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Massive Attack's Mezzanine album as DNA-encoded spray paint

IDEA: Encode music into DNA spray paint.

WHAT: 1 million copies of the Mezzanine album encoded in 901'065 DNA sequences, each 146 basepairs long and encapsulated in silicone particles for long-term storage stability. Limited editions of specially commissioned and manufactured aerosols which contain the DNA of Massive Attack's legendary Mezzanine album. Each can of paint is sold in a unique box, and come with a signed 3D instruction certificate.

Read more about the details of the encoding process here

It’s a creative way to store your back catalogue, although DNA-encoded spray paint is unlikely to be adopted by street artists seeking anonymity. - Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja

WHY: To mark the 20th anniversary of the seminal 1998 album Mezzanine.

BY: Massive Attack, in conjunction with Turboheards Zurich.

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Music for ceiling fan and tubes

IDEA:  Artistic ideas are like mutations of the reasonable. They might lead nowhere or to the development of something new. The beauty is in following the path revealing. 

WHAT:  'Music or Ceiling Fan and Tubes' is a performance with a ceiling fan and two corrugated tubes. One tube is attached to a fan blade to create a constant tone while the fan rotates. A smaller corrugated tube is played as a 'flute' while laying underneath the rotating ceiling fan. The ends of the tubes are used to play the fan blades percussively. 

WHY:  Klaas loves to put attention to things that might not have artistic value at first sight and search for a way to create something that I find poetic. If he can make the temptation disappear to ask why, he might have found what he was looking for.

"The journey to South Kurdistan left a deep impression on me. I learned a lesson in serenity, endurance and hospitality. I feel I learned something that should be fundamental to our human existence. If this is the 'Wild Kurdistan' people meant I feel that the world should be a wilder place"  -- Klaas Hübner

BY: Klaas Hübner (Germany), performed in the Amnasuraka (Red Museum) in Suleymania, South Kurdistan, Iraq, Space 21 Festival, April 2018

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Tentacule

IDEA: A Velcro octopus sound cyborg

WHAT: 'Tentacule' is a site-specific sound machine that houses ten speakers which are mechanically driven by Velcro extrications that occur on top of the speakers’ paper cones. The kinetic dynamics of the Velcro becoming hooked and unfastened is transmitted through large plastic tubes that resonate and transfer the acoustic energy into different parts of the space. The imposing cephalopodic presence of the black machine suggests a cyborgian instrument somewhere in between an organ, a music box, and a Luigi Nono noise machine. 

WHY: The installation examines the sonic materiality of Velcro as it is situated within the ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and BDSM (bondage, dominance, slave, master) communities. This “BDSMR” object complicates our awareness of sound and sensuality by casting materiality as an erotic fetish, one that derives from our darker, more lurid impulses. 

BY: Nolan Lem, on view until April 21st at Lhoste art contemporain, Arles, France.

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Cases

IDEA: Nullifying the portability of music.

WHAT & WHY: Encasing a whole drum set and broken guitar into an instrument case extended to such a size that it nullifies its usability. It is transformed into a giant stage, substituting a backstage functionality with a performative, front-stage one.

BY: Naama Tsabar

#Cases #NaamaTsabar #MusicInstruments #Guitar #Drums #InstrumentCase #Casing #SoundArt #SoundSculpture #Sculpture #MusicStage #ContemporaryArt #Art #TWMW

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Sounding Moby-Dick

WHAT: The table is made of steel rods and filled it with beach rocks, then it was lowered into the ocean near Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, where over the course of two months it accumulated living accretions from the ocean. Atop the table is an oversize sound-amplifying funnel reminiscent of the hailing horns used on whaling ships, which is constructed of laser-cut panels of polycarbonate lashed together with nylon zip ties. The horn amplifies and concentrates a sound recording made by a hydrophone close to where the table was submerged.

WHY: Sounding derives from the book Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, which has long been a source of inspiration for LaBianca and Fortescue. Their fascination with Moby-Dick comes in part from its detailed evocation of the bygone crafts of sailing and whaling and the struggles of men at sea, and also from its powerful and ever-relevant dissection of monomania. Through this work they aim to conjure the era of the book’s writing through the use of period forms such as a cabriole-legged table and hailing horn, while making it also very much of the moment by incorporating contemporary sound recordings and digital fabrication technologies.  'Sounding' provides a direct link to the living oceans surrounding the Bay Area through sight, sound, smell, and touch. In both form and concept it also links to the historical, literary, and metaphorical oceans of Moby-Dick.

BY: Lawrence LaBianca and Donald Fortescue, originally developed for Bay Area Now 5 at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

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Land Harps

IDEA: The Land Harps project revolves around sculptures that enable the landscape to create sound compositions.

