A CATASTROPHIC SILENCE
ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
Summer School 2008
A catastrophic event strikes without warning.
The electrical grid goes from brown to black.
All internal combustion engines fail.
A fast silence falls across the city...
Peter Cusack: Soundscape Resources
ResonanceFM www.resonancefm.com
London’s first radio art station and the original inspiration for Your Favourite London Sounds. Broadcasts on 104.4Mhz in Central London and on the internet.www.l-m-c.org.uk/
London Musicians Collective
For ordering “Your favourite London Sounds” plus LMC info, monthly concert calandar, LMC archives and much more.
London’s official noise strategy and related
The Greater London Authority’s Ambient noise strategy can be found here
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/strategies/noise/index.jsp
Highlights of ‘Sounder City’,
Londons final Ambient Noise Strategy are available for download free of charge here.
http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/strategies/noise/downloads.jsp
The site also has downloadable examples of ‘Sound-Conscious Urban Design’ from London, Paris, Seattle, Hong Kong and more.
London noise maps and noise mapping information
. See the traffic noise levels in your local area shown in beguiling colours.
Children’s concentration at schools under the main Heathrow flightpaths news item. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4603189.stm
London Green Maps
Acoustic ecology and phonography sites
Phonography.org
- the essential field recording site. Its email list is constantly full of practical information and open discussion by those most active in the field. Phonography is documentary sound recording with an ear towards the aesthetic and creative possibilities of environmental sound.
World Forum for Acoustic Ecology
the overal organisation for studies in acoustic ecology. It’s site has a comprehensive selection of links, writings and information. There is also an email list and extremely useful monthly newsletter.
The Acoustic Ecology Institute
www.acousticecology.org - anyone interested in soundscape, acousticecology and field recording should visit this site set up by Jim Cumming in paralell to his Earthear CD label www.earthear.com
. An invaluable resource.
Berlin.Soundscape-FM : A City of Sounds
http://berlin.soundscape-fm.net and SoundTransit http://soundtransit.nl
map based archives of sound recordings from Berlin and worldwide locations respectively, put together by Derek Holzer, Sara Kolster, Marc Boon, Gerard van Dongen. The invitation to contribute is open, so browsing the many recordings is fascinating.
Finland 100 Soundscapes
http://www.100aanimaisemaa.fi/ohjeet_en.php
Soundwalks
http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/Soundwalk/indexandra.html
American Society for Acoustic Ecology
http://www.AcousticEcology.org/asae
The Handbook for Acoustic Ecology http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/Soundwalk.html edited by Barry Truax
Nature Sound Society
MANCHESTER : PERIPHERAL
Alastair Dant, Tom Davis & David Gunn (UK/USA)
http://www.manchesterperipheral.com
The sounds of Manchester, for you to remix. Manchester : Peripheral is an interactive SoundMap that uses physical workshops and virtual interfaces to allow individuals to create their own “folk songs”.
Chinese phonography groups blogs:
PlayBackUnit http://sjp.blogbus.com/ http://sjp.blogbus.com/
by Lin Zhiying & Zhong Minjie (Guangzhou, Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta)
Harbin Sound Unit http://www.chinesenewear.com/harbin/
by Zhang Jun’gang & Wang Changcun Covering Harbin, Shanghai
Global Noise Online http://www.chinesenewear.com/gno/
Site-hearing http://www.mattgilbert.net/sitehearing/
a website that logs places that have interesting acoustics all over the world. All these sites are plotted on a Google map, and can be sorted by type.
Spires and Steeples website Dallas Simpson
http://www.spiresandsteeples.com/ListenHere/
Sound Map sites
Tuned City http://www.tunedcity.de/
Audiolab: Soinumapa http://www.soinumapa.net/index_en.php
Radio Aporee maps http://aporee.org/maps/
Locus Sonus audio streams
http://nujus.net/~locusonus/site/streams/map.php#
Gordon Soundscape map
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/%7Ewae006gordonsoundscape.co.uk/frameset.php?id=1&username=guest
Cologne http://soundmap.akustikfilm.com/
Berlin: http://berlincast.com/
New York City http://www.nysoundmap.org/
Individual recordists and sound artists sites
Francisco Lopez
www.franciscolopez.net/about.html
Aaron Ximm, the quiet american
Chris de Laurenti
Derek Holzer
Chris Watson
Hildegarde Westerkamp
Andra McCartney http://andrasound.org/
Janet Cardiff http://www.abbeymedia.com/Janweb/jan.htm
Andrea Polli http://www.andreapolli.com/
sound map of New York City http://www.andreapolli.com/studio/maps/google.html
Walter Knapp
http://frogrecordist.home.mindspring.com/
Mike Hallenbeck
http://www.juniorbirdman.com/archive
Windows project
http://www.lappareil.com/window/
Phonography from Iraq - Thomas Ashcraft
http://www.heliotown.com/Sound_From_Iraq_2006.html
Escoitar http://www.escoitar.org/?lang=en
Mississauga Sound Map http://www.yorku.ca/caseaces/soundmap/
New Adventures in Sound Art http://www.naisa.ca/opportunities.html
Fri 18 Jul
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Architectural Association Summer School Unit
This AA Unit considers simultaneously - the city as sound and catastrophe as a silencing.
