Sound Art In New York. The "Ear to the Earth"sound-art festival was held in New York City in early October. Two items are online related to the sound design work of artist Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger during the event. Read Elevated Harmonies and Green Thoughts.

Silence project is one man's start at preserving quiet in national parks. (CNEWS) Sound recordist Gordon Hempton has been searching for a one square inch of silence in America's national parks. Reclining against the trunk of a western hemlock tree, arms behind his head, Gordon Hempton listens closely to the quiet symphony of nature. The rumble of the Hoh River in the distance. A winter wren's trill. The chattering of a Douglas squirrel. Perhaps more striking is what's missing. There is no sound of airplane traffic, campground generators or over chatty hikers - all sounds that Hempton says are disturbing the peace at national parks across the country. Is this the place for which Hempton has been searching. Read Full Story

New York Artist Completes Residency. Composer/Acoustic Ecologist Michelle Nagai (ASAE) recently completed a residency with iLAB, the pilot residency program of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance (iLAND). iLAND is a new dance research organization founded by choreographer Jennifer Monson that fosters collaboration among the performing arts and the sciences. The Language of the Listening Body was a two-week residency and workshop, co-lead by Nagai and choreographer Hope Mohr. The project featured a group of dancers exploring an active listening and moving practice in the urban soundscape of New York City. During the residency, the group hosted two public soundwalks - one in midtown Manhattan and another in Long Island City, Queens. Special guests included composer Pauline Oliveros, choreographer Barbara Dilley and noise activist Arline Bronzaft. Read More more about the project and iLAND or view a critical discussion of the residency process.

Musical Trespassing. (BBC) Even though you're in your own seat on the train, you have to share it with the music from the selfish kid with the fancy mobile phone four rows back. Or how about piped music insinuating its way around a hospital waiting room? Or a television barking away in the reception area? The Piped Music and Showing of Television Programmes Bill, being put forward by Lord Beaumont in the British Parliament, aimed to outlaw piped music on public transport and in hospitals. And it also proposes that anyone listening to music on longer journeys on public transport must use headphones. Read Article.

Tranquil Areas in England. The Council for the Protection of Rural England has updated its maps of "Tranquil Areas" in England. THE CPRE’s criteria are explained in an online site and pdfs of the maps themselves can be downloaded as well.

Barking dogs, drum’n’bass - noise from next door can drive you mad. So what can you do about it? (Times Online) About half a million people have been forced to move in the past year because of noisy neighbours, says the National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection (NSCA). When it questioned 2,000 people about noise pollution, it discovered that 14% had been woken up by noisy neighbours, 5% had argued with their neighbours over noise, and 1% said they had been forced to move. If reflected nationally, says the NSCA, that amounts to half a million moves. Read Article.

Caretaker's war on noise ends in shots and suicide. (Timesonline) A man in the village of Govilon, near Abergavenny in south Wale, shot two brothers and then killed himself after being driven to distraction by the noise of their motorcycles. Mr Trevor Fallon, a caretaker at a local theatre, is believed to have hit the brothers when he fired his shotgun at the revving motorcycle over the garden fence. Read Article.

Blyth Soundwalks in the English landscape. Sound artist James Wyness has uploaded the sounds from two soundwalks in the Northumbrian town of Blyth. There are about 3 hours of high quality mp3s and over the weeks ahead he will blog details of the ideas/aesthetic approaches he adopted. He recommends headphone listening as the walks were largely recorded binaurally. The project is a public art commission. Listen and read blog.

Describing the Contemporary Sound Environment. A thesis by David Paquette presents and analyses three approaches to the subjective approach of the everyday sound environment: The World Soundscape Project descriptive model, Barry Truax’s information based Acoustic Communication model, and the perceptual and phenomenological work of French researchers Jean-François Augoyard and Pascal Amphoux. These models are then combined in a methodological and analytical framework to study listeners’ relationships to contemporary urban environments. Paquette received his Master's thesis during the summer 2004 at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., Canada Read Thesis Online.

Music At Work. (Spherion Survey) According to a study by from Spherion Corp, Nearly half of adults ages 25-29 say they listened to their iPod, MP3 player or other music devices while working, whereas only 22 percent of adults ages 50 to 64 claimed to do so. Overall, almost one-third of all workers listen to music at the office. Read Article

Sounding out Devon. (BBC) Sonic Postcards is a new, unique national education programme which is trying to link schools across England by the medium of sound. The Devon project focuses on the impact of sound in the lives and individual lives and demonstrates the possibilities for creativity through the manipulation of sounds with technology. Read More.

