Listening.

Video

shapesarchive — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:10:31 -0400

Annual Average Daily Traffic

shapesarchive — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 16:03:11 -0400

Annual Average Daily Traffic

algorithmic aesthetics

shapesarchive — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 20:52:00 -0400

algorithmic aesthetics

Notes on The Tuning of the World (salvaged from 'drafts')

shapesarchive — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:23:00 -0400

p4. “Noise pollution results when man does not listen carefully.”

p43.

“The country is generally more hi-fi than the the city; night more than day; ancient times more than modern”

what rem koolhaas thinks about the country-side side: http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/11954

p49. ”The rural soundscape was quiet, but it experienced two profound acoustic interruptions: the noise of war and the “noise” of religion.

-no mention of the industrialized country side. has it not hit yet in the 70’s? - find something to to show this one way or the other. perhaps this is simply an expression of the bias towards the country-side as a haven for hi-fi soundscape. In Schafer’s view: Industry is the domain of the city and the country is sacred ground intruded on by outside forces of war and religion

thesis map

shapesarchive — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:10:37 -0400

thesis map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_restoration_theory

shapesarchive — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:36:57 -0400

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_restoration_theory

Concept - proven. Optimization - needed.

shapesarchive — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:01:06 -0400

So I worked on the tin-can phone this weekend. Check out the pics. I don’t have any decent sound recordings but it doesn’t matter, because it actually doesn’t sound very good (yet!). But it did transfer something over the cable, which is encouraging.

shaft collars, steel cable

cans

Guy happened to be on campus with his visiting parents so I roped (cabled?) them into doing some testing…

“can you hear me?!”

“yeah.”

“how does it sound?!”

“tinny!”

yeah, it sounded tinny, and quiet. I sort of expected this. There’s a series of acoustic energy transfer points that are very inefficient (air -> can -> shaft collar -> cable. double and reverse that chain on the receiving side). Some ways to improve that include some kind of “stepped duct” system, where instead of coupling the bottom of can directly to the much more dense shaft collar, I can introduce a series of flat plates of increasing density and decreasing diameter, to more gradually step up to the density and surface area of the collar, and eventually of the cable.

Another issue, (see picture above) is the tensile strength of the can. I seem to have unlimited (for this purpose) tension capability via the ratchet belts. This is great on the one hand because the cable needs to be very taut.

here’s a recording of the string to demonstrate tautness

The weak link then becomes the can - the softest material in the chain. The can looks pretty stretched, although how close to breaking I’m not sure.

Some other non-acoustic issues, are about the physical interface of this thing. Ideally, there would be more space between the can and whatever it’s ratcheted to, and the tree, or whatever it is, should also be wider so that the belts are further apart, to better fit the source (mouth on head). Maybe a bigger can, but this of course complicates the acoustics part of it - bigger can bottom…

The other issue, and maybe this can be resolved with developing some kind of tin can protocol, is figuring out when to talk and when to listen. It took me and Guy a couple tries and coordinating exchanges via non-can methods to have an ear and a mouth on opposite sides of the line.

ONWARDS!

Classes are done.

shapesarchive — Sat, 12 May 2012 22:53:53 -0400

Classes are done, which means I will start posting more regularly again.

In the meantime, here’s some wind:

I’d recommend listening to this as loudly as whatever you have will allow. The thrill of being completely overwhelmed and gently brought back down by a gust of wind is unique.

Also, if you’re “into” “stereo”, at one point you can actually hear the wind pass through the woods from left to right. Like you always thought it did, like you never heard it do.

Summer!!

