Mobile Sound

Sonic Interaction Design Book launch

mobilesound — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:47:23 +0000

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

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)

mobilesound — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 09:22:05 +0000

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 research topics integral to mobile media devices, such as networks, automation, location, collaboration, and data sharing. The area of investigation might include analysis and representation of complex data sets, whether that involves sonification of data or navigation of sonic/musical structures.
Proposals with philosophical, theoretical and/or historical perspectives are welcomed, although the core of the work will be a practice-led form of enquiry. The research is expected to relate strongly to the formative yet exciting changes digitization, networks, and locative media have brought for sound and music, and it will demonstrate the potential to have impact on the field.
The Faculty of Arts is able to provide strong support for the above areas, but the research will be based within the Faculty of Arts’ academic programme of Photography, Moving Image and Sound. This opportunity is therefore ideal for projects that engage with visual interfaces, animation, geography, space, and location in the context of sonic or musical representation, performance and production.
The proposal should describe clearly what research question or problem will be addressed and the research context of the work. It should further describe what contribution to knowledge the project will bring, and outline the research methodologies used to address the research topic.
For more information about this project, or to be put in contact with a supervisor, please contact the doctoral college.
+44 (0)1273 642915
doctoralcollegedean@brighton.ac.uk
http://www.brighton.ac.uk/researchstudy/2013studentships/arts-and-humanities/project-1-6/

‘Bridging Sound’ event at the University of Sussex, 23-24 November

mobilesound — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 18:13:43 +0000

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

Michael Bull

Rupert Cox/Angus Carlyle

Sally-Jane Norman

Bridges Panel chaired by Frauke Behrendt (Brighton University)

School of Media, Film and Music:

School of History, Art History and Philosophy:

Ben Burbridge

Synthesis, Future Bridges

Registration appreciated by mail to M.J.Knight@sussex.ac.uk.

iPhone Musical Instrument by Mouse on Mars

mobilesound — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 17:44:03 +0000

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:

‘Playing the iPhone’ (June 2012) In: Snickars, Pelle and Vonderau, Patrick (eds) Moving Data: The iPhone and the Future of Media. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN: 978-0-231-15739-1

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

mobilesound — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:41:11 +0000

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

mobilesound — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:34:17 +0000

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…

Apply now for Job as Sonic Interaction Designer!

mobilesound — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:42:08 +0000

A one year position as research assistant in sonic interaction design is available in the Medialogy section of Aalborg University Copenhagen, starting on January 1st 2012. The position can be renewed up to three years and can be converted to assistant professorship for those who have a PhD. If you are interested or want to hear more, feel free to drop an email to Stefania Serafin, Associate professor, Medialogy, Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology, Aalborg University Copenhagen, sts@create.aau.dk sts [at] create.aau.dk .

I worked with Stefania on the EU COST Action on Sonic Interaction Design and this sounds like a very interesting post.

Major German Magazine discovers ‘App-Musik: Hier spielt die iPhone-Band’

mobilesound — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:45:38 +0000

In keeping with a recent book chapter “I play the iPhone: The Rise of Mobile Phones as Musical Instruments” I wrote, my 2005 book “Handymusik. Klangkunst und ‘mobile devices’” and many other publications and events in this area that I have been involved with, now ‘Spiegel‘ a major German news magazine has published an article on ‘App-Musik: Hier spielt die iPhone-Band’.

This is for my German readers, though there are images and a video for English readers to enjoy.

‘The World in Your Hand. On the Everyday Global Culture of the Mobile Phone’ by Miya Yoshida

mobilesound — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:26:40 +0000

Finally I got to meet Miya Yoshida in person today! I have followed her work for many years and we have been in touch via email, but somehow kept missing each other at conferences. We connected at ‘‘Reconfiguring Radio’ in Copenhagen.

I was so happy to see her – and her new book ‘The World in Your Hand. On the Everyday Global Culture of the Mobile Phone’! This book came out of an exhibition is Dresden.

You can order her book here.

This is more information about this edited volume:

Over the past decades, almost no other technological innovation has been able to find such widespread dissemination so easily, or so rapidly, nor take such all-embracing possession of our daily lives, as the portable telephone. As camera, Walkman, organizer, navigating device, and post box for private and business messages, the mobile phone does not only represent a connection to the world for the affluent parts of the planet the cell phone conquers public urban spaces as well commercial ones and dissolves previous borders between them. Its use causes fundamental shifts in cultural codes and intervenes in social textures. Mit Beiträgen aus Kultur- und Medienwissenschaften, Philosophie, Soziologie und Kunst / With essays from the fields of cultural and media studies,philosophy, sociology and art: Olaf Arndt, Günter Burkart,Kenichi Fujimoto, Dominic Johnson,Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz, Sadie Plant,Paul Feigelfeld & Jan Wenzel, Miya Yoshida

Photos of Sonic Interaction Design Exhibition Opening

mobilesound — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 08:17:01 +0000

Sonic Interaction Design Exhibition Opening, a set on Flickr.

The Opening of the Exhibition on Sonic Interaction Design in Oslo. Was great to see so many people there!
The exhibtion is curated by Trond Lossius and Frauke Behrendt, and hosted by at the Norwegian Museum of Science, Technology and Medicine. It’s open from May 29 – August 21 2011.Please let me know if you go!

The official photos are coming up soon, these are just mine.