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Showing posts from 2021

Chania Soundscape Project

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  Chania Soundscape Project is a initiative for making people in Chania more aware of their soundscape. We do that through artistic performances, workshops,  seminars and listening sessions. Our goal is supported by the Municipality of Chania. Chania Soundscape Project

Spider Web Sonification during Construction

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Spiders rely quite significantly on touch to sense the world around them. Their bodies and legs are covered in tiny hairs and slits that can distinguish between different kinds of vibrations. Prey blundering into a web makes a very different vibrational clamor from another spider coming a-wooing, or the stirring of a breeze, for example. Each strand of a web produces a different tone. A few years ago, scientists translated the three-dimensional structure of a spider's web into music, working with artist Tomás Saraceno to create an interactive musical instrument, titled Spider's Canvas. Now the team has refined and built on that previous work, and added an interactive virtual reality component to allow people to enter and interact with the web. Listen here:  Spider Sonification  

The port had never left

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For the last three months I am recording the Venetian harbour in Chania. Unfortunately, a great part of it's soundscape has been degraded over the years by the tourism development. However, there are still some acoustically rich and animated spots around the area, covering a wide band of the listening spectrum. Some have their own tempo and phase shifting properties depending on the volume and the direction of wind respectively. One of the most acoustically interesting spots, is the second wooden dock when walking down from Neorio Moro towards the harbour centre. There you get the feeling that you are inside the sea - and in a way you are. You are able to listen the sea more closely and you also get all the small sounds generated by the friction of the boats with the dock louder - either the buoys or the steel springs and the ropes. Zooming in to each of these sounds you start to hear their individual performances. Using contact microphones I was able to capture some of these perf

SingularityNET

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A decentralised network based on blockchain technology while promoting AI based applications. An impressive array of apps especially for audio.    https://singularitynet.io/

Short Wave Receiver

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An almost limitless fun of shortwave radio listening. Listen and control a short-wave receiver located at the amateur radio club  ETGD  at the  University of Twente . In contrast to other web-controlled receivers, this receiver can be tuned by multiple users simultaneously, thanks to the use of Software-Defined Radio.  The cherry on the top...a record button.   Visit here:  Wide-Band WebSDR .  

Sarah Belle Reid

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  Sarah Belle Reid  is a latest youtube discovery while searching reviews about the Make Noise Strega synthesiser. I watched a really good review by her and then started to browse her channel to find reviews for many other interesting audio topics.  She is also a good performer-composer who plays trumpet, modular synthesizer and an ever-growing collection of handcrafted electronic instruments. Her unique musical voice explores the intersections between contemporary classical, experimental and interactive electronics, noise music, and improvisation.  Here is a no input mixing board small performance in her channel:  Sarah Belle Reid  Search there for more...

Javascript & Music

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Here is a collection of music experiments with Javascript running on a browser. They use the tone.js library and many of them are quite remarkable. Have a go:  tone.js

Old and new philosophies about Life & Death

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This is one of my best shows on Lex Fridman podcast on YouTube.  For those who doesn't know about this podcast, you should check it out as it is probably one of the most forward-thinking shows on the Internet. I have learned about Solomon, a  social psychologist,   through this channel and I was instantly hooked by the clarity and the deep content of his thoughts. Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning

Beeple & NFTs

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  Beeple aka Mike Winkelmann is a graphics designer based in US. His NFT ( Non-fungible token ) ' Everydays the first 5000 days' artwork sold for 69.000.000 million dollars from Christies and became the third most expensive artwork that has ever been sold. The unknown buyer actually receive in exchange just a .jpg file. So, what are NFTs? They are basically digital works of art based on the Ethereum blockchain network. Contrary to common tokens which they could be exchanged with others, NFTs are unique and cannot be replaced with something else. Check Beeple website for more info about the artwork:  Beeple-crap.com  and search the ethereum network for more general info. 

Pauline Oliveros

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Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental electronic music.  She coined the term Deep Listening:  "an aesthetic based upon principles of improvisation, electronic music, ritual, teaching and meditation. This aesthetic is designed to inspire both trained and untrained performers to practice the art of listening and responding to environmental conditions in solo and ensemble situations" Her personal website:  Pauline Oliveros  with lots of info and one of my favourite works of her:  Deep Listening  w/ Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis. 

