Mobile Sound
Sound, Mobile Media, Art & CultureArchive for sound studies
Sonic Interaction Design Book launch
The MIT Press Sonic Interaction Design Book that comes out of the EU SID COST action I was involved with and curated an exhibition for, has its launch event and symposium in May at ETH in Zurich. The Book is edited by edited by Karmen Franinović and Stefania Serafin.
Here’s the blurb from the MIT website:
Sound is an integral part of every user experience but a neglected medium in design disciplines. Design of an artifact’s sonic qualities is often limited to the shaping of functional, representational, and signaling roles of sound. The interdisciplinary field of sonic interaction design (SID) challenges these prevalent approaches by considering sound as an active medium that can enable novel sensory and social experiences through interactive technologies. This book offers an overview of the emerging SID research, discussing theories, methods, and practices, with a focus on the multisensory aspects of sonic experience.
Sonic Interaction Design gathers contributions from scholars, artists, and designers working at the intersections of fields ranging from electronic music to cognitive science. They offer both theoretical considerations of key themes and case studies of products and systems created for such contexts as mobile music, sensorimotor learning, rehabilitation, and gaming. The goal is not only to extend the existing research and pedagogical approaches to SID but also to foster domains of practice for sound designers, architects, interaction designers, media artists, product designers, and urban planners. Taken together, the chapters provide a foundation for a still-emerging field, affording a new generation of designers a fresh perspective on interactive sound as a situated and multisensory experience.
Contributors:
Federico Avanzini, Gerold Baier, Stephen Barrass, Olivier Bau, Karin Bijsterveld, Roberto Bresin, Stephen Brewster, Jeremy Coopersotck, Amalia De Gotzen, Stefano Delle Monache, Cumhur Erkut, George Essl, Karmen Franinović, Bruno L. Giordano, Antti Jylhä, Thomas Hermann, Daniel Hug, Johan Kildal, Stefan Krebs, Anatole Lecuyer, Wendy Mackay, David Merrill, Roderick Murray-Smith, Sile O’Modhrain, Pietro Polotti, Hayes Raffle, Michal Rinott, Davide Rocchesso, Antonio Rodà, Christopher Salter, Zack Settel, Stefania Serafin, Simone Spagnol, Jean Sreng, Patrick Susini, Atau Tanaka, Yon Visell, Mike Wezniewski, John Williamson
‘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.
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 »
Call for Papers: A Sonic Geography: Rethinking Auditory Spatial Practice
The new ‘Interference: a Journal Of Audio Culture‘ just issued a very interesting call for papers for their second issue (wrote about the launch here). They are looking for contribution discussing ‘Sonic Geography: Rethinking Auditory Spatial Practice’.
This is the full call:
There now exists a significant body of work exploring the confluence of spatial and sonic practices, with recent literature acknowledging the role of sound in the ongoing production, regulation and conceptual representation of space. Aural architecture, soundscaping and sonic sculpture abound, as do accounts of sonic strategies for the delineation of territory, the performance of identity, and the management of difference within physical, and more recently, mobile, virtual, and networked spaces.
Events in the mainstream art world that took place in 2010, such as the inclusion of John Wynne’s untitled sound sculpture for 300 speakers, Pianola, and vacuum cleaner in the Newspeak: British Art Now exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, and Susan Philipsz’ reception of the Turner prize for her public sonic intervention ‘Lowlands’, demonstrate that this field of sound-based, spatially distributed practice has reached Read the rest of this entry »
Extended deadline (March 4th) Audio-visuality conference, especially ‘Mobile Mediated Audiovisuality’ theme
The call for papers for the Audio-visuality conference has been extended to March 4th, 2011! It’s very likely that I will be at the event and it would be great to see many of you there!
The organisers are especially aiming to get more proposals focussing on the problems addressed in the 4 tracks (themes). Especially, they would like to have more proposals for theme ‘Mobile Mediated Audiovisuality’ (track 4)! But submissions for the other tracks are also still welcome.
The proposals that they have already received will be taken into account together with the extra ones they will receive by March 4th.
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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