Sound Art: David Byrne - Playing the Building

Former Talking Heads singer and all round musical legend David Byrne has unveiled his new installation at The Battery Martime Museum in New York. The building is kitted out with various devices attached to a variety of different parts of the building itself. These devices are used to make sound through striking wind or vibration and channeled into a customised keyboard allowing you to 'play the building'.

Reminds me of an arty version of Barry Blesser's 'Spaces Speak' book we talked about here.

check out the pics and vids at DavidByrne.com

Sweet Child of Wine

Research commissioned by Chilean wine producer Aurelio Montes (pictured) by Dr Adrian North of Heriot Watt University has discovered that music plays a big influence on how we perceive taste in food and drink. When they played Gun n Roses "Sweet Child Of Mine" to people drinking cabernet sauvignon, they thought that the wine tasted 60% more robust than they did when no music was playing.

This is rooted in cognitive priming theory which we've talked about before and again goes to prove the powerful effect that music has on our behaviour. The article in the Times prompts that this could be an end to piped music in restaurants as more places seeks to nulify music's effect. However, i don't quite go along with this - why don't the restaurants take advantage of this effect by focusing more on the music design in their spaces to have a positive influence of taste and perception of the food such as the "Sound of The Sea" experiment by Heston Blumenthal

It is also significant that during any restaurant experience we are being primed by mixture of factors including the visual decor, lighting, service etc not just the music - and it is only by getting all these factors correct in combination can the restaurant really make proper use of this priming effect.

Times Article by Melanie Reid

Event: Tree Listening @ Atmospheres 2

The fantatsic Touch records (Fennesz, Philip Jeck etc) have collaborated with the Museum of Garden History to present the Atmospheres festival in London from tomorrow till Sunday. Focusing on the sounds of the natural world the thing that caught my ear was an installation from recent RCA design graduate Alex Metcalf called Tree Listening. Metcalf has designed an ear trumpet that can be used to listen to the microscopic sounds that trees make as they carry out their daily routine - mostly drinking water and creaking!
Apparently the trumpet filters out low frequency tones emitted from the earth to leave a clicking sound which is actually the tree drinking water and distributing it to it's branches.

Alex Metcalf Web

Atmosphere2 / Touch Music Web

Run to the music

Following years of research at Brunel University, Dr Costas Karageorghis has launched Run to the Beat, a half marathon where you run accompanied by live music strategically placed around the route, and designed to help ease the torture of pounding concrete for a couple of hours. Of course, readers of this blog will know that this 'music design' phenomenon that Karageorghis has spent the last two decades on is nothing new and is found in many other aspects of our life, dating as far back as the 1920's with the Muzak corporation's experiments on music and 'stimulus progression' of worker's in factories in America (There are undoubtedly even earlier examples, but that, to the best of my knowledge, was the first time music was turned into a 'science').

Anyways, Karageorghis ambitious project has exposed the benefits of music to a wider audience and the whole thing looks like a bit of fun rather than a huge devious experiment disguised as a charity run.. My concern is that by using pop bands whose music most will be familiar with and either love or completely resent, there's bound to be an element of

'oh- here's my fave tune by my fave band, i'll slow down to listen'
OR
'awww- i can't stand this song, i'd better speed up to get away from it'...
thereby making the whole thing a bit of a farce..

Especially when looking at the tunes that are talked about in the science

The half marathon will take place on the 5th of October this year. We'd better get training - dubstep for the snailpaced anyone?

runtothebeat.co.uk

Sound Art: Beneath and Beyond by Stephen Hurrel

Beneath and Beyond is an audio visual installation by Stephen Hurrel at Glasgow's Tranway as part of the annual GI festival for Visual Art. The installation presents a realtime feed of seismic shifts recorded from data of 100 of so seismic monitoring stations around the Earth. We are presented with the sound of the various vibrations going on within the Earth's core at that very moment. We also see two visual screens showing graphical displays of particularly large tectonic shifts or events at that one time.

We went to this on Saturday and were totally blown away. The work has been two years in the making following Hurrel being awarded the prestigious Creative Scotland award in 2005, but the hard work has paid off - we could have sat there all day just listening to the sound of the Earth grinding away.

Highly recommended!

Stephen Hurrel - Beneath and Beyond

The birds take on radio

A digital radio station which plays the sound of bird song from an English country garden is causing quite a chatter by swooping up over half a million listeners. There is now a campaign to keep the station on the air before a commercial station takes over it's frequency range..

