Handheld Audio Art Devices, article published in June at http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/12_3/

eContact! is the Canadian Electroacoustic Community’s (CEC) online journal of electroacoustics launched in May 1998 as the successor to its print journal, Contact! …published four times a year in French and English. Guest editors have been invited to coordinate one issue per year. Articles, reviews, interviews, commentaries and analyses are featured in the journal, supported by audio and video files. All freely available to the public.

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[This is an edited version of the July 28th blog post on my MySpace Music profile, and a follow-up to the July 9th post here.]

On July 1st I began work on new project called the World Listening Project. It was formed by small group of musicians and sonic artists with the initial goal of collecting field recordings from every country in the world and then presenting them on a web-based sound map for the Chicago Calling Festival (October 1–11, 2008). The festival director, Dan Godston cited R. Murray Schafer’s ideas and the World Soundscape Project as inspiration, as well as the work of Bernie Krausse of Wild Sanctuary. We’re excited have Bernie and Katherine  providing their ideas and support to the World Listening Project as we begin.

On the left is a proposed logo for the WLP, designed by Noé Cuellar.

Many sound mapping sites and interfaces exist on the web, among those I’ve noted often are SoundTransit, Locus Sonus Audio Streaming Project Map, and the recent Mississauga Sound Map. With this in mind our initial mission, as stated above, is now under discussion. Rather than being solely a field recording and sound map website, a broader range of practices, areas of investigation, and modes of presentation are being considered. The discussion on revising the WLP’s mission is public. Your participation may help if you subscribe to the World Listening Project’s (Yahoo! Group) listserv.

Among the ideas for project may include research and initiating geo-tagged audio projects, such as on Freesound.org. The WLP can promote investigations into the meaning, methods, and relations of information gathering through sound. We are also registering a non-profit organization to support this effort. Happily, we have many noteworthy artists and thinkers participating in this discussion. And, the membership of the listserv continues to grow.

I can mention many more fields of knowledge and practice that the World Listening Project can encompass, but I’d like to keep this post brief. Your participation can play a important role influencing the future of practices involving sound and listening in and of the world. If you wish to learn more about the discussion, or even join the worldlistening Yahoo! Group, please visit this link: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/worldlistening/

More video interviews with students from my 2008 Instrument Construction course at SAIC have been uploaded.

• SAIC Student Rob Martens: Evil Brother Of Snap, Crackle and Pop Martens?
  http://www.gearwire.com/theramin-instrument-construction.html
• (Part 1) SAIC Student Bethany Childs Tempts The Fury Of Neptune
  http://www.gearwire.com/conchshell-instrument-construction-001.html
• (Part 2) SAIC Student Bethany Childs And Playing An Interfaced Conch Shell
  http://www.gearwire.com/conchshell-instrument-construction-002.html

• Stuart Schmidt Is More Machine Than Man, Now
  http://www.gearwire.com/glove-controller-instrument-construction.html
• Cycling 74 Max: Kyle Evans’ Cigar Box Controller Controls Air Traffic Control
  http://www.gearwire.com/cigarbox-controller-instrument-construction.html

And as mentioned previously…

• Chris Burke’s Interactopus: One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Interactopus
  http://www.gearwire.com/interactopus-instrument-construction.html
• Jenna Caravello’s Celloharp Promotes Inter-Instrumental Hybridization
  [link removed at the student’s request - so sorry!]

On Friday, May 2 SAIC’s Waveforms presented videos and performances by students from the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gretchen Hasse from Gearwire came and interviewed many of the students in my Instrument Construction course, who opened the evening with an ensemble performance on their new instruments.

The video interviews are being completed now, and the first one up in the series is with Jenna Caravello, who worked all semester on her original acoustic instrument, the Celloharp. As you might guess from its name, this is a hybrid instrument. Jenna’s persistence and resilience in the face of so many kinds of challenges during its design and construction earns my respect and admiration.

The second video is an interview with Chris Burke who took Shawn Decker’s Programming For Sound course this spring. Chris dug deep into Max/MSP and Jitter software, and Ed Bennett’s ArtBus card, to come up with the Interactopus, a hardware interface for the real-time control of sound and video housed inside a warm, flexible fabric body.

Please visit this web page again and soon, as I announce more of Gretchen’s interviews with some of my outstanding student artists and their wonderful instruments.