WHAT: Secured to a sturdy form in the landscape, the walnut body of the instrument is outfitted with tuning machines and an internal piezo contact microphone. Piano wire is strung from the body of the instrument and secured to the bottom of a creek bed where the current of the water vibrates the strings at different pitches depending on the line tension, speed of the water and if anything happens to come in contact with the wires. As recordings progress, the current of the creek gradually alters the tuning of the instrument, producing subtle variations in tone and results in an overall composition.

WHY: Originating from pictorial ideas cultivated in drawings and paintings, the project has always been simultaneously thought of as an installation as well as an instrument.  The resulting work is a contemplation within the constant flux of landscape, a study of its pacing and intervals.

BY: David Andree  

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Ice Music for Chicago

IDEA: Matter in transition becomes a musical instrument, destruction as a focal-point for dramatic expression. 

WHAT: In 'ICED BODIES: Ice Music for Chicago', cellist and artist Seth Parker Woods explores and eventually destroys a black ice cello with embedded hydrophones resting on a custom-built platform and ice reservoir. The strikes, taps, scrapes, and gouges are translated into sound by artist Spencer Topel who diffuses these sounds across glass panels suspended around the gallery. 

WHY: To re-address the iconic 1972 work Ice Music for London by Jim McWilliams for Charlotte Moorman, through a sonified 3D fabricated ice cello. The work programmatically engages the cellist by supplanting the cold body—the frozen body—of those lost to mental illness and violence in the African-American community, with that of the ice cello. 

BY: Seth Parker Woods and Spencer Topel (U.S.) at the at the Arts Club of Chicago.

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Dancing flames

IDEA: While forbidden to dance, these candle flames dance on Christian chants.

WHAT: Oratório (Tidal Wave) is a sound-based work using subwoofers and lit candles, which are set in motion by deep rhythms of sub frequency sounds. The ambiance is rooted in the Ambrosian hymn 'Aeterne Rerum Conditor', one of the first forms of chanting in Western history, practiced by Christian monks. 

WHY: By exploring architectural and musical forms in religion, the artist expands connections and meanings to consider the cultural interrelations between the use of the bass with ritual and cult. As religious Christian music has historically distanced itself from percussion, drums and deep pulses in order to privilege the voice, wind instruments and strings, Caccuri’s musical interpretation seeks sonic forms in which the bass still performs as a vehicle for the mind through body and skin.

BY: Vivian Caccuri (Rio de Janeiro) 

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Sound Sphere

IDEA: Temporal relationships are a decisive factor in the linear recording of sound.

WHAT: An installation consisting of cassette tape wound around a spherical object and a device to play its sound. There is no beginning or end to the tape; rather, a small motor randomly moves the sphere as it sits atop the player, producing noise. The work varies in scale from installation to installation.

"When linear time is wound around a sphere, it is deprived of the relationship between place and time, and thus also loses its meaning (or in other words, causes meaning to arise)."  -- Lyota Yagi

WHY: Varying sizes of globes are covered with a length of time that is proportional to their surface area. When linear time is wound around a sphere, it is deprived of the relationship between place and time, and thus also loses its meaning (or in other words, causes meaning to arise).

BY: Japanese media artist Lyota Yagi produces works that reference the rich histories of sound art, sculpture, and interactive art. 

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Ceramic Sound Art Instruments

IDEA: Interactive ceramic sound art installations

WHAT: In the 'of Nature and Things' series, sound sculptures invite the viewer to wonder and play, and seduce the viewer to autonomously interact with each work. By approaching and touching it, the objects respond with magnified and designed electronic sounds. In each work a ceramic object is combined with other kinds of material, some materials can be found ready-made, in nature, where others are strongly manipulated by man.

WHY: The sculptures invite to independently, yet carefully, explore the layered possibilities of each work, and creates a private experience and relationship between the objects and the viewer occurs. Sonic, visual and sculptural qualities of all materials used, are being investigated, enriched and magnified. 

BY: Fedde ten Berge is a sound artist who creates work in different contexts and disciplines. In his project 'of Nature and Things’ he develops sound art installations, that investigate the possible manifestations and combinations of different types of material, like ceramics. A substantial part of his research is to express the electrical capacity and vibrating qualities of the material. 

The Trunk Instead of the field proximity capacitive sensing used in the other works, in The Trunk ten Berge used close proximity capacitive sensing. This enables the audience to use the water as a water percussion instrument, inspired by the water percussion performed by Brazillian native tribes.