Michalis Paraskakis

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Michalis is a multitalented musician based in Greece. He is artistic co-director and founder of the new music ensemble ΤΕΤΤΤΙΞ. The ensemble was founded in 2017 together with fellow musicians and composers and gave its first two performances in 2018.As a singer/performer, he focuses on challenging and demanding singing and music-theatre works, including “Kassandra” by Iannis Xenakis and “Anaparastasis I” by Jani Christou, as well as modal singing of the Medieval and Renaissance era. He has performed together with the ASKO/Schönberg Ensemble, ASKO Kammerkoor, the Ballata Ensemble, the Athens State Orchestra and the Greek National Choir. His personal website:  https://michailparaskakis.com  and one of his latest music works on soundcloud:  Toonbrood

Stelios Manousakis

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Stelios Manousakis is an artist exploring relationships between time, space, body, and system. His practice lies in the intersection of art, philosophy, science and engineering, extending from performances, to environments and interactive installations, to compositions and fixed media. Besides his solo work, he has co-founded several music ensembles, multimedia groups, and the Modern Body Festival. Check:  His personal website:  Modular Brains  and from his soundcloud page:  Megas Diakosmos  

Tristan Beutter

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  Tristan Beutter is a lovely musician and a friend studying at the Institute of Sonology in Hague.  This piece is for metallic trays, wet towels, microphone stands and 5 performers. The piece's texture starts from its highest density and gradually dissolves into a single drop - at which point the process comes to an end. The tone color is determined by the sound of water dripping onto metallic trays. https://tristanbeutter.bandcamp.com Listen: Partialization

Dokkyaku

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From George Angelidis:  "In 1958 the painter Isson Tanaka relocated to Amami Ōshima, an island in the Ryukyus. Where in self-chosen isolation, his island life was devoted exclusively to his art. Having just a few supporters, the local population viewed him as an eccentric. Tanaka died in 1977 while his first solo show was in preparation. Forty plus years later, in 2018, Seiha Kurosawa, Kanako Azuma and Hideki Umezawa create a video installation about Tanaka’s last years of his life on Amami Ōshima. The work, entitled “Dokkyaku” (tr. The Lone Visitor), shifts between the texture and materiality of Tanaka’s paintings in relation to the natural world of Amami Ōshima and its human and non-human inhabitants. The work invites viewers to understand—poetically—the artist’s sensitivity to nature and the expressivity of his works. During his stay on Amami Ōshima, Hideki Umezawa recorded numerous field recordings to enter the spirit of Tanaka. Through recording Umezawa wanted to

Prefabricated Tragedy

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global events major social where P eople to stay home and fall in with extensive p R opaganda and nak E dly lies by o F governments worldwide A t the same time most everything B ut questioning and these f R eedoms hypnot I sed and we are C lose forget the re A l meaning of freedom and T his n E w reality as the norm moreover an D sadly for T hey numb by the meaning of f R eedom consume is the new freedom is the only freedom you c A n do like a kin G or a

John Duncan

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I have discovered John Duncan through one of my favourite youtube channels, Anal Device. His  work includes performance arts, installations, experimental video art and films and of course music...where he use shortwave radio recordings amongst many other.  Here is the meditative: Mantra  

Suzanne Ciani

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Taught by Max Mathews (one of the fathers of electronic music) she became a pioneer herself, especially in the Buchla synthesiser modular format. She worked extensively with quadraphonic sound and she has been nominated 4 times for a Grammy Award.   Buchla Concerts 1975

Dalia Derbyshire

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The wonderful Dalia Derbyshire... One of the pioneers of electronic music and tape manipulations. Famous for BBC's doctor Who theme amongst so many other. Unfortunately she died relative young due to problems with chronic alcoholism. Here is a beautiful piece, presenting by one of my favourite youtube channels: αλώβητος κανένας.  Bach's Air 

Anestis Logothetis

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Anestis was  born in Bulgaria of Greek parents and moved to Tessaloniki in1934. He became influenced by modern composers such as  John Cage ,  Earle Brown , and  Bruno Maderna . Initially he wrote a number of works using conventional musical notation and different combinations of instruments and orchestrations. Around 1957 he started developing  electronic music  in  Gottfried Michael Koenig 's studio in Cologne, producing his composition  Fantasmata  in 1960.  One aspect of Logothetis' artistic talent is expressed in his graphic notations in which he has developed a personal system of musical symbols. They present the interpreter with a clear and directly understandable "sound picture". This kind of notation is also comprehensible to the layman as Logothetis' scores make visual sense even if the viewer has no musical training. "Culmination" is not instrumented. The material is distributed among the players; each of them then interprets the "picture

Peter Brötzmann

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Legendary free jazz German saxophonist and clarinetist, worked with Evan Parker and Derek Bailey. Here in an also legendary free jazz full power album: Machine Gun   (automatic gun for fast, continuous firing 😁)   

Negativland

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Masters of Sound Collage and Juxtaposition  Negativland  is an American  experimental music  band which originated in the  San Francisco Bay Area  in the late 1970s. Negativland has released a number of albums ranging from pure sound collage to more musical expositions. These have mostly been released on their own label,  Seeland Records . In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they produced several recordings for  SST Records , most notably  Escape from Noise ,  Helter Stupid  and  U2 . Negativland were sued by the band  U2 's record label,  Island Records , and by  SST Records , which brought them widespread publicity and notoriety. The band is also part of the  Church of the SubGenius  parody religion . Here is: Negativland  