Sound of Silence. These days, in our 24/7 western world, silence is in pretty short supply, and in most of urban Britain, as in New York, it's pretty hard to find. It's not easy to get New Yorkers to be quiet individually, let alone collectively. But for a few brief minutes on the anniversary of 9/11, that's just what they have recently started doing. They too need now to stop, to pause and to remember. Read Article.

Herring Break Wind to Communicate, Study Suggests. (National Geographic) In polite society, flatulence is often a social faux pas—especially when issued deliberately. But in the world of fish, group "raspberry-blowing" sessions appear to perform an important social role.
      This intriguing idea comes from scientists who discovered that herring create a mysterious underwater noise by farting. Researchers suspect herring hear the bubbles as they're expelled, helping the fish form protective shoals at night. It's the first ever study to suggest fish communicate by breaking wind. Read Article.

Acusmarte: sound for sound. Visit an online website which is a work in progress exploring a number of unique soundscapes. The site is in Portuguese. Comments are encouraged. Visit Site.

Indian noise pollution. (BBC-2005) India's Supreme Court banned loud music, firecrackers and the honking of vehicle horns from 2200 to 0600. The ruling came in response to a public interest lawsuit which called for action against noisemakers. Health experts argue noise pollution in India is a major cause of heart attacks and other stress related illnesses. Read Article.

Humans not alone in linking faces, sounds. (CBC-2003) Rhesus monkeys are able to match sounds and facial expressions. Their skill may be an evolutionary forerunner to our ability to interpret the signals, researchers say. "The presence of multimodal perception in an animal's communication signals may represent an evolutionary precursor of humans' ability to make the multimodal associations necessary for speech perception." Read Article.

Woman with no ears hears. (BBC 2002) A woman born with no ears has been able to hear for the first time, and has had artificial ears created. Janet Craven, who suffers from the rare genetic disorder Treacher Collins syndrome, underwent two operations in which a state-of-the-art hearing aid was attached to the bone in the side of her head. Her sister that when she Craven left hospital, "... we walked out of the hospital she asked me 'what's that noise?', and she had to describe it to me. I told her it was the wind - she had never heard the wind before and she says it still keeps her awake at night" Read Article.

Muffling Howl of Passing Trains Isn't Easy. (LA Times) For the last four years, the 72-year-old retired human resources director and Orange resident, along with a growing band of cohorts in other Orange County cities, have logged decibel readings for thousands of Amtrak, Burlington Northern and Metrolink trains passing through the county's 55 street-level "grade crossings."
      "Our purpose is the need for quiet zones," Owens said, "and we will tell anyone — city councils, transportation agencies, even Metrolink — of the need to eliminate excessive and unnerving noise from train horns." Read Article.

Is This What the Big Bang Sounded Like? (National Geographic) As University of Virginia astronomy professor Mark Whittle tells it, the big bang 13.7 billion years ago spawned a big noise along with billions of stars and galaxies. Whittle has come up with a soundtrack to the birth of the cosmos—and it doesn't sound anything like a bang. The noise was more of a "descending scream, building into a deep, rasping roar, and ending in a deafening hiss," he said. Read Article.

Invitation to Join AMP. Every artist could use some help finding what they need, such as collaborators, a support system, venues, places to sleep, tour personnel, and many other resources. Artists locally and worldwide need better ways to connect with both people and services. AMP, the Artists Meeting Place and Resource Collective, is a physical and virtual worldwide collective of over 1200 artists (including musicians, painters, performers, and many more) in nearly 40 countries networking together to build and support local and international artists, create new art communities, and enhance those that already exist. Oriented towards creating community, AMP is much more of an OurSpace than it is like MySpace. AMP's two main goals are quick, easy and useful creative connections, and a network of ways to make your life easier, better, bigger, and more interesting. AMP can save you money and time; expand your creative network and the possibilities that you can see for yourself; consolidate, organize, and clarify information; and open doors that you never even knew existed. More Information Online.