It questions: What will the city sound like? Is communication possible? As the noise floor drops, will a new soundscape emerge?
The Unit employs the soundtrack as the index for the urban sonic condition - before, during and after catastrophe. It takes the soundtracks of uncoventional and experimental films as points of departure to consider the sound of a post-catastrophe London.
The Unit explores the catastrophic possibilities for the sound of the city from three perspectives.
The Acoustic: The physical sound of the city and its psychoacoustic effects.
The Electromagnetic: The hidden, but prevalent phenomena that underpin everything from telecommunications to the weather.
The Soundtrack: The film, and in particular the disaster film, can serve as a medium for exploring and projecting our collective fears and hopes for an alternate future for how the city sounds.
Mon 26 May
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“Both architecture and cinema articulate lived space. These two art forms create and mediate comprehensive images of life… Both forms of art define the dimensions and essence of existential space. They both create experimental scenes of life situations.”
—Juhani Pallasmaa Lived Space in Architecture and Cinema
Mon 26 May
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Click Here To Open.
Sun 25 May
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Sun 25 May
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Catastrophic Listening
Alvin Lucier ‘I am sitting in a room’ 1969 & ‘Music on a Long Thin Wire’ 1980
Chris Watson & BJ Nilsen ‘Storm’ 2006.
Franscisco Lopez ‘New York Buildings’ 2001.
Glenn Gould ‘The Solitude Trilogy’ 1967-77.
Christina Kubisch ‘Five Electrical Walks’ 2007.
Wolf Eyes ‘Dead Hills’ 2002
Steve McGreevy ‘Auroral Chorus II: The Music of the Magnetosphere’ 2000.
Toshiya Tsunoda ‘Pieces of Air’ & ‘extract from field recording archive #2&3’ 2002-5
Jason Kahn ‘One Hour as Snow’ 2003.
Peter Cusack ‘Baikal Ice’ 2003.
Steve Roden ‘Resonant Cities’ 2003.
Krzysztof Penderecki ‘Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima’ 1960.
Gavin Bryars with Philip Jeck & Alter Ego ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ 2005.
RLW ‘The Pleasure of Burning Down Churches’ 2007.
Tod Dockstader ‘Apocalypse’ 1993.
The Conet Project ‘Recordings Of Shortwave Numbers Stations’ 1997.
Knurl ‘Torus’ 1998.
Sun 25 May
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London, UK
Sat 24 May
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Steve Bates | Joshua Bonnetta | Douglas Moffat
Steve Bates
Steve Bates is a media artist, musician, and audio technician whose current work revolves around improvised and composed music, radio, and installation projects. He founded and directed the Send +Recieve Festival of Sound in 1998, now in its eight year. Bates is the Sound Coordinator at the Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation in Media Arts and Technologies and is a graduate candidate in Studio Arts/Open Media at Concordia University. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.
Joshua Bonnetta
Based in Montreal, Bonnetta is multi-disciplinary artist working with sound and the moving image. His work, largely film based, incorporates both found-footage and direct-animation techniques. His work has been exhibited in various forms including installation and performance. His films have been screened in festivals in Russia, Ireland, Netherlands and Columbia. He is completing his graduate studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University. Bonnetta works as a revisionist for the Toronto International Film Festival and lives in Montreal, Quebec.
Douglas Moffat
Trained as a landscape architect, Moffat has worked in offices in Montréal and Vancouver. His work explores the relationship between sound and the built landscape. Utilizing field recordings, electro-acoustics, and landscape architecture, his projects are spaces built for listening. Currently completing his graduate work in Studio Arts at Concordia University, his graduate thesis project Listening to Las Vegas explores the sonic environment of the Las Vegas Strip. He has presented works at the Jardin de Métis Festival international de jardins and the Send + Receive Festival. He lives in Montreal,Quebec.
Fri 23 May
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