...................Sonic Art References and Links......................

Some Audio Art Practices - References for a talk given to the San Francisco Art Institute

Please note that where ever possible audio sources are referenced at official websites. Some unlicensed audio samples have been put on this site for the duration of the talk and immediately after. These will soon be removed.

Sourcing sound:

Found sound / found objects - a very contemporary practice:

The User (installation):
"Symphony for dot matrix printers"
The Silophone project

Alvin Lucier (installation and recordings):
"I am sitting in a room"

Alan Lamb (recordings of telephone wires)

Richard Ross (web based field recordings)
Sonic maps

VLF radio recordings:
of earth
of Ganymede (a moon of Jupiter)

Earthquakes

General:

Documentary and general field recording link
How to make field recordings
How to make a binaural microphone suitable for environmental recording

Plundering / Sampling

1. As a postmodern practice in contemporary dance music.
Cultural products derived from popular cultural material and making it into something else through a process of combination and manipulation (e.g., turntables).

Thomas Brinkman repurposing Ritchie Hawtkin's "Concept 1 96 VR"

2. As above but in an art context - cultural collage approach of John Oswald:
Plunderphonics - quotes on the brink of recognisability (by the way - click on the letters of the word "Plunderphonics" to access the content of this site).

3. We could get them legally through a copyright audio CD or via something like findsounds

Generating sound

Musical instruments and voice

Computers

Computers can generate sounds in many different ways. For free and intersting software check out:
RossTools (granular synthsis, mac)
AudioMulch (demo, pc)
MetaSynth ("paint with sound" demo, mac)

Practices

1. Formal/abstract

Pure sine waves + empty sampler & no input amplifier approaches (the sound of the tools themselves - their own circuitry).
Sahko / Mika Vainio / early Panasonic - Mika Vanio who is behind all these uses home made equipment.

Ryoji Ikeda

2. Glitches, faliures, clipping, noise, buzz.

"The aesthetics of failure"

Microsound - a return to electronic DJs where different sounds may be freely combined.
Microsound list

Meta

some labels:
mego
Fallt: Pimmon

Oval:
older material
newer material
OvalProcess

New Media - Sound Toys

http://web.bham.ac.uk/pjb747/toys.html
http://www.sas.mdx.ac.uk/first.html
http://www.soundtoys.net/
http://www.databaseaudio.co.uk/index_online.php
http://www.once-upon-a-forest.com/
http://www.destroyrockcity.com/
http://music.columbia.edu/~shape/
http://www.gmunk.com/
http://www.theremediproject.com/
http://www.designgraphik.com/
http://www.superficiel.org/
http://www.presstube.com/portion/
http://members.ams.chello.nl/mulder.g/
http://www.orangebleu.net
http://www.turbulence.org/Works/song/index.html
http://www.multimania.com/gugusland/
http://www.amorphoscapes.com/
http://www.trueistrue.com/
http://www.thepeoplesbureau.com/
http://www.volumeone.com