Communal Listening for Climate Action

This paper outlines a new initiative to establish a community embedded Environmental Listening Network that teaches environmental listening skills and conducts regular listening events free in the community. Using a network of key partnerships, it aims to share this simple yet powerful method of environmental engagement worldwide. An Environmental Listening Field Guide is in development for broad distributed.  This approach addresses several challenges. The first is that the time commitment and financial commitment associated with engaging in environmental listening is minimal. All socio-economic groups can engage in these activities equally. Environmental listening can be practice daily, wherever the listener finds themselves. So doing helps develop an awareness of the subtleties of the ecosystem in which we live. As individual action is increasingly amplified by social media, the empowerment of individuals is one of the most powerful ways to achieve climate action, individual behavior must change. Environmental Listening is an effective strategy for bringing about these changes and a key tool in addressing climate impact. The Community Environmental Listening Project envisions a future where, through acoustic ecology, people embrace their presence on the land on which they live to understand and foster a balanced ecosystem

Siteworks: ecologies and technologies

SITEWORKS is an interdisciplinary research and practice project that invites artists, scientists and scholars to respond to the Bundanon property through the lens of their specific discipline. Over four years this has led to a series of interactive projects, many utilising electronic technologies. The inaugural investigations focussed on the geomorphology of the site and palaeoenvironmental research, specifically in the area of sea level rise and climate change. In subsequent years the focus has been on water and the river; land management; Indigenous cultural heritage, and food security

Siteworks: ecologies and technologies

SITEWORKS is an interdisciplinary research and practice project that invites artists, scientists and scholars to respond to the Bundanon property through the lens of their specific discipline. Over four years this has led to a series of interactive projects, many utilising electronic technologies. The inaugural investigations focussed on the geomorphology of the site and palaeoenvironmental research, specifically in the area of sea level rise and climate change. In subsequent years the focus has been on water and the river; land management; Indigenous cultural heritage, and food security

Basic Atomic Physics

Contains reports on seven research projects.National Science Foundation (Grant PHY 87-06560)Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAL03-86-K-0001)Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAL03-89-C-0002)National Science Foundation (Grant PHY 86-05893)U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-83-K-0695)U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-89-J-1207

Atomic Resonance and Scattering

Contains reports on two research projects.National Science Foundation (Grant PHY 87-06560)Joint Services Electronics Program (Contract DAAL03-86-K-O002)U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-83-K-0695)National Science Foundation (Grant PHY 86-05893

Sonic immersion : interactive engagement in real-time immersive environments

This paper approaches the interactive sound environment from the perspective of practice-led research, applying experiential feedback as a means of theorising developments in artistic practice with a predilection for the Kantian empiricists’ perspective.  David Borgo discussed the dichotomies implicit in the distinctions between the doing and the knowing forms of knowledge.  He claims that knowing “comprises static information structures within one’s head, and doing refers to the straightforward process of executing a given operation based on these pre-existing knowledge structures” (2005: 178). Where knowledge structures are pre-existent, this model is useful, however in the relatively new domain of interactive sound installations, existing theory is limited.  Whilst I am working from the perspective of a musician/sound artist, musical theory (musicology or composition theory) is so entangled in a labyrinthine collection of ‘musical’ thought that it does not generally elucidate the experience of interactive, sonic immersion.  Theories from new-media and electronic arts are commonly also too removed from the empirical, that they at best describe the framework in which the experience occurs. Discussions such as this paper therefore need to borrow theories from other disciplines despite giving precedence to the empirical whilst discussing the underlying design and production methods used to heighten the experience of a nuanced individual engagement within such an installation

Editorial - Guest Editor

Editoria

Towards unified design guidelines for new interfaces for musical expression

The use of a laptop computer for musical performance has become widespread in the electronic music community. It brings with it many issues pertaining to the communication of musical intent. Critics argue that performances of this nature fail to engage audiences because many performers use the mouse and/or computer keyboard to control their musical works, leaving no visual cues to guide the audience as to the correlation between performance gestures and musical outcomes. The author will argue that interfaces need to communicate something of their task and that cognitive affordances (Gibson 1979) associated with the performance interface become paramount if the musical outcomes are to be perceived as clearly tied to real-time performance gestures - in other words, that the audience are witnessing the creation of the music in that moment as distinct to the manipulation of pre-recorded or pre-sequenced events. Interfaces of this kind lend themselves particularly to electroacoustic and computer music performance where timbre, texture and morphology may be paramount

Endangered sounds : silence as sonic exploration

In early 2001, NASA announced they had captured an echo of the Big Bang!! I have in my head an image of a wind beaten astronaut hanging out a porthole of a distant space ship, test tube in hand, swinging madly at arms length to capture a sample of the echo, an invisible artefact identifiable only by sophisticated sensors onboard. Once gathered, this sample is corked, labelled and safely archived. Of course this is a phantasmic vision, but it was my initial response, and stands as the inspiration for the Endangered Sounds project