I love the idea of this - we have all come to accept that mainstream radio represents annoying 'personality djs', offensive adverts and playlisting formats which limits diversity of music being played. The fact that so many listeners would choose to listen to bird song instead should acts as a wake up call to radio producers.. tweet tweet

listen to birdsong radio

Sound Art: Encounters by Katie Paterson

Saw this advertised in the Sunday Times last week - Sound installation by Katie Paterson at the Modern Art Oxford from the 2nd April to 1st June 2008. You are confronted by a telephone which connects you to the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland where you can hear the sound of the glacier melting.

Sounds interesting and obviously a topical subject to pick, what with constant stream of global warming debates dominating the news. But does the Sunday Times really need to give us ANOTHER history of 'Sound art' - brian eno, cage et al?? Surely, there must come a point where audiences can accept the concept of using sound as a medium for art - how hard can that be to grasp?!

Link

What it sounds like for a boy/girl ? or How i started to file her under misc, a tragedy in 12" 7" and cdvd formats

Men are from.... ? women are from.......?

It's easy: women dance around handbags, men can't.

...and now to add to the gender definition industry.

How we listen!

How do we listen?

According to Lesley Douglas, BBC6 head of music and a crack team of pointer-outers with super eyes, it boils down into two main camps -

MEN: Nerding over the producers suicide halfway through recording, compulsively collecting every last 7 inch where the word "bless" is used, etc. That is to say that men enjoy the overall stuff around a song and get enjoyment from the trivia. Reminds me of Losing My Edge by LCD Soundsystem - you know the one with the green label and the lightning bolt and Tim Sweeney and Yoko Ono kissing dogs in the background..... shit! I did it again.

WOMEN: Being swept into floods of tears by Tori Amos then swung into a Lambrini induced hysteria by um...Take That, Tom Jones, Girls Aloud (well you never know)... Emotional creatures at the mercy of cruel musicians who take them to the edge of ecstasy only for Stuart McConie to talk over the final seconds. Who enjoy each song without the baggage of whether they died in a plane or once supported their family by selling crack.

So for your own gender labeling please take a minute to take our test.

Are you a man or a women eh?

1) Kraftwerk or Joni Mitchell

2) Bannanarama or Nick Kershaw?

3) Debussy or Wagner

Now, bearing in mind you may not prefer either or like both. In this case i advise a peek down your front. Answers in the comment section.

As ever thanks to the Laura Barton at the Guardian for the article which inspired this little experiment.

Priming

"Priming in psychology refers to activating parts of particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task. It is considered to be one of the manifestations of implicit memory. A property of priming is that the remembered item is remembered best in the form in which it was originally encountered. If a priming list is given in an auditory mode, then an auditory cue produces better performance than a visual cue."

so thinking about the applications of this.... hmmm... trade?

A person walks into a cafe which is playing just the same tune granny used to have on as she tucked them into bed. That person now feels warm and comfortable and at ease and ripe for selling lattes, muffins or Vashti Bunyan cd's. poor sod:

This person has been primed.

Last nights horizon was focused on choices and how they aren't ever really yours. (half shite talk from men in blazers or prescient future imagining Gibson readers) but also half scary Harvard business school graduates that will be making a killing, and worst of all you will ask them too.

Yes their example was of a warm drink and a cold drink but I'm more interested, of course, by music as a priming mechanism.

What's interesting is that we self medicate with music to prime ourselves all the time - think of the couple getting the mood right for a romantic dinner tomorrow night only to put on Goblin, Earth or Sunno))).

It won't happen! Or, if it does I can only expect that one of the participants will be dinner. No actually try it.

Funnily, there is a discussion knocks around my flat about what everyone will play at my funeral. Why mine i can't really say, but what seems to come to the fore is music which will either bring people into the correct level of Georgian maudlin black mood or the opposite and bittersweet the ceremony with all the fun I used to have. This sport has some real winners (I'm not telling) but what I want to know is - will I hear the Pointer Sisters one day as i approach the counter to buy a coffee only to corpse it???

So just watch when you're next in a shop and you start humming along - you're already beat.

Two Open Ears @ Instal 08

We've been asked by our good friends at Radio Magnetic (www.radiomagnetic.com) to report on the wonderful annual Instal festival taking place in Glasgow this weekend. One of the leading experimental music festival's in the world, Instal brings together local, national and international artists, critics and curators to present a fascinating and varied insight into the music that has no boundaries. What we like about it is the way it's presented in such as way that can be enjoyed by the most hardened critic and uninitiated musical novice in equal measure - if you have an open mind and want to experience something different, challenging, and inspirational this festival is for you.
Basically, we're looking forward to it very much!

