An article in The Guardian last weekend discussed the Convention in Trade and Endangered Species (Cites) meeting in Bangkok. It mentioned a few species that had already succumbed to extinction, which included the New Zealand laughing owl. Unfortunately a trawl around the net informed me that the last sighting was in the early 20th century, […]
Today Southampton Solent University hosted a conference about Noise in Entertainment and Music. It was a nice mix of attendees with acoustic consultants, musicians, sound engineers and environmental health officers. The different perspectives allowed everyone to gain more of an insight into noise management for gigs. I hadn’t known until today that: The Noise Council […]
Yesterday I visited the Barbican for their Brain Waves Weekender, a range of exhibitions fusing art with neuroscience. Along with a kid-friendly dissection of a jelly brain and an invitation to knit a neuron, the event featured two sound-related demonstrations. The first was Music of the Mind – a performance by Finn Peters, Prof Mark […]
Last week I went to see the documentary Chasing Ice at Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios. It is an excellent film that follows the attempts of James Balog and his team to photograph receding glaciers in Alaska, Greenland and other parts of the Northern hemisphere. At one stage during the process Balog poignantly suggested that his photographs […]
Since many sound enthusiasts aren’t too keen on spending a few thousand pounds on an SLM, I thought I’d take the opportunity to review two iPhone apps currently available that serve the same purpose: The first is Faber Acoustical SoundMeter – £13.99, and the second is Studio Six Digital AudioTools – £6.99. Both have Fast, […]
Having heard this recording of a beluga whale mimicking human speech, it only made it all the more saddening to read this article about the Ukrainian navy training “killer dolphins” with pistons fixed to their heads. Far from being the only convincing evidence that cetaceans are intelligent, it is still extraordinary to hear them attempting […]
I was so excited by the topic of my last post that I didn’t want to crowd it with anything else, but I have a plethora of other sound-related goodies to talk about. It’s nice to hear that the concept of soundscape is becoming more prevalent in discussions of/exhibitions about design, such as the Be […]
