In keeping with World Listening Day, we bring you a video of sound artist Stephen Vitiello speaking at Pop Tech about intimate listening. Though not quite as intimate as the listening you can do here at Sonic; Vitiello speaks about the special attention he pays to the soundscapes he enters and how he reinterprets these sounds into art.
Celebrate your aural environment today on World Listening Day.
Get out your recording device and document the soundscapes you encounter today, whether you are joining a soundwalk, or simply commuting to work. Various projects are open to submissions of recordings gathered today.
The Soundscape Ecology Project at Purdue invites participants to visit their WLD drop event site and submit a short soundscape recording. They will collect information on your soundwalk experiences, soundscape descriptions and (optionally) contact information. The Google Gazetteer tool will associate your recording with a lat,long coordinate in order to map these soundscape recordings.
More info via WLP
Radio Aporee is asking people around the world to send in their World Listening Day recordings to create a sonic snapshot of the world today in the form of a soundmap. Visit the 2010 WLD soundmap.
More info via WLP
Additionally, today you can hear the recordings that were submitted in 2010, broadcast on the radio aporee streaming website.
A special World Listening day broadcast of radio show, O Coleccionador de Sons (The Sound Collector), on Rádio Zero in Portugal, will feature WLD recordings, today 18th July. The show is curated by LuÃs Antero and exclusively dedicated to field recordings.
Canadian Sound Enthusiasts:
July 16 – September 3, 2011
Kicking off on July 16th with a SOUNDwalk to celebrate World Listening Day, New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) presents a summer-long celebration of sound art, The Sound Travels Festival. It will feature indoor and outdoor performances, sound installations, SOUNDwalks and an outdoor sound sculpture. Special events include the Sound Travels Intensive – a 5-day intensive for emerging artists – and the fifth annual Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium. This year’s artist-in-residence is internationally renowned UK artist Jonty Harrison.
“In a world that often focuses too much on the visual, Sound Travels brings about a refreshing change as it presents works by sound artists that extract compelling musicality and wordless dramas from everyday sounds often taken for granted. From this lush auditory experience, audiences author their own imaginary world in their mind’s eye.” – Darren Copeland, Artistic Director, NAISA.
Sound Travels Intensive
Aug 16 to 20, 2011
$175 registration fee
NAISA Space, Artscape Wychwood Barns, 601 Christie #252, Toronto
The Sound Travels Intensive is an opportunity for artists, composers and musicians from across Canada and around the world to create and present new work in Toronto, exchange ideas with others, and hone their skills in diverse aspects of sound and electroacoustic practice. Participants must apply by July 15.
5th annual Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium
August 10 – 13, 2011
$70/$35
Wychwood Theatre and Christie Studio
The 5th annual Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium 2011 is an important opportunity for exchange between diverse Electroacoustic communities and will include a keynote lecture by Sound Travels featured artist Jonty Harrison (Birmingham, UK).
Next Monday is World Listening Day…but what does that mean?
The World Listening Project (WLP) is a not-for-profit organization devoted to understanding the world and its natural environment, societies and cultures through the practices of listening and field recording. Together with the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, the WLP invites you to participate in a day of celebrating active listening.
The world hums and pulses with sound and hymn. An intrepid network of field recordists draws out these rhythms, recognising that these sensescapes have something to tell us if only we’d listen. Renowned cultural planner Charles Landry has noted that urbanisation results in a proliferation of sound and often the pleasurable sounds – like music, talking and laughing – are drowned out by noise. As individuals move around, plugged into their portable music devices, they are selectively removed from the auditory envelop of the city. – Linda Carroli, ArtsHub
So turn off your mp3 player (even Sonic can wait) and engage with the sounds of the world around you for a day.
Some ways to participate are:
WLD events will be happening world wide.
In Toronto, Canada:
On July 16th, NAISA will take you on a SOUNDwalk through the local neighbourhood around the Wychwood Barns in Christie. Following the SOUNDwalk will be a soundscape concert that will feature a number of interesting sounds: nightingale floors in Japanese temples, fish burps in the North Saskatchewan River, and special ambisonic soundscape recordings of Toronto.
In Queensland, Australia:
Brisbane-based sound artist Lawrence English is encouraging Queensland’s residents and visitors are to experience the sites dotted across the state including Cape Hillsborough, Brisbane Forest Park and Mt Hypipamee as part of his project Site Listening. The sites are mapped on the project website along with GPS coordinates and recommended listening times.
In Perth, Australia:
Artist Perdita Phillips is organising two sound walks on July 17 and 18.
Walk 1: North Lake on Sunday 17 July. 9:30 am to approximately 10:45 am.
Walk 2: Night walk in the City of Perth. Monday 18 July, 7:30pm to 8:30pm
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