We'll post interviews, sets and other stuff we get our hands on after the event.. watch this space.

check - Instal - Arika webpage

Sonic Deterrent infringes on your human rights

Claims made by Al Aynsley-Green the government Children's rights representative last week have called for the ban of the controversial 'Mosquito' sonic deterrent that is placed outside shopping centres and other public spaces to stop gangs of neds hanging out and being a general nuisance to law abiding citizens who want to shop in peace.

I've talked about it in an earlier blog post here -
Sonic Chav Deterrent on Two Open Ears
MosquitoByteam website

The deterrent works by emitting high frequency pulses or tones that are only picked up by young people who have more sensitive hearing than adults (especially in the higher frequency ranges). The tones help to stop the children loitering for too long..

I guess it's the subliminal effect that Aynsley-Green doesn't like, even though I think her 'infringes on human rights' argument is ludicrous. her main point focuses on how these alarms may effect young children and babies who have done nothing wrong. I would say that she should look at the bigger picture and tackle the larger issues - Noise Pollution and unsociable behaviour in our cities.

The sonic deterrent isn't the only source of noise that may have an adverse effect on infants - any machine that creates noise will do - cars, coffee machine, pneumatic drills, TV, etc etc! For example, imagine raising a baby if you live underneath a flight path or on a busy street with bars or clubs creating noise after 10pm- surely the terrible effect this could have on a babies ability to get a good nights rest is a much more severe issue than the 5 seconds or so they might experience the Mosquito alarm as they go in and out of a shop?

Aynsley-Green should try and tackle the problem that these alarms are helping to combat - unsocialable behaviour by gangs outside public places. Surely this in itself is a bigger infringement on everyone's basic human rights?

Music tastes: where are YOU from?

This article in the G2 section of the Guardian yesterday explores musical tastes as being defined by the location you live in. On first glance this seems to have a lot of truth in it - just look at the amount of music sub genres that are linked to a city -

Detroit Techno
Chicago House
Miami Bass
Baltimore
London Grime
West Coast Hip Hop
etc
and more recently the sounds of Sheffield Bassline.

Does location create the music or music create the location?

Is the listener able to appreciate the music more because they can visualise an image of the particular location and imagine a 'scene' where everyone in that city is influenced by the sound of the music created? It seems to me a bit of a generalisation as most of the time the music linked to that location is only related to one (normally tiny) demographic.

On the other hand, the majority of musicians are influenced by their surroundings. The city they live in and the people they meet will be reflected in the music they make.

One interesting thing is that in a more globalised musical world, can this trend continue or will musicians become more influenced by global rather than local stimuli? Do musicians create music, consciously or subconsciously, to create an identity which represents their city? I would go so far to say that a city's very essence (culture, identity, economy) can be enhanced significantly by having a musical scene intrinsically attached to it, even if the reality is that the scene is generated by a minority band of locals. Usually this is centred around a single record label or collective (e.g. Underground Resistance records and Detroit - techno or Fence Collective and Fife - folk)

if cities do not have this musical identity, they are lacking a soul.

Laura Barton Guardian Article

Positive Soundscapes: Re-evaluation of Environmental Sound

This looks like an extremely interesting and worthwhile multi disciplinary project based in Manchester.
Here is some info from their website:

In the acoustics community, sound in the environment, especially that made by other people, has overwhelmingly been considered in negative terms, as both intrusive and undesirable. The strong focus of traditional engineering acoustics on reducing noise level ignores the many possibilities for characterising positive aspects of the soundscapes around us. Desirable aspects of the soundscape have been investigated in the past, mainly by artists and social scientists. This work has had little impact on quantitative engineering acoustics, however, perhaps because of barriers to communication across different disciplines.

The team behind this project comes from a very wide range of disciplines – social science, physiological acoustics, sound art, acoustic ecology, psychoacoustics, product perception and room acoustics. They will apply their breadth of experience to investigate soundscapes from many aspects and produce a more nuanced and complete picture of listener response than has so far been achieved.

The aims of the project are:

1. To acknowledge the relevance of positive soundscapes, to move away from a focus on negative noise and to identify a means whereby the concept of positive soundscapes can effectively be incorporated into planning; and
2. The evaluation of the relationship between the acoustic/auditory environment and the responses and behavioural characteristics of people living within it

Check out their site for more info -
Positive Soundscapes Web

Blog: La Blogotheque

Check this French site out - La blogotheque.net Takeaway Away Shows. They get a band such as Caribou, Animal Collective, The Kooks etc and get them to perform ad hoc in random out door or interesting locations. They film and record it and you can watch the finished versions on the site.
My particular favourite is Caribou and the mad frantic run by main man Dan Snaith to get to his drums which are positioned around the block in time to perform his drum solo.
This is interesting, site specific music with environmental sounds kept in the mix to enhance the experience. Plus, surprisingly good recordings in general.

