Monthly Archives: May 2010

Johan Primero brings a Citroën 2CV to a sound design studio

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Johan Primero and the Citroën 2CV at the FC Walvisch studios. Photo by Marcel Bultman

We’re living very strange days: sound professionals are very tough people, they know their work sometimes could be very hard, like recording sound underwater, following crazy seals vocals or jumping inside a very very noisy car.

Everything starts with Johan Primero, Johan Kramer‘s new movie, an extraordinary story of love and devotion to the world of football. In few words: Johan Puig is a 42 years-old man who drives his car 50 times a day around the stadium of FC Barcelona, in order to bring luck to his loved spanish club. And what a big surprise: Johan’s home is the sexy & vintage Citroën 2CV.

The entire movie is based on the relationship between the actors and the car, so we can imagine what kind of problems were born when designing the whole soundscape. The solution was around the corner: to bring the car to the recording studio!

Johan Kramer and his assistant Andreas Pasvantis decided to make a short film about this extraordinary situation, to document the great work of sound design made for the movie. The video was directed, filmed and edited by Andreas himself.

The company which accepted this challenge is FC Walvisch, a sound studio of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), specialized in making sound and music for commercials, films, music videos, games and online media.

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NODE international live media event, Modena, Italy

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The third edition of NODE will be held at the Galleria Civica di Modena (Italy), from 4 to 5 June 2010.

NODE can be considered as one of the most important event dedicated to live media in Italy.

The program is amazing:

4 June 2010 / Sala Grande

5 June 2010 / Sala Grande

Information: www.node-live.com, info@node-live.com, twitter - facebook - flickr

Electric dust for cars: working with FIAMM to create the future of sounds for electric and hybrid vehicles

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It will be one of the most critical issues for the automotive industry in the next three years: the sound of electric cars (EV) and hybrids (HEV). If you own a car, a motorcycle or a spaceship, it’s impossible that you never heard about the friendly Nissan LEAF, the sexy Fisker Karma or the worldwide well-known Toyota Prius. These will be the cars of our future, a new industrial mashup made of design, innovation and green technology.

This is surely nice, but electric and hybrid vehicles have a huge problem: they’re quiet. Too quiet. A conventional combustion-engine vehicle when stationery emits a sound of 50 dB, while the noise generated by an electric one is 0 dB. At a speed of 12 km/hr the conventional car is at 60 dB, the electric car is at 50 dB. When moving at a speed bigger than 20 km/hr, the intensity of the emitted sound is the same for all the vehicles, due to the friction with the ground. The reduced sound signature of hybrid and electric cars introduce a safety concern to cyclists and pedestrians, because they hardly detect vehicles at low speeds. This problem becomes more dramatic for blind and visually impaired pedestrians, who use auditory informations, like noise generated by vehicles, to localize streets, crossroads and make decisions in order to move safely.

I and Sara are working in Lorelei with FIAMM, world leader in the market of acoustic devices, for the development of a solution to the problem of quiet electric cars. Our mission: to guarantee the safety on the roads, but not only…

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Audiovisiva 6.0, Milan, Italy

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The international festival will take place in Milan (Italy) from the 27th to th 29th of May. Take a look in particular to the live performance and sound installation Audioscan, a soundscape project by Giorgio Sancristoforo, dedicated to the city of Milan and produced by Agon. And do not miss The Books on Friday 28.

Time Design with Albert Mayr

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On Tuesday the 18th at 8 p.m. @ Neon Campobase, via Zanardi 2/5 Bologna (Italy), the electroacoustic music guru and soundscape researcher Albert Mayr will present his recent works on his non orthodox concept of time design. We do not have the time we are in the time and The roundtable will involve the public in a collective performance which aims to unveil our obsessive relationship with time in the contemporary society. The moderator of this event is Silvia Bordini, La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy.

Partners: Neon Campobase, Concrete19.10, 451frammentisonori.

Free admittance.

sounDesign sketches sounds at the IV Italian Information Architecture Summit

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Andrew on stage

Andrew Hinton on the stage of IV IA Summit, Pisa, Italy. Photo by Andrea Resmini.

The IA Summit is one of the most important italian events dedicated to the themes of Information Architecture, User Experience and Information Design. The 4th edition of the summit took place in Pisa on 7-8th May 2010 and was organized by Dario Betti, Andrea Resmini, Alberto Mucignat and Luca Rosati. Among the speakers of this year we can remember professionals and researchers from many fields of the IA, like: Andrew Hinton, Jason Hobbs and Federico Fasce.

I and Sara were invited to present Sketching in Audio Design, a paper describing some techniques and methodologies of sound & audio design we are experimenting with Lorelei in a project for the english studio Architects of Air. It was very interesting, because we compared our sound-oriented approach with the traditional way of thinking of user experience designers and information architects, more used to deal with textual information than audio samples. We had a lot of fun and we also won the prize for the best presentation of the summit. We want to thank all the people who appreciated and voted this work. Below there are the slides of our presentation, the video is coming, so stay tuned on this post.

An Interview with Andrew Spitz – Social Sound Design

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If you ask yourself what new recorder to buy or if you are the only sound designer in the world being offered to work for free, now you know you’ve got to check out Social Sound Design, the new project of the sound designer – and of course the author of one of the best and most well-known blog {sound+design} – Andrew Spitz.

Andrew Spitz

Yes, he’s the guy of Tweet A Sound and The Telephone Game. We looked for him to get a bit deeper on the birth and evolution of Social Sound Design, and – why not – to investigate his point of view on our favorite subject, sound design.

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Nodar Artist Residency Program 2011

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This year Nodar Residency Program is open to art projects centred in the human voice, which work with issues such as the origin, meaning and relationship with the sacred (reconnected to its ancestral meaning of mystery and symbol), thevoice as a pivotal element of rituals, customs and superstitions, able to enchant the listener and bring deep changes to the reality, to the communities and territory, the voice as the protagonist of memories, myths, archetypes, folk wisdom handed down through the centuries, or even the voice of everyday, tool for work and life.

Artistic Disciplines admitted to the selection:

Sound Poetry; Vocal Performance; Sound Art; Phonography; Acoustic, Electroacoustic or Electronic Composition / Improvisation; Radio Art; Video Performance.

The selection is open from 1st of May to the 30th of September. More info here.