New England Forum for Acoustic Ecology

The first Forum of the New England Forum for Acoustic Ecology will be a salon featuring three speakers on sonic topics. Attendance is free.

The Forum will begin at 4PM on Sunday January 29, 2012; and be held at Mobius
55 Norfolk Street, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Presentations by:

Ed Osborn – Albedo Prospect

Matthew Azevedo – How quiet is quiet enough? Background sounds in performance spaces

Sophia Roosth – Screaming Yeast: Sonocytology, Cytoplasmic Milieus, and Cellular Subjectivities

Acoustic ecology is a field of inquiry into the interrelationships between living beings and our environment, as mediated through sound.

The New England Forum for Acoustic Ecology intends to provide a forum in which to engage on issues of sound and sonic environments from a multiplicity of perspectives and approaches. This forum, broadly conceived, will take the form of concerts, salons, discussions, place-centered actions, and other events throughout the New England area.

NEFAE was founded as a chapter of the American Society of Acoustic Ecology (ASAE). For more information about ASAE visit http://acousticecology.us. We welcome composers, artists, researchers, performers, and others interested in acoustic ecology to join in.

Presenter bios and abstracts:

Ed Osborn’s sound art pieces take many forms including installation, sculpture, radio, video, performance, and public projects. His works combine a visceral sense of space, aurality, and motion with a precise economy of materials. Ranging from rumbling fans and sounding train sets to squirming music boxes and delicate feedback networks, Osborn’s kinetic and audible pieces function as resonating systems that are by turns playful and oblique, engaging and enigmatic. Osborn has performed, exhibited, and lectured, and held residencies throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and South America. The recipient of many awards including a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Stipendium and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and is on the faculty of the Visual Art Department at Brown University.

Abstract:
Osborn’s Albedo Prospect is a set of media works that explore the polar imaginary using video, still images, audio, sculptural elements and text. Source material for the project was gathered in the Svalbard archipelago in October, 2011, on the sea and in remote locations around the islands.

Matthew Azevedo is Consultant in Architectural Acoustics and Mechanical Systems for Acentech. Matt brings an extensive range of teaching and recording talents plus experience as an audio engineer, mastering engineer and musician to his role of acoustician. He has a wide variety of interests ranging from recording facilities, classroom acoustics, and residential facilities to corporate environments. His consulting projects focus on architectural acoustics, sound isolation, and acoustical measurement. He received a Master of Science in Architectural Sciences with a concentration in Architectural Acoustics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Bachelor of Music in Sound Recording Technology from the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He has taught courses in acoustics, audio production, and circuit design at Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and Harvard Extension School. Mr. Azevedo is an active composer and musician in the Boston area.

Abstract:
A good listening environment should be quiet, but how quiet does it need to be? Intrusive noise is not just a distraction, it also affects a listener’s perceptions of emotion, space, and timbre. Unfortunately, construction costs increase exponentially with decreasing noise levels. Where is the right place to draw the line between quiet and cost? This talk will examine the common metrics for background noise, describe the architectural techniques and challenges of reducing background noise, and present ongoing research into the effects of background noise in performance spaces.

Sophia Roosth is Assistant Professor in the History of Science at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first century life sciences. Her first book manuscript, based on four years of ethnographic fieldwork, examines how the life sciences are changing at a moment when researchers build new biological systems in order to investigate how biology works. In this work, Roosth asks what happens to “life” as a conceptual category when experimentation and fabrication converge. To answer this question, she tracks groups as diverse as synthetic biologists (bioengineers who build standardized genetic components), amateur biohackers who promote biological research in community labs, and molecular gastronomers (those who apply biochemical principles and techniques to cooking), among others. She draws upon anthropological accounts of craft and artisanship to analyze this recent turn to biological manufacture. This research piqued her interest in how non-visual senses (e.g., hearing, taste, and touch) figure in scientific research and knowledge production. For example, Roosth has written about sonocytologists who record cellular vibrations, exploring how listening to cells impacts how researchers understand biological processes. Roosth joined the Department of the History of Science in 2011. She previously worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University (2010-2011). She received her doctorate in science studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2010.

Abstract:
What do cells sound like? Sonocytology is a technique in nanotechnology research developed by James Gimzewski at UCLA. Using a scanning probe microscope to record the vibrations of cell walls, researchers amplify those vibrations so that humans can hear them. Yeast cells vibrate approximately one thousand times per second, and most cells vibrate within the frequency — though not amplitude — of human hearing. In this talk, I address how cellular vibrations are converted into sounds that scientists can interpret as conveying meaningful information regarding the dynamism of cellular interiors. I ask what conditions enable scientists to describe cells as actors capable of “speaking” or “screaming,” and suggest that listening to cellular sounds could change how scientists think about cells — as subjects that are dynamic, environmentally situated, and experiential.