Just discovered Musician and sound engineer Nick Mariette´s blog sonic surrounds. Run yet for a couple of years, Nick has slowly but surely built up an archive on sound tech, ambisonics, coding, hardware and sound art.
shared by watz
shared by watz
shared by watz
shared by watz
Naqoyqatsi: Life as war is a documentary film released in 2002; it is the third and final film of the Qatsi trilogy by Godfrey Reggio. The film focuses on society’s transition from a natural environment to a technology-based industrial environment.
In the opening chapter, the first scene is a zoom in of the Tower of Babel as portrayed in the Bible, then, shots of an abandoned building from both interior and exterior are shown, followed by a black and white series of shots. One shot is one of a strong wave, followed by a mountain with an effect behind the mountains of stars falling like comets, then a natural scene, then a black and white animation of a mountain’s framework growing is shown, after that, inverted, black and white, layered people are seen walking. Many lines come above the scene, and then the title is revealed in big, red writing.
Source: Wikipedia
Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation is the 1988 sequel to the experimental 1982 documentary film Koyaanisqatsi, by Godfrey Reggio. It is the second film in the Qatsi trilogy.
Powaqqatsi is a Hopi word meaning “parasitic way of life” or “life in transition”. While Koyaanisqatsi focused on modern life in industrial countries, Powaqqatsi, which similarly has no dialogue, focuses more on the conflict in third world countries between traditional ways of life and the new ways of life introduced with industrialization.
As with Koyaanisqatsi and the third and final part of the ‘Qatsi’ trilogy, Naqoyqatsi, the film is strongly related to its soundtrack, written by Philip Glass. Here, human voices (especially children’s and mainly from South America and Africa) appear more than in Koyaanisqatsi, in harmony with the film’s message and images.
Source: Wikipedia
Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by minimalist composer Philip Glass and cinematography by Ron Fricke
The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means 'life of moral corruption and turmoil, life out of balance', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.
The artwork and packaging for Disco Four, a collection of remixes by the Pet Shop Boys (featuring songs by The Killers, David Bowie and Yoko Ono) has been designed and art directed by Farrow, employing the photographic talents of John Ross. The album cover features a number “4″ made with four fluorescent lighting units.
also in the same category as gantz graf but this time interactive and real time – the fijuu2
completely different music but similar style – very nice video by french director Matray.
some background info at blendernation
old but still amazing work by british director Alex Rutterford
The orbiter is an interactive sound environment by Vera-Maria Glahn and Marcus Wendt.
It invites you to reach for the stars and play their music!
» Polar Scene A / Polar Scene B
» Solar Scene A / Solar Scene B
» Sawtooth Scene A / Sawtooth Scene B
» Kunsthochschule Kassel, Setup
» Kunsthochschule Kassel, annual exhibition 2007
» Microarchitecture Lounge exhibition at Tendence07, Frankfurt/Main
The Orbiter takes possession of all senses. It is a place for visitors to lay down and relax, watching the firmament above them. With a small gesture, just pointing upwards, the visitor can insert new stars into orbit with unique visual and musical characteristics. The player is enveloped by the instrument; the music filling the ears, the body and space.
The dream of reaching for the stars is as old as mankind itself. The mathematics of planetary orbits, the perfection of natural geometrical forms fascinates scientists and artists alike. Even music principles as tonality or phase displacement are based upon computational ideas and find correspondency in the Orbiters structure.
The music is played on concentric circles, with higher tones on the outside, bass notes nearer the centre. The bigger you let a star grow before you pull back your hand to insert it into orbit, the louder it plays. Like the stars orbit on the large ceiling screen above the player, the surround sound orbits in the room on 4 high-tone-channels, supported by a bass box and a solid bourne sound speaker underneath the player`s couch, making low basses physically sensable.
Each version of the Orbiter features various scenes with different graphics, sounds and behaviour. Some create an illusionary nightsky firmament, playing more melodic or ambient sounds. Others experiment with the possibilities of graphical abstraction and rough synths, allowing you to even play drum’n bass-like sounds.
The installation is based on custom-built software using latest gaming and computer vision technology, performing real-time analysis of a camera image of the player as well as generating 6-channel-audio and video signals. The video analysis is written in C++, instructing SuperCollider for the audio generation, Processing for the graphics.
just a reminder to myself about this weird instrument which is a nice example of how to utilize electromagnetic fields as input sources. also see thereminvox and theremin world
“[...] 1. Mode ist die neue Indie-Musik geworden, weil man mit dem Droppen von kleineren hochqualitativen Designern im Handumdrehen Leute aus dem Gespräch ausgrenzen kann. [...] 2. Kunst ist die neue Popmusik, weil in Monopol, in Sleek oder beim wöchentlichen Atelierbesuch im halbneuen Zeitmagazin zum Beispiel über Künstler berichtet wird, wie im Feuilleton über Popmusik. Marke: Sollte man kennen, muss man haben. 3. Nur was ist Musik eigentlich noch? Außer schön natürlich und auf dem Ipod. [...]”
Source: Mercedes Bunz
from CLASSIC AMBIENT RECORDINGS: The 2001 Survey
»An interesting compilation to what the album names of ambient musician Biosphere (Geir Jenssen) refer.
All Biosphere names allude to the cold environments of space or ice, and their exploration:
The Biosphere 2 project intended to explore the possible use of an artificial biosphere (a closed ecosystem) for space colonization. The Russian Biosphere 3 too. Both are detached, self-sufficient environments, like a space ship or a submarine.
The North Pole explored by a submarine, which may be lost like a ship in space.
Microgravity is the imperfect state of weightlessness in a space ship.
The word “patashnik” is allegedly Russian cosmonaut slang for “a traveler” or “a goner”, a cosmonaut who didn’t return from a space mission because his security cable disengaged and he was lost in space.
Substrata is, among others, a glaciology term (always plural) for the nature of a glacier’s bed. Phonetically, it’s also the Russian word for “frozen ground” (the permafrost).
A cirque is an amphitheatre-like valley formed by glacial erosion. It also refers to the death of Chris McCandless, a sort of “patashnik” who explored self-sufficient survival in a cirque in Alaska and lost himself.
Shenzhou refers to the Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft.
Autour de la Lune (1870, Round the Moon) was Jules Verne’s followup to De la Terre à la Lune (1865, From the Earth to the Moon). The first one dealt with the Earth part of the story until the ship’s launching, from the outside. Autour de la Lune dealt from the inside of the ship with the launching and the actual space travel to and around the moon [2]. The album’s titles are French for “Translatory”, “Rotatory”, “Modified”, “Vibratory”, “Deviation”, “Rotary”, “Disappeared”, “Reverse”, “Falling”.
A dropsonde is a device designed to be dropped at altitude to collect data as the device falls to the ground – in this context, it’s a sonde sent through space to another planet, it’s another “patashnik” explorator intended to be lost.