sonic surrounds

Some other recent and impending events I’m involved with:

A new version of my Sound Transit radio composition was commissioned by ABC Radio National and went to air on 11th Feb 2007. The piece includes wonderful narrations by some of the internationally-diverse field recording artists whose sounds I included. Some information and the podcast is available for a few more weeks here. Update: Derek Holzer has kindly hosted the file on sound transit servers here, along with several other compositions of sound transit material listed in a sound transit forum post.

On Monday at the Feb 2007 issue of Dorkbot Sydney, I’m doing a talk about building and using my DIY ambisonic microphone, and maybe a brief performance.

On Wednesday I’m doing a live improv performance at the first 2007 Loud Is Boring at the Front Gallery in Canberra. According to the blurb I wrote, I’ll be “processing field recordings of a stochastic nature, influenced mildly by the chaotic logic and flux of the Shanghai metropolis”. Expect to hear the sounds of the tourist tunnel under the bund, demolition of buildings, taxi and window recordings, and other snippets of random audio along the themes of china and random textures. I’m not going to be totally purist about my sources for this, although all sounds will be based on my own original recordings, played and processed in my own Pd patchwork.

 

 Sound Transit commissioned piece for ABC Radio National, by Nick Mariette with additional production by John Jacobs: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

An article by Stephen Jones in the latest RealTime magazine on the recent Engage symposium at Creativity and Cognition Studios has a nice mention of my paper (which was presented by Somaya Langley).

Other problems that disrupt the illusion are more technical. For example, Nick Mariette has been exploring the Audio Nomad system (based on work by Nigel Helyer). Sound is superimposed on objects in the gallery or public space and the question becomes how well the received sound relate to the visual sites upon which it is superimposed; ie how good is the tracking and the sound rendering for source position fidelity. Here the science enters; Mariette is involved in experimental work in psychoacoustics within virtual sound environments.