Sniffer Sounds

From 11-12 March I’ll be leading a workshop for young people at the Amandus Film Festival in Lillehammer, Norway. Small groups, equipped with detectors and mini-dv cam-corders will explore electromagnetic Lillehammer, recording the sound of the invisible city directly on to tape as an alternative “concrete” sound for film. We’ll then look at the various recordings, discuss them a bit, and pick out interesting parts of the recordings. These will be shown on the last evening, together with the results of Ivar Smedstad‘s video group and will be loaded up to the Sniffer Sounds blog.

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Electric walks

HC Gilje sent me a link to an ongoing project called Electric Walks (started 2003), by Berlin-based sound artist Christina Kubisch. Using sniffer headphones (that pick up electromagnetic waves and converts them into sound) she maps out hot spots in cities that are either very strong or interesting to listen to, and then loans the headphones out to the public. For an interview for Cabinet no. 21, she has provided 30 sound samples that she’s gathered while walking through various cities. You can listen to them here:
URL: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/21/kubisch.php

Life: A User’s Manual

(situationist)

Michelle Teran, since 2003

[From the website: To understand the extent to which the multitude of transmissions circulating through the airwaves permeate cities and blur the boundaries between the private and the public, the best thing to do is go out on the street and intercept them. This is what Canadian artist Michelle Teran has been doing since 2003 with her series of interventions “Life: A User’s Manual”. Armed with a frequency scanner, Teran intercepts signals from wireless video cameras around the area she is walking in, and displays their images on a portable monitor on the street. From the analogue fog there arise ghostly non-places like hotel lobbies, banks and automatic tellers, but also spaces as private as a baby’s nursery. These walks become a real-time map of what is happening in the narrow unregulated range of the spectrum, where a series of devices operate (wireless webcams, bluetooth security cameras or mobile telephones), turning consumers into “micro-broadcasters”. For Michelle Teran, to place a camera somewhere is usually a way of protecting what it displays, and strengthening its borders. “Life: A User’s Manual” shows that the borders of physical reality do not match those of Hertzian space.]
URL: http://www.zemos98.org/festivales/zemos988/reclaim/michelle_teran_eng.htm
Michelle’s website: http://www.ubermatic.org/life/

Electromagnetic Live Mix

(situationist)

The Oldenburg Walks – Concert
Christina Kubisch/ Lutz Pruditsch, Berlin, 2007

[ From website: For their music performance Christina Kubisch and Lutz Pruditsch, known as Tarkatak, use sounds collected by visitors to the exhibition Sound//Bytes while walking around Oldenburg equipped with specially designed headphones, acoustically discovering the city’s electromagnetic fields. These and the two artists’ own recordings will be mixed live, resulting in a surprising musical experience: the sound of the city, originally generated by neon advertising, security devices, cell phones, automated teller machines, or electric devices.]
URL: http://www.edith-russ-haus.de/english/soundbytes_kubisch.html