Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 27. Issue 27 Issue 27

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  Music for Spaces: Music for Space - An argument for sound as a component of museum experience (2014) author(s): Tim Boon published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  Music for Spaces: Music for Space. An argument for sound as a component of museum experience
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  The Significance of Electro-acoustic Music in the Space Opera Aniara (2014) author(s): Johan Stenstrøm published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  In 1956 the Swedish poet Harry Martinson published Aniara, a poetic narrative set in a distant future and based on the idea that the Earth has been contaminated with nuclear fallout from atomic bombs and has become uninhabitable. A fleet of spacecraft ferry people to Mars and Venus, where the population of the Earth must be evacuated. One of these spaceships is called Aniara. Soon after take-off, she is involved in a collision that renders her steering gear nonfunctional. Consequently, she veers off course, setting out on a journey into space with no possibility of ever reaching her destination. The reader follows the fate of the passengers and crew during the next 24 years as they try to adapt to life in the spaceship. In 1959 the opera Aniara by Karl-Birger Blomdahl premiered at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. One of the features that attracted widespread attention was the Mima tapes – that is, taped electro-acoustic music and musique concrète used to represent the sound sequences emanating from a computer-like machine called the mima on board the spaceship Aniara. To create the Mima tapes, the composer and the librettist used key phrases from different songs in Martinson’s epic. By using this device in an opera about mankind set in a remote future, Blomdahl was able to create an affinity between music and subject matter.
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  Remixing the Voyager Interstellar Record: Or, As Extraterrestrials Might Listen (2014) author(s): Stefan Helmreich published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  This text offers an introduction to a hyperlink, http://earthscramble.com/, a portal to the Scrambles of Earth project, which is dedicated to decoding and disseminating audio transmissions of possible extraterrestrial origin that have been received on Earth in response to the Voyager Golden Record. The Voyager Record, a compendium of recorded Earth sounds affixed in phonograph form to NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, was launched out of Earth orbit in the 1970s and in 2013 left our solar system to travel into interstellar space. It may be that aliens have started listening in — and more, as the Scrambles of Earth document suggests, it may be that aliens have started to create their own interpretations of the Earth sounds they have received. Whether such Voyager Record echoes are messages meant for Earthly receipt or are simply exploratory experiments in sound that happen to have been intercepted on their way to somewhere else remains to be determined.
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  An Exceptional Purity of Sound: Noise reduction technology and the inevitable noise of sound recording (2014) author(s): Melle Kromhout published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  The phenomenon of noise has resisted many attempts at framing it within a singular conceptual framework. Critically questioning the tendency to do so, this article asserts the complexities of different noise-phenomena by analysing a specific technology: technological noise reduction systems. Whereas Sterne describes how engineers have sought to eradicate noise in order to reach what Dolby Laboratories called an ‘exceptional purity of sound,’ Serres and Kittler repeatedly stress that the presence of noise is not only inevitable, but even fundamental to sound and sound recording. Working at the crossroads of noise as a concept in information theory and noise as a physical and sonic phenomenon, a close reading of technological noise reduction shows how it not only produces its own notion of noise in the very process of reducing it, but even generates noise itself. Ultimately, this analysis offers valuable insights into the complexity of noise and the multiple levels on which it operates.
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  Editorial - Functional Sounds in Sound Art and Popular Culture: Proceedings of the First International ESSA Conference 2013, part I (2014) author(s): Julia Krause published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  Editorial: Proceedings of the First International ESSA Conference
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  Affective Soundscape Composition for Evoking Sonic Immersion (2014) author(s): Mehdi Mark Nazemi published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  In 2012, I came to a realization in Barry Truax’s graduate course, Acoustic Dimensions of Communication, that there might be a potential to use concepts from the acoustic communication model and research from the acoustic ecology community to shift paradigms in healthcare research. What started as an idea written in a moleskin notebook has now led to a body of work that transfers knowledge from the soundscape community to health sciences. Although this research is in its nascent stage, the use of media, specifically audio recordings, pervades several well-known approaches to pain management and anxiety. However, there remains consideration of the potentiality of using deep listening techniques, specifically recordings of mediated spaces as a tool for analgesic purposes. Mediated spaces can be conceived of as exploratory spaces that use the principles of soundwalks and soundscapes to create an experience for the patient that simulates an environment through the means of audio playback of binaural recordings. In this research, careful attention was placed towards creating specific soundwalks that produce a distinct auditory quality, which helps bring the attention of the patient to focus on three intertwined levels: a micro-narrated experience – heightening a visceral sensation as they engage with the sounds, the structure of the soundscape composed using binaural recording, and the sounds of real-time physical presence, such as walking or sounds of children playing in the environment. This approach allows the patient to self-orient himself or herself in a new environment, minimizing tension, and encourages them to reactively become attentive to the sites and sounds in the recordings. Therefore, this novel approach is one of the first attempts at improving the psychological experience of patients in clinics by immersing them in a sonic milieu.
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