Residency: Micro-Listening
DAVID DUNN, composer
DAVID DUNN, author of Why Do Whales and Children Sing? will collaborate with iSAW on a series of sound – based tools to illustrate concepts of science in the classroom. He will conduct a microphone building workshop titled Micro Listening for artists, musicians, biologists and sound enthusiasts, as well as lecture and discuss ideas regarding symbiotic collaborations between artists and scientists. David Dunn is President of Art and Science Laboratory in Santa Fe, NM. He has been praised enthusiastically for his recordings, live compositions, and intelligent commentary, and is the recipient of the 2007 Henry Cowell Music Award.
This residency is made possible through partnerships with Carnival Center for the Performing Arts, the South Beach Music Institute, Miami Science Museum, and Books & Books in Coral Gables. iSAW is funded by the Department of Cultural Affairs of Miami-Dade County and the Division of Cultural Affairs of the State of Florida
October 1-15, 2007
iSAW – resident artist David Dunn (iAR 10-07)
1. lecture: Listening at the Edges
2. workshop: Micro Listening Project
3. lecture / performance / book-signing: Why do Whales and Children Sing?
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10/06/07
Miami Science Museum Auditorium
Listening at the Edges: The Necessity for Double Description
as part of the Understanding Sound lecture series
in partnership with Carnival Center for the Performing Arts
For over three decades there has been an ongoing discourse that has addressed the role that the sonic arts can play in increasing our collective awareness to environmental issues through sensitizing us to the soundscape. A variety of approaches and strategies have used experimental music practices and audio recording technologies to document, compose preserve, study, manipulate, intensify, and otherwise attempt to bring issues of the natural environment into foreground awareness through sound. This lecture demonstrates one approach to bringing art practice and scientific knowledge together towards applied environmental problem solving. It illustrates one of the many ways that the sonic arts can move beyond documentary and sensory heightening strategies alone towards participation in both scientific research and subsequent interventions to growing environmental dilemmas.
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10/06/07 & 10/07/07
South Beach Music Institute
Micro Listening Workshop
DAVID DUNN, composer
The Micro Listening Project is an interdisciplinary art and science strategy for increasing the monitoring of our environment through sound. It hopes to provide new inexpensive technologies that can facilitate an increase in our collective environmental sensitivity and discovery of unknown natural and human made phenomena, providing novel tools for sound artist, and contributing towards practical environmental problem solving.
The project focuses upon the design of inexpensive but highly effective audio transducer systems for bioacoustic and sound art monitoring of otherwise hidden aspects of our auditory environment that are not audible through the use of conventional microphones. In addition to these technological advancements for listening, the project seeks to document a wide diversity of sound worlds for both demonstration of the transducers and general aesthetic revelation of our environment. Precise instruments on how to use and construct these devices will be part of this workshop. The devices are designed to allow as wide a distribution of their use as possible by both amateurs and professionals
early hydrophone by david dunn
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06/13/07
Books & Books, Coral Gables
Why do Children and Whales Sing?
Lecture / Performance / Book Signing
For over 30 years, david dunn has been recording the natural world as a sound artist, composer, and bio-acoustician. this has led him to explore a wide range of diverse phenomena including many that are only accessible through the use of unique technologies that he has developed. he will present and talk about a full range of his recent work including underwater hydrophone recordings, vibration sensor recordings from the interior of trees and frequency expanded ultrasonic soundscapes that reveal the mysterious world of communication beyond our normal hearing. the talk will range from the natural history and ecological significance of the sounds to personal anecdotes about the experience of making the recordings.
about the book:
95 pages + cd
Published by Earth/ea
I have been listening to and thinking about soundscapes for many years and yet this book is full of revelations to me. each recorded segment is full of vitality, full of “presence.” But it is david’s commentary which transform it from a purely aural pleasure into something multi-dimensional, encouraging me to reintegrate myself into his “complex chain of connection,” an invaluable gift. There is a welcome intellectual clarity, even rigor here, and a generosity of heart towards the listener/reader which welcomes one into listening, into reflecting. Connection becomes possible.
– Annea Lockwood