La Blogotheque

Book: Musicophilia

Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does--humans are a musical species.

Oliver Sacks's compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people--from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical from birth; from people with "amusia," to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds--for everything but music.

Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson's disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer's or amnesia.

Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.

source -
http://musicophilia.com/

New York Marathon turns blind eye to music

Headphones and portable audio players were banned this year by USA Track & Field, the national governing body for running, from all official races. However, it was decided not to police the runners on the 26.2-mile New York course -- which is set to be run Sunday -- because organizers have no surefire way to enforce the rule, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The decision follows threats from organizers of the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington last week to disqualify runners who violated the headphones ban. The organizers didn't follow through on the threat and no one was disqualified.

"To ban them outright is just stupid and if they want to disqualify me, they can," Jennifer Lamkins, a Long Beach, Calif., teacher, before running the Marine Corps Marathon, told the Times. "If they are banning them because we can't hear directions, does that mean they should ban deaf people, too?"

Some runners said the rule is pointless, as music players are available in tiny sizes that are easy to conceal.

"They can ban iPods all they want but how do you think they are going to enforce that when those things have gotten so small?" said Richie Sais, a participant in the Marine Corps race.

"I dare them to find the iPod on me," he said.


source - http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Quirks/2007/11/01/new_york_marathon_turns_blind_eye_to_music/7180/

Book: This is your brain on music by Daniel Levitin

This book is about the science of music, from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience - the field that is at the intersection of psychology and neurology. Levitin discusses some of his own and the latest studies researchers in our field have conducted on music, musical meaning, and musical pleasure. They offer new insights into profound questions. If all of us hear music differently, how can we account for pieces that seem to move so many people - Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or Don McLean's "Vincent (Starry Starry Night (Vincent)" for example? On the other hand, if we all hear music in the same way, how can we account for wide differences in musical preference - why is it that one man's Mozart is another man's Madonna?

The mind has been opened up in the last few years by the exploding field of neuroscience and the new approaches in psychology due to new brain imaging technologies, drugs able to manipulate neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin, and plain old scientific pursuit. Less well known are the extraordinary advances we have been able to make in modeling how our neurons network thanks to the continuing revolution in computer technology. We are coming to understand computational systems in our head like never before. Language now seems to be substantially hardwired into our brains. Even consciousness itself is no longer hopelessly shrouded in a mystical fog, but is rather something that emerges from observable physical systems. But no-one until now has taken all this new work together and used it to elucidate what is for me the most beautiful human obsession. Your brain on music is a way to understand the deepest mysteries of human nature.

By better understanding what music is and where it comes from, we may be able to better understand our motives, fears, desires, memories, and even communication in the broadest sense. Is music listening more like eating when you're hungry and thus satisfying an urge? Or is it more like seeing a beautiful sunset or getting a backrub, and thus triggering sensory pleasure systems in the brain? Why do people seem to get stuck in their musical tastes as they grow older and cease experimenting with new music? This is the story of how brains and music co-evolved ­ - what music can teach us about the brain, what the brain can teach us about music, and what both can teach us about ourselves.

Your Brain On Music Website

Noise of modern life blamed for thousands of heart deaths

Thousands of people in Britain and around the world are dying prematurely from heart disease triggered by long-term exposure to excessive noise, according to research by the World Health Organisation. Coronary heart disease caused 101,000 deaths in the UK in 2006, and the study suggests that 3,030 of these are caused by chronic noise exposure, including to daytime traffic.

Deepak Prasher, professor of audiology at University College London, told the New Scientist magazine: "The new data provide the link showing there are earlier deaths because of noise. Until now, noise has been the Cinderella form of pollution and people haven't been aware that it has an impact on their health."

The WHO's working group on the Noise Environmental Burden on Disease began work on the health effects of noise in Europe in 2003. In addition to the heart disease link, it found that 2% of Europeans suffer severely disturbed sleep because of noise pollution and 15% can suffer severe annoyance. Chronic exposure to loud traffic noise causes 3% of tinnitus cases, in which people constantly hear a noise in their ears.

Research published in recent years has shown that noise can increase the levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenalin in the body, even during sleep. The longer these hormones stay in circulation around the bloodstream, the more likely they are to cause life-threatening physiological problems. High stress levels can lead to heart failure, strokes, high blood pressure and immune problems.

"All this is happening imperceptibly," said Prof Prasher. "Even when you think you are used to the noise, these physiological changes are still happening."

