When Jonáš Gruska is not busy giving workshops on urban sonification, creating his own recording instruments, making electromagnetic fields audible or organizing a solar-powered (experimental) music festival called SVUK, you’ll find him under bridges, inside bridges, in ventilation systems or near oil refineries exploring the psychoacoustic properties of sound in industrial spaces

This piece of sound equipment emits low frequency infrasound waves, which causes those in its path to release the contents of their bowels—or more colloquially, to “shit themselves”. This kind of sound cannon has its roots in sonic weapons first developed by the Nazis for the purposes of crowd control, and purportedly also by the French authorities during the Paris riots of 1968

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There is a surprising similarity in the way neural networks and analogue modular synthesizers function, in that for both, voltages are passed through components to produce data or sound. The neural interface we developed juxtaposes these two networks and in a sense creates a continuum that creates one unified network. With CellF, the musician and musical instrument become one entity to create a cybernetic musician, a rock star in a petri dish.

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Moritz Simon Geist is a classical musician and a robotics engineer who builds his own musical instruments. The most famous of them is the MR-808, an oversized replica of the TR-808 produced by Roland to reproduce drum sounds. This 1980s electronic drum machine imitated the drum so inadequately that it actually created its own sound. The distinctive ‘thump thump’ became an integral part of hip hop music, gained iconic status with Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing and reached such a cult position within the music industry that even Kayne West paid tribute to the machine in one of his hit albums

Aernoudt Jacobs is an artist fascinated with sound in all its forms and possible expressions. He collects fields recordings around the world but he also creates installations based on Bell’s photoacoustic effect that reveals the sonority of any material hit with a strong beam of light, builds sound microscope that magnifies the freezing and melting process of water or suspends coils, magnets and 1000 tin cans into the air to play with the laws of electromagnetic induction and create tiny vibrations that produce sounds

The sound of empty space explores relationships between microphones, speakers, and surrounding acoustic environments through controlled, self-generating microphone feedback. By building flawed technological systems and nullifying their intended potential for communication, the ear is turned towards the empty space between components; to the unique configurations of each amplifying assemblage

Lacplesis Technology is a group of three projects that aim to rise discussion about the balance between two paragraphs of the article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits” and
“Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author”

Darsha Hewitt built a whole installation that exploits the inherent and irritating glitches emitted by vintage baby monitors. The receivers are attached to motors and slowly bow back and forth in front of the emitters, creating a subtle soundscape of nuanced feedback patterns and squelching radio interference reminiscent of the whimpers of crying babies

The work of Owl Project goes from simple ironic devices such as the iLog which is a log that thinks it is a music player to large scale installations such as ~Flow which was a floating tidal waterwheel powered electro acoustic musical instrument responding to the river Tyne in Newcastle. Owl Project has also toured festivals and events with their rather ingenious Sound Lathe, a musical instrument based on a traditional green wood turning pole lathe that explores the relationship between the crafting of physical objects and the shaping of sound

The event brought together two men who share a passion for whales. One is environmental scientist and marine biologist Mark Peter Simmonds who investigates and raises awareness about an issue that is far away from our sights: the threats to the life of marine mammals caused by the increasing emissions of loud noise under water. The other is artist and inventor Ariel Guzik who has spent the last ten years looking for a way of communicating with cetaceans

Marco Donnarumma is a young performer and sound artist who gained fame across the world for a series of performances and instruments that use open biophysical systems to explore the sonic dimensions of the human body. His interactive instrument Xth Sense won the first prize in the Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition and was named the 2012 “world’s most innovative new musical instrument”

Behind its menacing aspect, SPPS considers selectively permeable structures under lenses that range from the molecular level to the macro scale.It explores the (xenophobic) history of immigration in Australia and more generally current infrastructures that define socio-political boundaries. It also looks at the history of biowarfare, from Antique Chinese gunpowder rockets carrying poisonous material to virus injected into chicken eggs

More than 2 years ago, i was interviewing Marguerite Humeau about her attempt to bring back to life the voice of extinct creatures by reconstructing their voice box. She started by giving her voice back to Lucy (aka Australopithecus Afarensis), one of the first hominids. Since then, the resuscitation endeavour has expanded to more extinct animals. A mammoth, the Walking Whale and the Terminator Pig have now joined the loud party. The prehistoric creatures where recently in Eindhoven for the STRP biennial where they performed live for the first time together with Dutch musician and DJ Jameszoo. Sadly, i missed the performance. But that gave me a good excuse to contact Marguerite and get more details about her work

Very few artists manage to translate scientific phenomena into stunning images as elegantly as Carsten Nicolai. If you’re in London, don’t you dare miss Observatory at Ibid Projects.

The works on show visualise diverse physical occurrences. From the ground floor to the top floor, the installations, videos and photographic pieces investigate phenomena that get further and further away from our daily experience

Three large-scale installations that experiment with scientific phenomena and pay homage to Nikola Tesla. The works can be experienced without mediation but each of them also conveys several layers of meanings and readings, whether you’re intrigued by the technical description or by the sheer beauty of the sparks, lightening bolts, and sonic properties of the works

This week we are talking with Nelly Ben Hayoun about space science technologies, aliens and music. The designer spent a whole Summer in California to direct the International Space Orchestra. The cast of the opera is pretty spectacular. It is performed by space scientists from NASA Ames, Singularity University, International Space University and the SETI Institute. The music was composed by Damon Albarn, Bobby Womack, Maywa Denki and Arthur Jeffes. The lyrics are by Bruce Sterling & Jasmina Tesanovic. Finally, Grammy-Award winner Evan Price was in charge of the musical direction

eCLIPSe surveys the creativity of music videos with a selection of the 50 videos that may be considered crucial for a proper appreciation of the discipline. Perhaps there are some missing but all that are included are beyond dispute. The clips are divided into several sections, to be screened in separate projections, starting with a historical overview and continuing with monographs devoted to who we believe to be the most seminal video directors: Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham

I met Signe Lidén over the Summer at the FARM festival where she was performing the sound pieces she had recorded while traveling on a rural train line in Southern Italy.

I had actually come upon the work of this young artist several times in the past. Two years ago, when i visited Bergen for the Piksel festival and back in May when i spent a whole afternoon listening to the sound files and watching the videos collected for the project The Cold Coast Archive: Future Artifacts from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Being more used to visual arts, i’m fascinated by Signe Lidén’s work, by the way uses field recordings to evoke and communicate the places and spaces she investigates.

My guest on the show is Dr. Jonah Brucker-Cohen whom i’m sure you all know. Jonah is a researcher, artist, and writer. Apart from his work as an artist, Jonah has been teaching in several universities in New York, lecturing internationally, writing essays for magazines focusing on technology and since he is teaching a course called Designing Critical Networks at Parsons in New york, i thought he’d be the perfect guest for a program which covers issues such as social media, subverting network experience, hacking, and internet censorship. We also took the time to focus on some of his own works, from the now legendary Wifi Liberator to Scrapyard Challenge Jr. 555 Noisemaker Kit and America’s Got No Talent