""For the design of the ceramic trays, they look a bit like exploded chocolate cakes, I was inspired by the melted geometry by Salvador Dali.""

The Egg With The Egg, ten Berge focused on creating a sculpture in which light and sound design are integrated. This way, no external speakers or lamps are needed to create a total experience. The experience itself is based on the magical experience that you can have on our physical reality. One part of the sound design is based on the crackling of eggshells. The intensity of each egg crackle is coupled to a light flash on the LED strips. For me the tightness of the light sound interaction demonstrates the power of Bela. Another part of the sound design is based on a chord progression and a synthesis technique called phase aligned formant synthesis. Described by in Theory and Techniques of Electronic Music by Miller Puckette. There are mainly 3 nuances in playing the egg. When you move close to the egg the sound design becomes more intense. When you move out of the proximity field the chord changes. When you touch the water the most intense effect is achieved.

The Shroom The Shroom focusses on the vibrations that occur on different levels in the psychical reality of the artwork. Electromagnetic, acoustic, material and structural vibrations are picked up by different sensor strategies, which enables The Shroom to respond to the approach of the audience with carefully designed sound. In this way the visual design of the object comes in close relation with the sound design. 

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Acoustics based on volume: aluminum

IDEA: An instrument based on basic shapes, volume and resonance.

WHAT: Three geometric objects out of aluminium: a sphere, a cube and a tetrahedron, they all have the same volume. Together they form a new instrument which shows how form changes its acoustic characteristics by using its individual resonance. With the use of electronics the shapes can be used as instruments or acoustic (reverb) chambers. 

WHY: A work made for performance, as well as research, with an interets in the language of bodies, inspired by Harry Partch.

BY: Stefano Murgia

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Lisbon’s Sound Art Greenhouse

IDEA: Bring to debate an important and often neglected variable in the planning of public space: sound.

WHAT: The second edition of Lisboa Soa: a multiple day event which presents sound art installations and performances which discuss urbanism and auditory culture, this time at a beautiful botanic greenhouse in the centre of Lisbon.

WHY: Imagine a place that celebrates the world of sound, which leads you through labyrinthine paths that communicate acoustically with you. Imagine a garden populated by sounds that call attention to all the other sounds around, an imaginary soundscape that seeks to stimulate hearing and make you think about what you are listening to.

BY: Lisboa Soa, at Estufa Fria, Lisbon. Curated by Raquel Castro. www.lisboasoa.com #lisboasoa #soundart #EstufaFria #Urbanism #Greenhouse #ContemporaryArt #Lisbon www.thosewhomakeswaves.com #TWMW

Juan Sorrentino, Giro The Movement of Vibration www.juansorrentino.com.ar This new work made during his residency at Lisboa Soa, continues Sorrentino's research into the modulation of sound by movement and reflection from different surfaces. The effect of 'Giro' results from the rotation of the cones on the rafts that direct the sound to a single point. In this constant, but often wind affected movement, these sound rafts give us a new conception of space and time. This movement modulates the frequencies of white noise playing through the loudspeakers and also follows its emergence and disappearance, just like the waves of the sea. This sound reminds us of water, filters through the plants and invades the space of the Estufa Fria greenhouse, which is daily watered by a sprinkler system that rotates and sprays water to the leaves and roots.

Sonoscopia, Fauna www.sonoscopia.pt In 'Fauna', an artificial ecosystem is created that recreates an imaginary animal life. Small musical automatons inhabit small boxes distributed throughout the physical space of the Fria Greenhouse, emitting sounds, interacting with each other and musically complementing the sound and space where they are inserted. The mechanics are controlled by a set of microprocessors, programmed to induce instructions to various types of mechanical actuators that will be translated into musical actions. At the base of the functioning of this ecosystem, are algorithms that recreate natural processes, such as statistical data of population growth, fractals or genetic algorithms.

Juan Sorrentino, Fragile www.juansorrentino.com.ar

Adriana Sá & John Klima www.cityarts.com How to intervene in the natural beauty of a cave with water? The title of this installation is borrowed from a Zen poetry book. Space is now reactive, like the body of an instrument. By producing shadow on light sensors, people activate small balls that plunge into the water, producing concentric rings that intersect. This shaking drives the movement of floating metal bowls, which contain other balls, glass and metal. The larger the bowl, the greater the sound cycle produced by the roller. Orchestration emerges as you listen to the relationship between objects, space, water, and shadows. Slowly, with time for silence.

Cláudia Martinho, Passagem www.spacefrequencies.org What do you hear in a microcosm with hundreds of plant species in the middle of a city? The Passage installation explores ways of listening to this ecology through acoustic phenomena. A sound landscape amplifies the vibratory forces propagating, and modulates specific frequencies in resonance with the space of a tunnel. The experience involves us in active and immersive listening, in a way of attuning ourselves to the environment and to ourselves.

