Our ears were tuned to the sound of art today during Dr. Rebecca Caines’s lecture about sound art, an artistic medium of sound created through a multiplicity of disciplines. During her introduction, Dr. Caines mentioned that her work is interdisciplinary and socially engaged as she incorporates communities in her projects. Dr. Caines has dedicated herself to developing the U of R’s Creative Technologies department for the past five years. Sound art involves considering audio, location, and technology in its design. Sound art can be used to develop data sonification and sound walking compositions.
The Main Questions
There were three main questions answered during today’s lecture.
1. What technologies and practices are used in sound art?
Sound art can use data sonification, which is the use of sounds to represent data. Technologies of sound teach us about site, place, and space. Since sound art is an interdisciplinary subject, all sorts of technologies can be used in this field, and sound art does not require a musical background.
2. What is sound art?
Sound art can be any sounds possible, whether it is arranged or not. Arranged sounds remind people more of music, so sound art is more commonly known to be unintentionally arranged sounds or sounds that represent a space. Spatial data is represented by sonification, and sounds record existing environments.
3. How do you decide to design sound art effectively?
There are many factors to consider when creating sound art. For example, the sound that represents data should match the data being represented. One idea to represent windspeeds through sonification is to use wind sounds that match the speed values. The sound art that is created can then be used to develop understandings of accessibility and usage. For instance, the sound map of Bittorrent downloads suggests which countries have access to internet resources and which countries are lacking such access.
Data Sonification
When artists represent data through sound, they may use a variety of technologies to do so. They may utilize existing audio software or develop specialized sonification software and interfaces, like how the artist who developed the Stoctaves installation created buttons that can switch between the stocks creating sound.
The graphic scores for data can be developed by the artist’s own logic system or how a musician decides to play sound. The representation can be either specific or interpretive. There are low tech options to represent the sound like through graphic scores that engage with the data or through photos and drawings.
Sound Map Advice
Sound art is “characterized by the presence of recognizable environmental sounds and contexts, the purpose being to invoke the listener’s associations, memories, and imagination related to the soundscape.”
For the upcoming sound map project, Dr. Caines advised the class to consider listening to the sound in a place and considering the creative arrangement of the sound in the place. We should practice moving through the acoustic environment and plan the composition about the sounds in the place. There are many creative ways to use sound, such as to bring the person’s mind to the area or to express a message about the area like Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk. The sound should tell the listener something about the place. Sound that represents data should be relevant to the data being represented.
The Tools Used to Create Sound Art
A variety of tools can be used to create sound art. The list of tools include audio recorders, microphones, audio software, sampling, sequencing, GPS, and so on. The tools seem to be endless as more tools are created from the different fields involved. The design of sound art can vary as well. For example, sound maps can be based on GPS location or based on the listener selecting the tracks to play once certain destinations are reached. The choice of sounds, location, and whether or not to tell the listener about a space from a distance are important creative decisions to consider when creating sound maps.
Community Sound Scapes
One of Dr. Caines’s major projects involved creating sound maps in her project Community Sound [e]Scapes: Northern Ontario. The technology used to create the community sound scapes includes phone microphones, audio editing software, and simple, one-click audio recording devices. Dr. Caines’s project in North Spirit Lake, Ontario, focused on developing relationships between the spaces and the people. She found that some participants had difficulty accessing the required technology, and so she created tools for these people to participate. Composed of three high school students, the daVinci team recorded hours of sound in a nature center and edited the clips down. The Woolgoolga team recorded sounds on handheld devices with easy on/off switches to record sounds along the team’s bike ride.
Research & References
Dr. Caines showed many examples of sound art during class today. These references include:
- London Sound Survey – a survey of sounds throughout London
- Janette Cardiff and Bures Miller‘s 40 Part Motet – a separate speaker for each singer
- Lucas Abela’s Vinyl Rally – a toy car with a record pin drives over records
- Gary James Joynes’s Modular Synthesizer – tunes and animates particles with sound
- Stoctaves – sound installation of the stock market
- Leech – sonification of Bittorrent downloads
- Isao Hashimoto’s Nuclear Test Timeline 1945 – 1998
I started researching sound art and I rediscovered the following video:
The guest lecture today reminded me of the above video that I watched during my biology class in high school. The video plays the sound of a heartbeat that continues to increase as the world’s population increases. I enjoy this video because it represents world population by the sound of a beating heart, which is a sound that ties nicely with the data being represented.
Connections with Past Speakers
Dr. Caines’s work involving communities reminds me of Dr. Gerhard’s “Balloon Project.” I like how Dr. Caines brings members of the public who might not normally think of themselves as artists together to collect beautiful sounds, while Dr. Gerhard unites people together to conduct scientific experiments. Both Dr. Caines and Dr. Gerhard inspire the public to experiment in disciplines they may normally be shy about pursuing.
Les Trois Frontières de L’Europe by Philippe Rekacewicz maps immigration camps in 2006.
Dr. Caines’s work is also similar to Ben Dalton’s projects. In Dalton’s paper Data Is Political: Investigation, Emotion and the Accountability of Institutional Critique, he suggests that data should be represented in a visual medium to make the data more engaging, like in Philippe Rekacewicz’s map of immigration camps above. Dr. Caines shares a similar value to Dalton in that data sonification allows people to become more understanding of what a data set represents.
ctch111 shelby piechotta 
