A Catastrophic Playlist
Alvin Lucier ‘I am sitting in a room” 1969 & “Music on a Long Thin Wire’ 1980
Chris Watson & BJ Nilsen ‘Storm’ 2006.
Franscisco Lopez ‘New York Buildings’ 2001.
Glenn Gould ‘The Solitude Trilogy’ 1967-77.
Christina Kubisch ‘Five Electrical Walks’ 2007.
Wolf Eyes ‘Dead Hills’ 2002
Steve McGreevy ‘Auroral Chorus II: The Music of the Magnetosphere’ 2000.
Toshiya Tsunoda ‘Pieces of Air’ & ‘extract from field recording archive #2&3’ 2002-5
Jason Kahn ‘One Hour as Snow’ 2003.
Peter Cusack ‘Baikal Ice’ 2003.
Steve Roden ‘Resonant Cities’ 2003.
Krzysztof Penderecki ‘Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima’ 1960.
Gavin Bryars with Philip Jeck & Alter Ego ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ 2005.
RLW ‘The Pleasure of Burning Down Churches’ 2007.
Tod Dockstader ‘Apocalypse’ 1993.
The Conet Project ‘Recordings Of Shortwave Numbers Stations’ 1997.
Knurl ‘Torus’ 1998.
Audible Topographies
Audible Topographies presents final projects from the Computational Arts 356 course that explore the terrain in which sound, the body and the built environment collide within a culture of listening. A public open house will present installations, performance along with video and sound work from 6 to 8 pm.
Including Work from:
Hugues Bruyère * Angela Gabereau * Brett Bergman * Joseph Ghaleb & Daniel Faria * Carina Ockerdahl * Jonathan Hill *Jon Lebensold * Thomas Benoit * Andrea Zarbo * Claudia Mannigel * Philip Karneef * Maziar Javidiani * Alexandre O’Bomsawin * Benjamin Henderson * Anouk BenT * Matt Waddell * Navid Navab
The Sound of Sea Monkeys - Preliminary Research
For the purposes of clarity, all instances of the term “brine shrimp” have been replaced with the more accurate term – Sea Monkeys. -Ed.
I once even herded Sea Monkeys into a pack to capture the quality of their movements.
- Interview with Stan Brakhage at smoc.net
The first thing I noticed was the sound – like Sea Monkeys when you snorkel or dive in the ocean or a scratched up old record. My ear also felt very warm but not too hot.
- Report on ear candling at RevolutionHealth.com
It is very very hard to eliminate the interconnection between the experimenter and the plants being tested. Even the briefest association with the plants—just a few hours—is enough to let them become attuned to you. Then, even though you automate the experiment and leave the laboratory, and even though you set a time delay switch for random intervals, guaranteeing you are entirely unaware of when the experiment starts, the plants will remain attuned to you, no matter where you go. At first, my partner and I used to go to a bar a block away, and after a time we began to grow suspicious that the plants were not responding to the death of the Sea Monkeys at all, but instead to the rising and falling levels of excitement in our conversations. Finally, we came up with a way around this. We had someone else buy the plants, and store them in another part of the building we didn’t frequent. On the day of the experiment we went to the holding area, brought the plants in, hooked them up, and left. This meant the plants were in a strange environment, they had the pressure of the electrodes, they had a little trickle of electricity going through their leaves, and they’d been deserted. Because they were not attuned to us or to anyone else, they began “looking around” for anything that would acquaint them with their environment. Then, and only then, did something so subtle as the deaths of the Sea Monkeys get picked up by the plants.
- Report on responsiveness of plants to the death of Sea Monkeys (the Backster Effect) at Unexplained-Mysteries.com
The U.S. military’s Defense University Research Instrumentation Program has supplied Jumars with a grant of more than $103,000 to continue his groundbreaking work in the utilization of sonar technology, which seeks to establish reliable techniques for monitoring the movements of Sea Monkeys as they carry out their daily migrations from the shelter of the ocean floor to the waters above and back. “I basically study what the people who identify undersea mines call noise. Their noise has become my signal,” said Jumars. “My Office of Naval Research Program Officers have been impressed by how dense the swarms of migrating Sea Monkeys can be. This is definitely not a small problem when it comes to using acoustics for local area search…..
- Article on military research into sound of clouds of Sea Monkeys on the ocean floor at ScienceDaily.com
Sounds of most of the other marine organisms that create auditory signals – for example, the vibrations made when tiny Sea Monkeys swim are involved in the discharge of the stinging capsules of sea anemones that prey on them are of such short range that they would not be useful in observing systems … However, most marine organisms do not create sound.
- Journal article on the development of acoustic sensors to be used to identify marine organisms based on sounds they produce at the University of Kansas, USA
Ear Phonautograph
The Ear phonautograph, 1874 (built by Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence Blake). This machine used the excised bones from a human middle ear, a synthetic mouthpiece, and a piece of straw to trace sound vibrations on a piece of smoked glass.