November 1, 2006
World-Wide Fourth annual Extreme Slow Soundwalk.
     November 1st is All Saints Day. Preceded by Halloween on the 31st of October and followed by All Souls Day on the 2nd, this stretch of days is a time, in many traditions and faiths, to honor the departed - a time to visit resting places and make offerings and a time to acknowledge the living spirit that moves around us. Like every other day, November 1 is also a day to listen. Join with others around the world in making an extreme slow soundwalk wherever you are on Wednesday, November 1, 2006. Visit www.treetheater.org/extreme_slow to read journal entries from prior years' walks, find out locations and times of planned walks and get more details about the event. Organized by Brooklyn-based composer Michelle Nagai mn@treetheater.org. 

November 3-4, 2006
sonic.focus: theory and practice between sound and image
Brown University
Providence, RI 
     Sonic.focus is a project that examines complementarities and antagonisms between sound and image in contemporary culture. Starting with film & video screenings on October 20th and 27th, the events will culminate in a conference and performance series to be held at Brown University on November 3 and 4, 2006.
   This program is prompted by the emergence over the past decade of an auditory culture that parallels the dominant visual culture. Among the phenomena that signal this emergence are: the increasing presence of sound
in visual arts exhibitions and venues; the proliferation of visual and media practices in which sound is central to meaning; and the development of a body of theory that examines the nature, history, and circulation of sound
as a useful social or conceptual model. Learn More.

November 9-12, 2006
Habitats (ASAE Chapter: New York Society for Acoustic Ecology)
Brooklyn Lyceum and Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn
Soundwalks on November 9 & 10 at 1 pm and 3 pm
NY Soundmap kiosk available throughout, soundmap jam on November 12, 7-9 pm
      Habitats is a multi-day festival aimed at strengthening the contributions that communities and neighborhoods make toward sustainable and environmental living. It brings together community members, artists and scientists in a large-scale, site-specific collaborative endeavor. Habitats explores collaborative and interdisciplinary action by encouraging artists from different backgrounds and cultures to follow their inner vision while working together under a common framework of understanding. This framework materializes when the artists build together and become the dwellers of a unique and integrated environment. Website: www.global-habitat.net/ and Contact: info@global-habitat.net 

November 10-11, 2006
Lighthouse, Poole, Dorset, UK
     The second annual Unsafe Festival, which will be held on Friday 10th / Saturday, November 11th at Lighthouse in Poole, Dorset, UK. There will be a film show and short performance on the Friday, and Saturday will involve workshops, performances, installations and seminars.
     Sound works that take risks – artistically, aesthetically, philosophically, sonically, even physically will be presented. All submissions will be featured in a sonic art event within the main festival, and will be diffused on a multi-speaker system. More information: Adrian Newton (nemeton@clara.co.uk)

November 15-19, 2006
Peter Stuyvesant's Ghost (ASAE Chapter: New York Society for Acoustic Ecology)
St. Marks Church and East Village, NYC
Soundwalks on November 17 at 9 pm & November 18 at 3 pm
      Peter Stuyvesant's Ghost (PSG) is a civic art project inspired by the rapid cultural and physical changes during the Dutch colonial period in what is now New York City. Using sound as the medium of performance, PSG hopes to tap into the visceral response that hearing, like smell, tends to generate. Guided soundwalks, sound art accessed via public pay phone and customized maps explore the contemporary topography of the East Village while making palpable the pre-urban terrain of Peter Stuyvesant's seventeenth century farm. PSG is part of Five Dutch Days 2006, taking place November 15-19 in New York City. Website: www.cityinasoundwalk.org/psg/ Contact: Lise Brenner brennerl@hotmail.com

November 18, 2006
SOUND Festival
Aberdeen, Scotland
     SOUND is the North East of Scotland's contemporary music festival. Following a pilot event, "Upbeat" in 2004, the first festival was launched in November 2005, and is on its way to becoming an annual event.
     SOUND aims to make contemporary music more accessible to audiences of all ages and backgrounds by presenting an eclectic but very broad range of contemporary music - classical, traditional, popular, jazz, experimental - through a wide range of events including concerts, talks, electroacoustic installations, and workshops. More Information.   

