Volume 2, Number 4
• Up Front
• Events Calendar
• People/Projects
• Opportunities
• Sound Bites
• Site Visit
• Resources
• Eartoons
• About WFAE
• SJAE Journal
• Contributions
• Back Editions |
RESOURCES
Contributors: Hildegard Westerkamp and Katharine Norman
Books, Articles,Texts
Compact and DVD Discs
Web Sites
BOOKS, ARTICLES AND TEXTS
Marine Newsletter Available. The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology has begun a roughly quarterly Marine Collection Newsletter for the marine bioacoustics community, in PDF format. The first edition is available for immediate download via (the file of 280 KB):
Information in the newsletter includes the marine sound collection status; information on accessing the collection; technical notes on recording gear and sound recording; and the NOPP-funded Sea of Sound Project. We also plan to use the newsletter to solicit advice from the community at large on tool development for exploring and analyzing the collection online, expansion of the collection, and other collection issues.
To avoid unsolicited mailings, I currently plan to email future editions of the PDF only to recent contributors to the collection, but I would like to get this information into the hands of anyone with interest in the project. Please visit the link above and look at this first edition. If you would like to be included on the email list for future editions, please send me an email or feel free to call.
Additionally, we currently have some open-reel tapes of Ken Norris' in the collection that we cannot play back on our reel-to-reel machines. If you or someone you know has access to a 1/2" 4-track in-line machine, capable of 30 & 60 ips playback, or a 1/2" 7-channel inline, capable of 15-60 ips playback (originals recorded on a Precisions Instruments), and you would be willing to loan it to the project, please contact:
Shelagh A. Smith
Assistant Curator
Marine Collection
Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
159 Sapsucker Woods Road
Ithaca, New York 14850
Phone: 607.254.2492
Fax: 607.254.2439 |
Bow Bells in Vancouver, Canada
A paper on Bow Bells is temporarily posted by the Acoustic Society of America on line. The transfer of the PowerPoint presentation to PDF did not include sound samples, but this may soon be corrected. The paper is by David Lubman, FASA of Westminster, CA. USA
Master's Thesis: "Describing the Contemporary Sound Environment", by David Paquette, is now available online. The author notes that the complete thesis is available including chapters, appendices, plus some short sound excerpts.
Auditory Culture by Barry Truax
Paperback: 244 pages
Publisher: Ablex Publishing Corporation (May 1, 1985)
Language: English
ISBN: 0893913073
This book/CD-ROM draws on many traditional disciplines that deal with specific aspects of sound, and presents material within an interdisciplinary framework. Establishes a model for understanding all acoustic and aural experiences both in the traditional forms and as they have been radically altered in the 20th century. The accompanying CD-ROM contains definitions of 500 terms, 125 graphics, and 150 sound examples. This second edition takes into account social and technical changes in the field since 17 years ago. Truax teaches courses in acoustic communication and electro-acoustic music at Simon Fraser University. (Book News).
COMPACT and DVD DISC
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The Wolves of Bays Mountain by Judy Klein
CD 21 Minutes
Judy Klein's monumental documentary of the growls and songs of wolves offers a wonderful perspective of our wildlife environment. She took several years during the 1990s to study and understand the meanings of their communications and then she recorded a group of wolves living in a nature preserve in Eastern Tennessee. And as she recorded them, she got to know them as individuals named Navarro, Kashtin, Djenoun, Askina, Mayehi, and Kanati, all of them with distinct personalities. Listening to this CD is like exploring and becoming acquainted with the natives of a newfound land. |
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Lisboa.Reloaded
Audio-Visual projections of the White City
DVD
Real Ambient No. 5
RealAmbient (Cologne) - July 14th
Lisboa.reloaded takes upon where Hans Ulrich Werner and Michael Rüsenberg left off. For 10 days in June 1993 Rüsenberg recorded daily life in Lisbon, accompanied by cameraman Uli Sigg. The video footage is released here for the first time. The audio material was made into a radio-documentary and the CD Lisboa - a soundscape portrait, released in 1994 both with co-authorship by Hans-Ulrich Werner.
As the title suggests, this work belongs to the category of soundscape composition, understanding the genre not merely as the acoustic equivalent of landscape but as a musical interpretation of environmental sound. Everyone who has ever visited the Portuguese capital or lived there might re-discover in the album a great deal of what can be heard in the city. Lisboa - a soundscape portrait more or less followed a documentary approach.
The CD caught the attention of Carlos Alberto Augusto, Carcavelos composer and in 2003 organizer of "Coimbra Vibra!", a sonification of the ancient Portuguese city by World Soundscape Project founder Murray Schafer. The event had been recorded by Rüsenberg and Werner for German Radio.