Sonic Seascape Terrace by Decoster-Taivalkoski,Haaslahti and...

shapesarchive — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:42:41 -0500

Sonic Seascape Terrace by Decoster-Taivalkoski,Haaslahti and Montes de Oca

am definitely not writing thesis..

shapesarchive — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:16:21 -0500

am proud new owner of two tin cans

am also scheming construction

am definitely not writing thesis..

i think i would like to make one of these for a relatively long...

shapesarchive — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 23:01:25 -0500

i think i would like to make one of these for a relatively long distance

Semantic-differential data for a bell sound -Hugo Fastl....

shapesarchive — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:04:36 -0500

Semantic-differential data for a bell sound

-Hugo Fastl. Communication Acoustics

Vultures, Nine Birds Feeding on Zebra Carcass, Itong Plains,...

shapesarchive — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:31:00 -0500

Vultures, Nine Birds Feeding on Zebra Carcass, Itong Plains, Kenya’ Chris Watson

Video

shapesarchive — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:10:50 -0500

Photo

shapesarchive — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:31:40 -0500

Photo

shapesarchive — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:25:22 -0500

soundscape representation

shapesarchive — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:52:56 -0500

start of soundscape database. next step - spectrograms, and maybe sound(?! - right now i just point to the folder with the files) there’s a body of tepid debate on the best way to present long soundscape recordings, the 3 main methods being:

visual spectrogram
event based aural sampling
time based compression/lapse aural sampling

the spectrogram to me, is useful in a way that’s different from time sampling, although at longer recording times only very gross trends are apparent (i suppose this is obvious)

3 hours of a very windy forrest

the red ‘belt’ in the lower mid frequency range is the howl of wind, and one can see that it subsides in the last hour.

Conversely, looking at a 5 minute window, yields this:

windy forrest 5 minutes - here is an airplane (paralel lines) and some bird calls (2:28:00 and 2:31:30).

I haven’t interacted much with sampling (event based or lapsing) systems, and while it’s tempting to build one, I also have to really analyze how necessary that would be. The eventual goal is to be able to integrate a soundscape database into a built structure. A robust tagging system comes to mind as a more immediately useful feature in this regard, if the database and the structure are to be interactive.

Video

shapesarchive — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:02:12 -0500

Bike Recorder

shapesarchive — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:50:38 -0500

Ok, new (another) project.

School is starting back up again. I’ve fixed my bike chain just in time for the Spring semester and with any luck, Spring is actually close and I can once again start taking the bike to campus.

Whenever I commute this way, I always take the same route. Something about the regularity of this routine appeals to me. On top of the automated experience of getting to class, there is the variety that each day brings - weather, traffic, those meandering underclassmen, my own disposition or exhaustion from a late night…

Those that bike have probably noticed that the activity demands a unique kind of attention. (David Byrne alludes to this in his Bicycle Diaries). Part of this engagement is aural. I am constantly scanning for aural cues about cars, or pedestrians, or the condition of my bike based on the sounds it makes (“hm, haven’t heard that before”), moisture on the road, etc..

It didn’t take long for me to realize that in these daily rides exists a soundscape project, to highlight the aural nature of biking. The regularity of the route, the short timeframe (about 5 min), the ease of execution, all provide a setup for a series of interesting recordings - variations on a theme, so to speak. The only real issue - and perhaps I was being lazy about it last semester, or maybe just busy - was figuring out a way to mount the recorder on the bike.

Little did I know, it would take but an hour and I even had everything right in my own piles of random hardware. Here’s how I did it.

dumped a bunch of hardware stuff on my table:

found a pipe ring from another project:

measured bolt to fit the recorder mount:

cut it using my patented “vice-on-the-arm-of-chair” technique:

Miraculously, when I turned the part into the recorder, it fit snugly and perfectly oriented!

mount the mount. attach the attachment…

success!

I am eager to try this tomorrow. After a few pilot runs, I plan to make and post these recordings regularly. Not yet sure the best way to do it. Should I do it here, maybe under its own tag? Should I start a new tumblr entirely devoted to my bike commute recordings? Let me know what y’all think!

noiseforairports: Appropriate for the hurricane tropical...

shapesarchive — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 23:47:57 -0500

noiseforairports:

Appropriate for the ~~hurricane~~ tropical storm: Pierre Sauvageot’s Harmonic Fields. Instruments/installation pieces played by the wind.

(via Everyday Listening)