Transom’s Guests right now are folk from TV’s Creature Comforts:
The CBS series Creature Comforts comes from Nick Park’s Aardman Animations Ltd., who also gave us Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit. The concept puts audio from real-life interviews into the mouths of animated animals.
For a personal glimpse into the CC process, Bob and Kathy Olkowski’s daughter Lu documented their transformation into insects, from Studio 360 “Bee-ing There” (7:36 mp3):
“The Professor” (formerly of WFMU’s Audio Kitchen) now curates an online museum, The Audio Kitchen blog, where you can listen to “Found Sound, Amateur Recordings and Homestyle Noise,” read about the tapes’ content, where they were discovered or created, and how to submit and discuss similar recordings.
For instance, here’s some found Answering Machine Recordings. These days our missed calls are recorded on digital voice mail, but not long ago we recorded our missed calls on cassettes, The Audio Kitchen dispenses this outdated technology to display many interesting and somewhat amusing glimpses into peoples lives.
Marks Answering Machine (6:25 mp3):
Pussy’s Answering Machine (5:28 mp3):
There are mounds of found sound and recorded messages the Professor has documented and is sharing with everyone that cares to look and listen. He also hosts The Radio Kitchen, Adventures in Amplitude Modulation:
“The Radio Kitchen is a blog about lo-fi old fashioned terrestrial radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (on medium wave and the shortwave bands). You’ll find that most posts actually contain audio files relevant to the subject matter discussed in each entry, while others may concern radio topics: radio reception, audio archiving, and general news related to AM and shortwave radio broadcasting.”
Happy Birthday to radio’s Some Assembly Required on their 9th year of ops and 200th broadcast. Since 1999 sound artist Jon Nelson (of Escape Mechanism) has hosted the series, which “features work by a variety of artists and groups who work with bits and pieces of their media environments, giving something back to the cultural landscape from which they so enthusiastically appropriate.”
The SAR blog has many interviews with mash- & cut-up, and other audio artists.
Just getting started is this WikiRecording, an audio-recording community knowledge-base. The contents are a bit skimpy as yet, but some sections, like “Stereo Microphone Techniques” are filling out. And maybe with all our help…
Sound-artist Joan Schuman offers her audio oeuvre online as HyperAcousia. What’s a sound-artist? Glad you asked… “Radio~Sound~Art” by Joan Schuman (6:07 mp3):
Audio artist & HV-fren Susan Stone got a Untied States Artists USA Fellow award, along with its whopping $50K. Congrats to one of radio’s innovators. Check out this SStone concoction from an audio cookbook, “Pineapple Boat” (1:15 mp3)
Last year HV collaborator Dmae Roberts also won one of these godsends.
A participatory sound project, “ItSpace pages feature everyday household objects. Each page has a photo of the object, a description, and most importantly, a 1-minute piece of music composed of recordings of the object being struck and resonated in various.” Here’s an example, some rhythms made from stair “Banisters” (1:02 mp3):
Peter Traub‘s ItSpace is a 2007 commission Networked Music Review of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (who produced the 1990’s sound-breaking series New American Radio).
via Lu Olkowski.
Saturn is one noisy celestial, and the Cassini orbiter and Huygens probe are catching it all. A/V from Saturn and its moons are housed in NASA’s Cassini-Huygens: Multimedia-Sounds exhibit. This audio is from the Cassini video “Sounds of Enceladus” (0:13 mp3):
NASA calls them “The Eerie, Bizarre Sounds of the Saturnian System,” as in this recording by Huygen’s microphones while “Speeding Through Titan’s Haze” (1:42 mp3):
The Cassini spacecraft is a multimedia reporter and has been snapping some astounding pix of Saturn:
A while back WFMU blogged (“Saturn, Your Other Home for Hippy Noise“) some Saturn-sonicities from NASA (1:14 mp3):
And the audio from this Titan descent mission- video, “Saturn Electrostatic Discharge” by The Planet Saturn (4:34 mp3)
“Sounds from a left speaker trace Huygens’ motion, with tones changing with rotational speed and the tilt of the parachute. There also are clicks that clock the rotational counter, as well as sounds for the probe’s heat shield hitting Titan’s atmosphere, parachute deployments, heat shield release, jettison of the camera cover and touchdown.
