orchard Avenue
Fee TBC
Artist bios: 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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