João Ricardo, Cactusworkestra www.lixoluxo.com It is a plastic and sonorous creation that starts from the instrumentation of 20 prepared and sonorized cacti, positioned in the greenhouse in diverse positions and constellations. Passing visitors can intervene in the cacti individually or collectively, exploring dynamics as the main object in sound, thus working variations of speed, intensity, and timbre. The aim of this project is to motivate the general public to develop sound sensitivity, critical sense, in the unceasing search for unrepeatable sound.

Mileece In the itinerant life that brought her from French farms to crystal gardens in Los Angeles, Mileece became aware of the many forms of man's impact on the natural world. Their 'ecoscapes' are generated by electromagnetic emissions from plants and by hand-held musical instruments based on sensors. Mileece attaches electrodes to the leaves of plants, which collect their bio-electric impulses. These micro-currents are then translated into harmonic sounds, using a program created and designed by Mileece. In this way, a garden becomes an orchestra.

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A 4G network turned into music

IDEA: Turn 4G network browsing into musical sounds   WHAT: A dedicated algorithm was created to turn one second of browsing on the 4G network into one second of music. The number of connections to the network in different regions of Lithuania controls the volume of the notes being played and their rhythmic distribution, while the amount of data transferred during those sessions determines the notes' pitches.

The walk-in kinetic sound installation consists of 77 segments distributed throughout the exhibition space. Each segment consists of a metal bar, a sound activator, a sound damper, a resonator, and mechatronics. The distribution of the segments in space forms 4 narrow and 11 wide directions of movement. The number of segments and their positions were in part determined by the spatial and acoustic characteristics of the exhibition space. The sound range of the installation consists of 4 notes in 4 octaves where a specific note is assigned to the North, the South, the East and West of Lithuania. WHY: Inviting one to experience how data generated through a person's reality and behavioural patterns can be revived from the digital world and returned to the real one by being transformed into generative music. 

"Statistics reduces the studied object into a few, several or a dozen features. This is a paradoxical trait of statistics – investigating the variability of an object it actually produces immutable characteristics, monitoring the differences, it observes repetitions. The average, however, is not reality, but rather a color that is the result of mixed different tints. The height or weight gets summed, but the noise, the smell or shadows are lost. Statistics draw the map of reality, making it two-dimensional. The effect of music is directly contrary."  -- Andrius Šarapovas

BY: Andrius Šarapovas, Technarium. commissioned by Tele2. Video by: Some Films

#Advertising #InstallationArt #SoundArt #AndriusSarapovas #SomeFilms #Technarium #ContemporaryArt #Lithuania #Tele2 #TsekhGallery #Vilnius #IevaJavaityte

The walk-in kinetic sound installation consists of 77 segments distributed throughout the exhibition space. Each segment consists of a metal bar, a sound activator, a sound damper, a resonator, and mechatronics. The distribution of the segments in space forms 4 narrow and 11 wide directions of movement. The number of segments and their positions were in part determined by the spatial and acoustic characteristics of the exhibition space. The sound range of the installation consists of 4 notes in 4 octaves where a specific note is assigned to the North, the South, the East and West of Lithuania. WHY: Inviting one to experience how data generated through a person's reality and behavioural patterns can be revived from the digital world and returned to the real one by being transformed into generative music. 

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Anit-release

IDEA: Embraces obscure music formats, atypical packaging, and do-it-yourself ethics. 

WHAT: The sensory-driven macro-label from Bloomington (Indiana, USA) publishes limited editions of experimental audio and visual works with unlimited boundaries. They operate under utilitarian principles, focusing on minimalist design and maximum aesthetic. Although externally illogical, their anti-releases serve as a form of provocation that attempts to force interaction on the part of the listener by implementing tangible manifestations of abstract concepts. While seemingly unplayable in their presented state, the intention is that the consumer will actively seek a solution to playback rather than settle for the notion they are “art objects.”

"It started kind of as a weird idea about releasing music that you couldn't listen to or purchase. We never really could manifest a logical way to implement that, which is why it sort of evolved into the label. I guess it was more of an absurdist digital performance art, is what the idea was."  -- Dante Augustus Scarlatti owner of Auris Apothecary on Noisey.

WHY: Through bizarre alterations of audio & visual mediums and tangible implementations of abstract concepts, they seek to raise the threshold of interactivity for audiences in a normally passive activity, and push artistic limits to their logical (and sometimes illogical) extremes.