November 24-26, 2007
The Soundscape in our Landscape - The 3rd Haliburton Soundscape Retreat
Canadian Association for Sound Ecology
    For those of you who can't make it out to Japan to the WFAE conference but want to participate in something a little closer to home (for North Americans at least!) below is information about the upcoming Canadian Association for Sound Ecology retreat at the end of November in Haliburton Ontario. Speakers: R. Murray Schafer, Bernie Krause, Andrea Dancer, Kristi Allik & Robert Mulder.
   The weekend long retreat will take place at the Haliburton Wildlife Reserve on the weekend of November 24-26, 2006 and will include lectures/talks on the theme “the Soundscape in our Landscape” along with ear-cleaning exercises, show-and-tell sessions for participants and outdoor soundwalks. Registration deadline, November 7th. Download here the full descriptive document and registration form. More information:nadene@magma.ca

November 24, 25, 26, 2007
SoundAsArt :: Blurring of the Boundaries Conference
Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
    Besides some excellent papers and presentations from artists and academics alike, the conference has three Keynote speakers (Jonty Harrison, Rajesh Mehta, and Christina Kubisch), performers (Keith Rowe, Rohan de Saram, ahem, Bill Thompson, and Patrick Keenan), installations by sound artist Giancarlo Toniutti, Karen Hay, and Patrick Wyness, and a soundwalk by Tony Whitehead. Also performing are the acousmatic group, invisiblEARs. The conference is free anyone that's intending to attend needs to register. Full details available on the Conference Web Site.

December 1-3, 2006
Time, Sound, and Transcendence: Forging a New Vision for Improvised Music Pedagogy and Practice  
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
   The International Society for Improvised Music is happy to announce its first inaugural conference and invite proposals for performances, workshops, and papers from individuals involved in all kinds of improvised music.  Submissions are welcome from artists/educators working in tradition-specific realms—e.g. Jazz, traditional Hindustani, European baroque, Arabic maqam—as well as in trans-stylistic approaches.  Given the dearth of trans-stylistic approaches to improvisation pedagogy, proposals are welcome for hands-on workshops that present strategies in this regard. Read More Online.

December 8, 2006
Bells, Water, Car Horns: New Work on EcoAcoustics and Acoustemology:
A presentation by Steven Feld
7:30 PM O'Shaughnessy Performance Space, Benildus Hall, College of Santa Fe
Info: 505-473-6196
     The presentation will consist of new audio and video from current research in Europe, Japan, and Ghana, to appear on 4 CDs on the VoxLox, EarthEar, and Smithsonian Folkways labels: The Time of Bells 4; Suikinkutsu: A Japanese Underground Water Zither; Por Por: Honk Horn Music of Ghana; and The Anomabo Shoreline. Free and open to all. Sponsored by the College of Santa Fe Contemporary Music Program and the American Society for Acoustic Ecology (ASAE) - Santa Fe Chapter

January 17, 2007
New Adventures in Sound Art
Ryerson University, Toronto
    New Adventures in Sound Art will turn the Ryerson Student Campus Centre and various venues around the city into Surrealist cabarets of sound poetry, experimental music, and performance art for a day long celebration of Art and inter-continental communications exchange. "Art's Birthday" is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou.
      Art's Birthday. Net - an annual exchange-art event celebrated on January 17th by a loose collection of artists and artist organizations around the world. He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Modest beginnings, but look at us now. More Information.

March 1-3 2007
2007 Santa Fe International Festival of Electroacoustic Music
College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe New Mexico, USA
    SFIFEM has a 10-year history of presenting cutting-edge international electroacoustic music performances, broadcasts, and installations in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For more information, see the festival website.

May, 2007
Translocal Events - Deep Wireless Festival
    May, 2007 will be the first Deep Wireless festival to include translocal events (performances and broadcasts that occur simultaneously in more than one location locally and internationally). For details on how you can participate or to send your own proposal e-mail naisa@naisa.ca.

April 18-21, 2007
The School of Sound
    Since its inception in 1998, the School of Sound has raised the profile of sound in audio-visual media through an unequalled series of presentations which integrate practice with theory, and art with entertainment.
   Each edition features master classes by practitioners, artists and academics working at the highest levels of art and media. Directors, sound designers, composers, editors, and theorists have shown us the soundtrack from hundreds of new angles. They reveal the methods, theories and creative thinking that lie behind the most effective uses of sound and music. If you work in film, television, commercials or multimedia, this event will provide the perfect complement to your technical expertise. More Information.

Click to Enlarge

Explore the Macaulay Library of animal sounds. Watch and listen to a large collection of animal behavior recordings.