By coincidence, 2003 marked the 10th anniversary of their initial Lisbon recording and inspired the trio to renew the project. A title was easily found - lisboa.reloaded because that's exactly what is is. It should not repeat what had already been done, but broaden the picture (in the literal sense of the word) by departing from the documentary approach, allowing more artistic freedom and last not least to make of the project a German/Portuguese partnership.
A late night dinner in Coimbra in October 2003 made it clear that personnel would not be a problem. The obvious people to win were - the then absent - artists Zingaro and Korn. Carlos Zingaro is Portugal's most internationally acclaimed improvisor and electronic musician; Christoph Korn from Frankfurt has strong ties to Lisbon with three awards for film music which he won there. Both of them have also contributed to Rüsenberg´s CD "Roma - a soundscape remix" (1998).
Lisboa.reloaded features audio-visual projections of the Portuguese capital, which is also known as "The White City" (cidade branca): two audio and three video works with a variety of expression hardly to be labeled with one term.
The starting piece "MetaSon Lisboa" by Hans-Ulrich Werner directly links lisboa.reloaded to "Lisboa - a soundscape portrait". Apart from a few additions the audio parts remain unchanged, most importantly: video editing follows audio.
"Cine Lisboa" by Carlos Alberto Augusto sonically draws from similar sources, but involves more sound processing in order to support to the narrative role of the Portuguese guitar, played by Paulo Soares.
Christoph Korn's "Stern" basically forms the centre line of this project, being both rooted in the Lisbon soundscape (a street musician's melody) and simultaneously removed from it with Carlos Zingaro's augmented rendition of the same melody on violin. Then there is the video: words only, among them notes on locations who's sounds have been recorded...and deleted.
Both "Dr Musserts Landing" by Michael Rüsenberg and "Storia Intramuri" by Carlos Zingaro reveal themselves as dreamlike excursions to certain locations in Lisbon: the former to a jetty at River Tejo, close to Cais do Sodré and to the gigantic Bridge of the 25th April; the latter to structures very likely to be overheard and overseen - Lisbon's facades.
Lisboa.reloaded, both representational and abstract, pays hommage to a place known as The White City. |
WEB SITES
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Frogs A Chorus of Colors. Frogshave been on Earth for more than 200 million years, and range in size from half an inch (the Cuban tree toad) to the much larger goliath frog of West Africa, which can grow to 15 inches and weigh up to 7 pounds. As a public service, the American Museum of Natural History has created this thoughtful online site that introduces visitors to the world of frogs, and as a way of highlighting their own work with these amphibians, both in the field and at the Museum. After reading an introductory essay, visitors can peruse a section on a number of frog species, which include some fine photographs and general information. Visitors will want to take a look a the Budgett's frog, which can puff up its body with air, arch its back, and scream like a cat in order to frighten intruders. The rest of the site is equally delightful, including a nice area on the reproductive cycle of frogs, a live "FrogCam" direct from the Museum, and a great section containing the sounds of frogs from the island of Madagascar. Source: Scout Report |
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| Omaha Indian Music. The oral traditions of many North American Indian groups are generally well known, though access to existing sound recordings and the like can often be limited to on-site listening booths at major museums and archives. This nice collection of traditional music from the Omaha tribe is a fine way to begin learning about these traditions. The online exhibit was created by the American Memory project at the Library of Congress and includes traditional Omaha music both from the 1890s and the 1980s. The selections from the 1890s include 44 wax cylinder recordings made by Francis La Flesche and Alice Cunningham Fletcher. Equally compelling are the 323 songs from the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration powwow that are also available here. The collection also includes a brief introductory essay, field notes from the 1983 powwow, and an original program from the 1983 celebration. Source: Scout Report |
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StoryCorps is modeled, in spirit and in scope, after the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the United States during the 1930s. It was during that time when oral-history interviews with everyday Americans across the country were recorded. These recordings remain the single most important collection of American voices gathered to date. Today, StoryCorps is expanding on that work.
StoryCorps is building soundproof recording booths across the country, called StoryBooths. You can use these StoryBooths to record broadcast-quality interviews with the help of a trained facilitator. The first StoryBooths opened in New York City's Grand Central Terminal on October 23, 2003, and the project continues to grow.
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Radio Memories. The "Golden Age of Radio" that arguably lasted until the early 1950s may be hard to imagine today in an era of swirling iPod playlists and other genre-bending devices and technologies, but during this time the radio reigned supreme. People tuned in every week to hear the exploits of Flash Gordon, Sam Spade, and Amos n' Andy. Thanks to the Radio Memories website, many of these memories can be relived, or just experienced for the first time. Started in May 2005, the site contains a host of compelling programs, including episodes from the Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon and a number of original episodes of the fabled Radio Detective Story Hour. If those types of programs fail to pique the interest of the casual visitor, the site also contains archived shows that explore the world of radio soap operas from the 1940s and the musical worlds of such stars as Tommy Dorsey and Harry James. Source: Scout Report
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