Sounds from a right speaker go with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer activity. There’s a continuous tone that represents the strength of Huygens’ signal to Cassini. Then there are 13 different chimes – one for each of instrument’s 13 different science parts – that keep time with flashing-white-dot exposure counters. During its descent, the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer took 3,500 exposures.”
via SALT-y Rob.
Saw Joe Frank a couple weeks ago perform “The Blue Room” at Largo’s in LA, along with a live groovin’ Frank-en-jazz band. Quite the show. Don’t have audio from that night, but here’s another taste of JF live— his acceptance speech for the Third Coast International Audio Festival Audio Luminary Award:
Sound artist BJ Nilsen has a new CD (Touch Records) “based on field recordings and electronics, with mostly analogue equipment, using up to 50 year-old tapemachines, filters and generators.” From The Short Night here’s “Black Light” (4:16 mp3):
Two apps that record radio for later listening, progammable by station and time: Rogue Amoeba – Radioshift (Mac $32) and RadioTime.com (Win $29). Both capture the station’s online audio stream then save it as an mp3 soundfile. Haven’t used either but I frequently resort to Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro, and can vouch for that co. heartily.
AARP Prime Time Radio has posted a photo-audio gallery of Gordon Hempton’s Sounds of Silence. Hempton is aka Sound Tracker , “an international acoustic ecologists,” and instigator of the One Square Inch project.
For the preceeding Murrow mp3, I tried out the new Zamzar – Free online file conversion. Submitted an online real-audio file thru Zamzar’s eb form; received an email w/ an mp3 attached. All went well. They can do the same for image, audio and video formats.
TouchRadio is the webcast (iTunes subscribe) of Touch Records, the label of field recordists and audio artists, including Chris Watson. Try one— step into this “9-Sided Room,” by Steve Roden (27:00):
Exquisite field recordist (and ex-Cabaret Voltaire band member) Chris Watson has new site up with news, bio, and downloads.
Form Touch Sampler 3, Chris Watson, “Out of Our Sight” (2:59 mp3):
“Motionless anticipation, along the dry sandy banks of the Zambesi a Mozambique nightjar is sucking in all the remaining light.”
Soundsnap: “share free sound effects and loops.” From animals to audio art, available in .mp3 and .wav. Mix, match, & montage:
bass chord
horse
bowling ball
Doug Kaye of The Conversations Network has posted on his Blogarithms an in-depth guide to Recording Skype Interviews, which he sez can now exceed the audio quality of a high-end telephone hybrid.
EarthEar’s Giant Fantabulous Yard Sale has CDs for $3-5 by master field-recordists such as Chris Watson, Bernie Krause, and Gordon Hempton, along with enviro sound collage music by Annea Lockwood, Paul Winter, the Thai Elephant Orchestra, and lots more.
WFMU’s blog has mp3s of Head and Leg’s In Your Dreams, a spoken-weird, oddio art, musicollage. I suggest you buy the CD, as I did, from Seeland, Negativland’s mail-order label, if only for the exquisite artwork inside by Pauline Lim:
“Your ___ Is Only Momentary” © Pauline Lim
Oil, alkyd, acrylic on canvas. 22″ x 28″ 2004
From Head and Leg In Your Dreams…
“Poke You in the Eye” (1:09):
“The Womb Room” (2:54):
“Dreamscape” (2:15):
The Sound Archive at the Imperial War Museum has a huge collection of sound-recorded war-related oral histories and broadcasts from WWI on. Some of the best-of are in the Forgotten Voices project; there’s a play in London based on the collection; and there’s several Forgotten Voices of the Second World War book/CDs.
Here’s the tres-Brit voice of First Lord of the Admiralty 1/Oct/1939, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, getting ready for a fight (1:13):
Sent by Rich Halten.