Giacinto Scelsi

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Scelsi's mature music is marked by a supreme concentration on single notes, combined with a masterly sense of form. Scelsi revolutionised the role of sound in western music.  These single notes are elaborated through microtonal shadings, harmonic allusions, and variations in timbre and dynamics. It is impossible to express the immense power of this apparently simple music in words. Therefore, listen: String Quartet No. 3

John Cage

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Neither a painter or a sculptor, Cage is best known for revolutionising modern music through his incorporation of unconventional instrumentation and the idea of environmental music dictated by chance. His approach to composition was deeply influenced by Asian philosophies, focusing on the harmony that exists in nature, as well as elements of chance. Cage is famous not only for his radical works, like  4'33"  (1952), in which the ambient noise of the recital hall created the music, but also for his innovative collaborations with artists like Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg.  These partnerships helped break down the divisions between the various realms of art production, such as music, performance, painting, and dance, allowing for new interdisciplinary work to be produced. Cage's influence ushered in groundbreaking stylistic developments key to contemporary art and paved the way for the postmodern artistic inquiries, which began in the late 1960s and further challe

Loopop

This is my favourite youtube channel about music technology and synthesiser. Amazing reviews, countless of music tech ideas and generally a joy to watch. Most of all, synth review are top-notch, not biased, very contemporary.  Here is an interview from the guy behind Synthesisers and Animals Synths & Animals     

Simon Emmerson

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I credit my introduction to Acousmatic music to Simon Emmerson.  He was head of the Music department when I was studying at City University in London and the first person to listen talking about Acoustic Ecology. Will never forget the mini concerts held every Tuesday evenings at City. They were extremely inspiring and shaped my music production process. Simon was also editor in one of the best books written about electroacoustic music, The Language of Electroacoustic Music, a must read if you into this genre.    Here he is in a beautiful duet with Lol Coxhill, an English soprano sax improvisation player and a usual suspect at Sonic Arts Network gatherings in London.  Lol Coxhill + Simon Emmerson - Digswell Duets: 11.5.78   and a solo album by Emmerson: Spaces & Places

La Monte Thornton Young

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La Monte Thornton Young is an American composer, musician, and artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in post-war avant-garde music. He is best known for his exploration of sustained tones and his works have called into question the nature and definition of music most prominently in the text scores of his Compositions 1960. Some sources have described him as "the most influential living composer today.  Below a nice presentation in the NYTimes: The Daddy of Us All And one of my Favourites albums: The Tortoise, His Dream and Journeys

Peeping Tom

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The Belgian masters of hype-realism modern dance theatre in unstable universes.   32 rue Vandenbranden

Henri Chopin

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Chopin was a French practitioner of  concrete  and  sound poetry , well known throughout the second half of the 20th century. His work, though iconoclastic, remained well within the historical spectrum of poetry as it moved from a spoken tradition to the printed word and now back to the spoken word again ( Wendt 1996 , 112). He created a large body of pioneering recordings using early tape recorders, studio technologies and the sounds of the manipulated human voice. His emphasis on sound is a reminder that language stems as much from oral traditions as from classic literature, of the relationship of balance between order and chaos. Le Souffle Et La Langue

Kaoru Abe

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Japanese Avant-Garde by the amazing alto-sax Kaoru Abe.   Lover Come Back to Me

a lecture on nothing

Από την πρώτη στιγμή που ήρθα σε επαφή με το έργο του John Cage δεν έπαψα ποτέ να θαυμάζω και ταυτόχρονα να ανακαλύπτω τον ανατρεπτικό τρόπο σκέψης του. Με αφορμή την πρόσφατη μελέτη και προσπάθεια κατανόησης της δομής του εξαιρετικού έργου  Sonatas and Interludes , βρέθηκα να διαβάζω άλλο ένα έργο του, ένα από τα πιο σημαντικά κείμενα της avant-garde του εικοστού αιώνα το  A lecture on Νothing . Η σύνδεση αυτή συνέβη διότι και τα δυο μοιράζονται δομικά πολλά κοινά στοιχεία. Μου έκανε εντύπωση όμως πως το Lecture on Nothing δεν έχει αποδοθεί στα Ελληνικά. Έτσι πήρα την απόφαση να το μεταφράσω, βοηθώντας τον εαυτό μου ταυτόχρονα να εισχωρήσω πιο βαθιά στο νόημα του κειμένου και στην κοσμοθεωρία του Cage. Ενώ σε πρώτη ανάγνωση η μετάφραση φαίνεται εύκολη, όσο συνέχιζα ήρθα αντιμέτωπος με αρκετές δυσκολίες προσπαθώντας να κρατήσω την ρυθμικότητα του κειμένου και παράλληλα να αποδώσω το ουσιαστικό νόημα των σκέψεων του Cage. Διάφορα σημεία έχουν μεταφραστεί ελευθέρα με σκοπό την πιο εύκολη