Listen: Making Sense of Sound. (Scout Report) This very detailed and well-thought out set of online activities gives users the opportunity to listen closely to the particular sounds of the natural world. Based at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, this site was sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Listening Guides includes testimonies and suggestions about listening to wildlife, urban environments, and even to build new experimental musical instruments. Users can learn about Bart Hopkin, who makes such instruments, and also play a number of online games. Finally, the Online Activities area lets users watch and listen to a number of fun and interactive features, such as a listening memory game. Visit Site.

Resource

Hearing Cultures by Veit Erlmann. Hearing Cultures is a timely examination of the elusive, often evocative, and sometimes cacophonous auditory sense. It answers such intriguing questions as: Did people in Shakespeare's time hear differently from us? In what way does technology affect our ears? Why do people in Egypt increasingly listen to taped religious sermons? Why did Enlightenment doctors believe that music was an essential cure? What happens acoustically in cross-cultural first encounters? Why do Runa Indians in the Amazon basin now consider onomatopoetic speech child's talk? The ear, as much as the eye, nose, mouth and hand, offers a way into experience. All five senses are instruments that record, interpret and engage with the world. This book shows how sound offers a refreshing new lens through which to examine culture and complex social issues.
     This book shows how sound offers a refreshing new lens through which to examine culture and complex social issues. ISBN: 1859738281 Publisher: Berg Publishers

Deadline: November 15, 2006
Call for Works 11th Annual Santa Fe International Festival of Electroacoustic Music
College of Santa Fe Contemporary Music Program
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
     Programming for the 2007 Santa Fe International Festival of Electroacoustic Music is accepting submissions for consideration in two categories: 'Radio broadcasts' and 'Ambient sound installations.' Full information on both categories and submission details can be found on the 'Call for Works' link on the festival website.
    SFIFEM is a program of the Contemporary Music Program at the College of Santa Fe in Santa Fe New Mexico, USA.

Deadline: December 1, 2006
Call for Submissions: Sound:Space – Screen
Event supported by Sonic Arts Network
      South Hill Park Arts Centre is hosting the Sound:Space Symposium event on 20th January 2007. The day features talks and discussions examining contemporary artistic use of sound  in the environment, featuring Janek Schaefer, Kode9 & The Spaceape, Neil C. Smith, Radio Access Memory, Prof. Aaron Watson, Acoustic research of Megalithic monuments,  Resonance FM, Open Source audio software, digital distribution systems.
     Sound:Space Screen will present audio and video documentation of spatial sound installations, radio art, audio and architecture projects, environmental sound interventions during the whole day in our Cinema.
     Artists are invited to send in submissions on audio CD or DVD (PAL format) to contribute to this unique event. Send to: Martin Franklin, Sound:Space, South Hill Park, Bracknell RG12 7PA. UK

Deadline: December 31, 2006
Call for Submissions: Papers, sound documentaries, soundscape compostions, and art work.
FKL Symposium, Basel, Switzerland - April 21-22, 2007
      A call for symposium presentations has been made by the FKL. The main language of the symposium is German. However there is the possiblitiy to submit contributions in English. The sole precondition for a contribution is a membership at the FKL. The symposium is a part of the annual FKL meeting .

Guidelines for submissions:

• For papers submit an abstract of 300 words
• For sound documentations submit an abstract on CD and a project description
• For soundscape compositions submit the entire work on CD and a description
• For art installations submit a detailed description and - if possible - an audio example. Please note that the we can't take into acount submissions that are too complex (space, technology).

Please send your submissions before 31 December 2006 to the FKL secretary: Lorenz Schwarz, Jacob Burckhardt-Str. 16, CH-4052 Basel, lorenz.schwarz@klanglandschaft.org. This email address is protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it The FKL steering committee decides over the admission of your contribution to the agenda.

Accepting Submissions - Atrium Sound Space
College of Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
     The Atrium Sound Space gallery is accepting submissions of multi-CD based sound installations for programming consideration.
    The Atrium Sound Space is a gallery for sound installations located in the lobby of Benildus Hall, on the College of Santa Fe campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Dedicated to presenting sound installations as sonic environment in public spaces, the Atrium Sound Space runs continuously throughout the year - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
    Though the Atrium Sound Space will be formally launched in early Fall 2006, it has already hosted installation pieces by Peter Swanzy and Al Margolis (in conjunction with the Santa Fe International Festival of Electroacoustic Music), and Steven M. Miller. The Fall schedule will be announced in September.
    Sound artists interested in submitting pieces for programming consideration can find technical specifications and submission guidelines/information on the Atrium Sound Space submissions page.