BY: Auris Apothecary

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Recording studio at French Pavilion Venice biennale

IDEA: A recording studio as a sculpture.

WHAT: Artist Xavier Veilhan has transformed the 1912 French Pavilion into a giant sound sculpture for the Venice Biennale.  The building’s exterior (designed by Venetian engineer Fausto Finzi in the Giardini della Biennale) remains untouched, but Veilhan has created a faceted interior landscape of wood and fabric. Together with curators Lionel Bovier and Christian Marclay he invited musicians and artists from around the world to play in the recording studio for the duration of the Biennale. Around a hundred musicians from various countries will come to Venice to work, think and play for audiences of art lovers who are not necessarily there to hear them play. Numerous instruments enable musicians from different horizons and genres, to work on-site, either individually or collaboratively. The presence of sound technicians and an impressive guest list of musicians will ensure the possibility to experiment with sound, at the same time as encouraging unexpected collaborations.

WHY: The artist aims to enable a form of interaction that breaks away from a cultural industry which declares itself the keeper of both the 'fringe' and the 'unplugged, which leads to the same old hierarchies between renowned, experimental and amateur musicians.

"I imagine an overall environment: an immersive installation that propels visitors to the world of the recording studio and that is inspired by the pioneering work of Kurt Schwitters, the Merzbau (1923-1937). Musicians from all backgrounds are invited to bring this recording studio-sculpture to life, as it becomes home to their creations during the seven months of the Biennale. The pavilion merges visual arts and music, with a nod not only to Bauhaus and the experiments of Black Mountain College but also Doug Aitken’s Station to Station."  -- Xavier Veilhan

BY: Xavier Veilha

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Music In Fabric

IDEA: 'Silence if the fabric upon which notes are woven.' - Lawrence Duncan

WHAT: Award-winning artist Nadia-Anne Ricketts pioneers globally with her fusion of sound and vision by transforming any song or prayer into bespoke statement art pieces in her fabric series, titled 'BeatWoven'. Nadia uses her skillfully coded audio technology as an instrument to translate and reveal the invisible sonic geometrics behind the beats and sounds of music, to orchestrate literal tessellated woven pattern formations. Whilst carefully ensuring that the image of the sound does not get distorted, Nadia becomes a ‘composer’ of the pattern, playing with scale, editing and looping sections; much like a music producer's role when editing a track. Colour and yarn are then carefully selected to not only enhance the pattern but also the overall aesthetic of the fabric and with it the interior space with which it will eventually exist.

WHY: Ricketts allows the intangible of music to manifest into an aesthetically beautiful form, which, in turn becomes part of our physical space. The work sits at the intersection of art, craft and technology, connecting us to a new experience of both music and woven cloth.

"Precisely because musical sound is abstract, intangible and ethereal - lost as soon as its gained - the visual experience of its production is crucial for locating and communicating musical sound within society and culture."  -- Richard Leppert - Sight of Sound.

BY: Nadia-Anne Ricketts

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Animas River Sound Sculpture

IDEA: Environmental degradation represented in a sound sculpture.

WHAT: Animas comprises four suspended panels of industry-processed metal, each 26”x42,” made of iron-oxidized steel, aluminum, copper, and lead respectively—all metals that have exceeded EPA tolerances in the river. A contact microphone and audio transducer are affixed to each panel in a feedback circuit together with an amplifier. This causes each metal to vibrate at its own resonant frequency, creating a complex drone in the gallery space. The quality of the sound is adjusted by modulating the gain of the amplifiers—Animas does this in accordance with real-time data from water quality sensors placed in the river by the USGS. Changes in the clarity of the water, invisible indicators of the dissolved metals within it, and the dynamics of its daily and seasonal flows all become sound in the gallery, producing timbral “color” from the river’s continually changing composition. Animas is the result of a residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory.

WHY: The Animas River flows through the mountains of Southwestern Colorado, through what was once the undisputed land of Ute and Navajo people before the encroachment of miners in the 19th century. In 2015, the EPA was performing maintenance on the abandoned Gold King Mine when it accidentally released three million gallons of wastewater contaminated with heavy metals into the river, turning it a bright orange and threatening agriculture, tourism, and an already “disturbed” alpine ecology. Animas resists over-simplified representations of environmental degradation, creating a felt relationship to the river. It acknowledges how our limited temporal sensibilities are challenged by the imbrication of the geologic time of minerals, the historical time of extractive industries, and the immediate urgency of sane and equitable responses to rapid ecological change.

BY: Brian House , Commissioned by: Vicki Myhren Gallery, data: UU Geological Survey in cooperation with the Colorado Department Of Health and Environment.