The WHO came to its figures by comparing households with abnormally high exposure to noise with those in quieter homes. It also studied people with problems such as coronary heart disease and tried to work out if high noise levels had been a factor in developing the condition. This data was then combined with maps showing the noisiest European cities.

According to the WHO guidelines, the noise threshold for cardiovascular problems is chronic night-time exposure of 50 decibels (dB) or above - the noise of light traffic. For sleep disturbance, the threshold is 42dB, for general annoyance it is 35dB, the sound of a whisper.

Ellen Mason, a cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "Our world is undoubtedly getting busier and noisier. Some people find noise pollution more stressful to live with than others do. Noise cannot directly kill us, but it may add to our stress. Occasionally, stressful events can trigger a heart attack in someone with underlying heart disease. We know that stressed people are more likely to eat unhealthily, exercise less and smoke more, and these can increase the risk of developing heart disease in the first place."

Mary Stevens, policy officer at the National Society for Clean Air, said of the study's results: "We welcome this because one of the problems with noise is that it's one of the areas that local authorities get most complaints about and it's a big draw on their resources. But, unlike air quality, it hasn't been taken that seriously policy-wise because there [wasn't] the link between noise and health."

Ms Stevens said that there were many options for reducing noise. Traffic could be quietened if more cars used low-noise tyres and councils installed low-noise road surfaces, for example. And coordinating roadworks by utility companies would also prevent the proliferation of potholes, another source of noisy traffic.

The EU has already issued a directive that obligates European cities with populations greater than 250,000 to produce digitised noise maps showing where traffic noise and volume is greatest. "[The research] all supports work going on at the moment to manage traffic noise, which is driven by the environmental noise directive," said Ms Stevens.

Music vibes as good as sex and food

Listening to music releases the same "feelgood" chemicals as eating and having sex, researchers have found.

The neuroscientist and former rock music producer Prof Daniel Levitin said music activates the brain area responsible for feeling pleasure, excitement and satisfaction. Research shows that music has specific effects on the body's physiology Prof Levitin, an associate professor of psychology at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada, suggests that understanding how different types of music affects the body can help people choose songs or bands that could help them achieve tasks or goals. He found the brain of someone listening to music reacts in a similar way to that of a gambler when winning a bet, a skydiver about to leap out of a plane or someone who has just taken drugs.

Someone listening to songs or tunes they enjoy experiences a release of dopamine, the hormone linked to reward and happiness. This association has led Prof Levitin, who worked with Stevie Wonder and the Grateful Dead, to claim to have discovered the "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" centre of the brain after collating research to be published this year.

He said: "The sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll scenario proves that music is at the heart of creating moods and reactions. Research shows that music has specific effects on the body's physiology, including heart rate, respiration, sweating, and mental activity. Music is effective at moderating arousal levels, concentration, and helping to regulate mood through its action on the brain's natural chemistry. People who can have music follow them around during their daily lives can use these properties of music effectively, to form a soundtrack for their day and their lives."

Music has been shown to cause activity in brain circuits associated with physical reactions, such as sweating, sexual arousal, and "shivers down the spine".Researchers used a variety of methods to measure the effect of music on the body, including heart rate, blood pressure, sweat response, breathing and brain wave activity. Scanning techniques have allowed scientists to look at changes in specific parts of the brain.

Dr Levitin found instrumental music such as classical, jazz, techno or bluegrass were better for people studying text to avoid becoming distracted. Energetic tunes with a tempo above 96 beats per minute were best for those cooking, cleaning or doing household chores.
Article

LOUD MUSIC CULTURE CREATING HEARING LOSS TIMEBOMB

70% of clubbers, 68% of gig goers, and 44% of those who hang out in pubs with loud sound systems, display symptoms of hearing damage after a night out - including that irritating ringing in the ears and a dullness of hearing. Those stats, based on a survey of 1000 young music fans, come from the Royal National Institute For The Deaf, who are trying to raise awareness of the long term damage to hearing that can be caused by consuming excessively loud music.

RNID CEO Dr John Low told reporters this week: "We're all familiar with messages about practising safe sex and using suncream - but the lack of any guidance on loud music means this generation of music lovers could be facing a hearing loss timebomb. Our research shows most young people have experienced the first signs of permanent hearing damage after a night out, yet have no idea how to prevent it. With regular exposure to music at high volumes in clubs, gigs and bars, it's only too easy to clock up noise doses that could damage their hearing forever.

He continued: "Young people who love music need to be educated so they can make choices about the risk of exposure to loud noise and protect their hearing from premature damage. RNID is calling on the government to establish a recommended noise exposure level for audiences attending music venues and events, and to educate young people about noise as a public
health risk".

CMU Music News