Key Events In Sound Art

Revealed: the reason birds sing in spring

Published Date: 20 March 2008

By Lyndsay Mos

Health Correspondent

THE secret of how birds know to sing in springtime has been discovered by researchers in Scotland and Japan.

A key part of the brain in birds is affected by seasonal change. The team found that, when birds are exposed to more light, cells near the pituitary gland release a hormone that sparks a series of reactions, making them ready for the mating season, when they sing more to attract a partner.

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Wet Sounds UK Tour 2011

Wet Sounds is an underwater sound art gallery - a deep listening experience
Touring swimming pools, it presents listening sessions to a floating and diving audience in the water. The participants are fully immersed in sound. Free to move weightlessly in the sound space. Read Press Release...

I found the experience to be quite extraordinary, as you were able to navigate 'hot spots' of sound underwater where I imagine, due to the shape of the swimming pool and different depths of water, the sound would sound much louder and all encompassing. Seeing as the water actually enters your ear and is in direct contact with your ear drum the sensation is that you are hearing the sounds in much the same way as when you might speak for example, therefore it is quite a bizzare experience when there are vocals played through the speakers, which actually feel like they are much closer.

Of course this is not the first time where a swimming pool has been used as means by which to exhibit sound works. Max Neuhaus was experimenting with this idea as early as 1971, in his series water whistle which is described by the artist here:

"The sound sources were hydraulic: a network of hoses fed water through a configuration of whistle-like devices, each enclosed in a reflector. The water pressure in the hoses caused them to flex constantly, reorienting each sound source independently. This formed a shifting sound texture which varied according to the listener's position in the pool. "

Projection of underwater shape with sound source locations,
Water Whistle XVII, 1983
Ink and colored pencil on paper, 96 x 96 cm

Listeners at Water Whistle III, St. Paul YMCA, 1972

Momus: 27 Lies About the Mackintosh Building

Following his own maxim that "every lie creates a parallel world in which it is true", Momus (Scottish musician and author of The Book of Scotlands and The Book of Jokes) sets out to tell twenty-seven fantastic lies about things which happen, have happened or will happen in Glasgow School of Art's most famous building. His attempted lies will sometimes falter and fail, falling back into truths, reasonable and useful suggestions, and thoughts about lying itself.

http://imomus.com/

Archimedean solid

Whilst on a recent trip to Haifa, in the on the north-western coast of Israel, I observed a building out of the window of the train which had a rather intriguing shape protruding from the main building itself. I later discovered that it was The National Institute of Oceanography (NIO).

I thought this would be a fantastic shape for some sort of microphone so I decided to do further research into this shape and to my suprise, discovered that this shape had been illustrated by Leonardo Da Vinci who named it rhombicuboctahedron and the following image is from the Divina Proportione (written in Milan in 1496–98, published in Venice in 1509).
There is a really in-depth wikipedia page dedicated to Archimedean Solids, to which this this shape, officially called a Rhombicuboctahedron, belongs. The following shape is a net which I used as the basis for making a drawing on rhino from which I could then cut a metal shape to form a very accurate 3D model.

How music-buying habits have changed

By Sarfraz Manzoor

Writer and broadcaster

The news that HMV is the latest music retailer in trouble may not upset the downloaders. But for many, like this self-confessed music obsessive, record shops were always more than just a place to buy the latest album.

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The Philips Pavilion

Brussels World’s Fair, 1958

In 1956, the artistic director of the Philips company, Louis C. Kalff, asked Le Corbusier to design a pavilion that would embody and demonstrate the excellence of the company’s products for the benefit of visitors to the Brussels World’s Fair. Le Corbusier agreed, proposing a “bottle” that would house a light, colour, image, rhythm and sound show that Le Corbusier called an “electronic poem”. Poème électronique was the title of the musical score commissioned from avant-garde composer Edgar Varèse specifically for use in the Pavilion.

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