Wilson Cloud Chamber
via Wikipedia of course.
The cloud chamber, also known as the Wilson chamber, is used for detecting particles of ionizing radiation. In its most basic form, a cloud chamber is a sealed environment containing a supercooled, supersaturated water vapour. When an alpha particle or beta particle interacts with the mixture, it ionises it. The resulting ions act as condensation nuclei, around which a mist will form (because the mixture is on the point of condensation). The high energies of alpha and beta particles mean that a trail is left, due to many ions being produced along the path of the charged particle. These tracks have distinctive shapes (for example an alpha particle’s track is broad and straight, while an electron’s is thinner and shows more evidence of deflection). When a vertical magnetic field is applied, positively and negatively charged particles will curve in opposite directions. This is evidenced in the photograph above showing the discovery of the positron; an electron curves the other way. It is possible (and essential) in this case to determine that the positron was actually moving upwards (presumably it had been deflected from below), because the curvature of the track is greater in the lower part of the figure (the photograph was upside down!). For more detailed track shape information see bubble chamber.
Attenuation of Audible Sound in Fog and Smoke
Vern O. Knudsen, John V. Wilson, and Neal S. Anderson
University of California, Los Angeles, California
(Received July 19, 1948)
Measurements of the rate of decay of sound in a reverberation room, first with no fog or smoke in the room and then with fog or smoke of known concentration and particle size added to the room, show that the attenuation of sound in a number of aerosols is in approximate agreement with values predicted by the theories of Sewell, Epstein, and Oswatitsch. In a water fog having a concentration of 2.0×10–6 grams/cm3 and average droplet radius of 6.25×10–4 cm, the attenuation owing to the fog increased from about 5 db/sec. at 500 c.p.s. to 13 db/sec. at 8000 c.p.s. In a quite similar fog of mineral oil, the corresponding attenuation increased from 1.6 db/sec. at 500 c.p.s. to 21 db/sec. at 8000 c.p.s. At very low frequencies, a fog of water is much more absorptive than is a fog of oil; the difference is ascribed to a “relaxation” effect of evaporation from and recondensation the droplets, which is much greater for water than for oil. The attenuation of sound in smoke may become rather high, amounting to 58 db/sec. at a frequency of 6000 c.p.s. for a moderately dense smoke of NH4Cl (180 g in a volume of 6080 cu. ft.). ©1948 Acoustical Society of America
Full Text: PDF
See Also:
Propagation of Sound Through Atmospheric Fog
Measurements of the Attenuation of Sound by a Warm Air Fog
435,190 Buildings
City assessor Francine Godin today tabled the 2007-2008-2009 assessment rolls for the 16 municipalities of the Montreal urban agglomeration.
The overall value of the 435,190 buildings on the territory has reached a record high of $188 billion. Based on the current roll, this means an increase of approximately 39% in real estate wealth. In the urban agglomeration, property assessments increase by 47.4%, on average, in the residential sector, and by 23.7% in the non-residential sector.
In the 16 municipalities of the Montreal agglomeration, taxable value increases vary between 21.1% and 42.5%. The increase varies between 27.6% and 53.5% in the 19 Montreal boroughs.
The assessment rolls of the Montreal urban agglomeration alone represent approximately 30% of Quebec’s real estate value. Some $3 billion in taxes are collected annually on the basis of property value.
The assessment roll is subject to the Act respecting municipal taxation. Property assessment reflects current values as of July 1, 2005. According to the law, the Quebec minister of municipal affairs and the regions has developed performance indicators to ensure assessment roll quality throughout Quebec.
The Sound of Microclimates
SEMICONDUCTOR : Sound of Microclimates
Experimental video | dv | colour | 0:09:00
United Kingdom, France | 2004
Quicktime Extract
The Sound of Microclimates reveals the sights and sounds of a series of unusual weather patterns in the Paris of today. Here, architecture has become interwoven with the natural processes of the geographical landscape. Set within the un-noticed moments in time, extreme microclimates are presented as the future in city accessories, revealing the unseen urban terrains of tomorrow. Like the temporary staged events at a World Expo these weather patterns hi-light public spaces and architecture within the City or Paris. They exist as a series of weather observations that animate the evolution of the inanimate urban condition. Each microclimatic intervention has its own audible frequencies, where the sound from each environment animates the movement and reveals each sites unique narrative.
Semiconductor are artists Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt who have been working together since 1996, producing short films, music, art installations and performances. Originally established as a music orientated collaboration, Semiconductor soon began to work on what has become their self titled Sound Films series, where relationships between audio and image have been consistently explored. They tackle the strucural relationships between music and architecture that transform soundscapes to landscapes and explore ideas of evolving landscapes that cross urban and rural boundaries. Finely crafted digital work is combined with analogue processes that tailor the randomness and errors within computer systems as co-conductor. Recently they have been exploring a variety of new environments through Artist residencies and site specific Artworks.