CDM contributor, mic flag fabricator, beat bicyclist, and sound artist extraordinaire Michael Una has been up to more sonic magic-making in Chicago. He showed two recent creations at MGFest 2008 — that’s MG as in “Motion Graphics”, not, sadly, the car, though I think sound art would also go deliciously with MG automobiles.

On display in Chi-town: giant pods to fill rooms with sound, and a man in a sound-induced, hypnotic blizzard of milk. (Yes, they have winter in northern Illinois.)

Snowy Day at MGFest 2008 from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Octophonopod at MGFest 2008 from Michael Una on Vimeo.

Behind-the-scenes commentary is available on Mike’s site, not to be confused with the domain-squatting personals site that you get if you leave out the hyphen. (Will, someday, an entire romantic community be devoted to Una Love? I wouldn’t rule it out.)

One lesson learned: milk can be incompatible with electronics.

Looks can be a powerful agent for changing how we think about sound. Pairing liquid, organic speakers with equally fluid and dynamic visualizations, the launch of Muon last month in Italy made this principle readily apparent. I’m all about lo-fi, cheap gear here on CDM, but if you absolutely must launch luxurious aluminum speakers with spectacular animated visuals at a posh party in an Italian salon, I sure won’t complain. Pass the prosecco, please?

Muon Project Page, documentation videos at chrisoshea.org
See coverage at ze | d | esign, toxi’s project blog, MoCo Loco, elsewhere. (Yeah, CDM’s motto is: cover things last. Was a bit busy with Maker Faire!)
Created by Moving Brands

Details on the installation and how it was done:

While on the subject of Gallo Speakers, here’s about as far as you can get from the baby-sized A’Diva satellites: speakers that tower 78″ tall, pack some 12 4″ aluminum woofers each, and deliver nearly omni-directional sound. Micro speakers (5″ each), yes, but in a slender but tall enclosure.

The Reference 5LS speakers, due third quarter 2007 but shown recently at CES in prototype form, alternate mid-range spheres with tweeter cylinders vertically. The idea is to deal with phase and dispersion issues in a nearly (though not quite) omni-directional speaker. Gallo also showed off a reference amp that would couple with the speakers (the Reference SA).

Anthony Gallo Speakers

Click through for some drool-inducing photos. Now I need to make up a reason to build a sound art installation with these units. (I have until later 2007, after all.)

For many of us, our studio and our home are one and the same. The speakers we use to monitor mixes are the ones we use for rehearsals, improvisations, and casual listening. I first got interested in the Anthony Gallo A’Diva series speakers partly because I’ve long admired Gallo’s home speaker products, but also because the Gallos seemed to be comfortable walking this home/studio line.

Normally, engineers steer far clear of home audio equipment when it comes to monitoring. But producer Neal Pogue has been using the A’Diva speakers for just that, including five songs on the new Stevie Wonder album, and projects for Nelly Furtado, Indie Ari, Earth Wind and Fire, and Outkast. (See studioexpresso profile, or a 2004 interview in Electronic Musician for more about Pogue’s production background.) That’s pretty unusual for speakers aimed at the home market.

Having lived with a 2.1 set of the A’Diva Ti satellites for a while, I’m impressed, as well. The sound is uncolored and clear, with really gorgeous high-frequency definition. It makes these speakers sound both much larger than they are (you can fit them in your hand), and much more expensive. (They run just over US$200 a speaker, but you could easily fool someone into thinking they went for more.) That could make these ideal for complementing your existing set of monitors. I got to talk to Anthony Gallo, the speaker’s creator, about his background and, most importantly, why the speakers are spherical in the first place.

If you frequent experimental music concerts and performance art events, you might have seen them: mysterious, spherical and polyhedronalish speaker arrays, looking a bit like an unmanned space probe or an alien soccer ball.

Now you can have one of your very own: Electrotap has announced they’re shipping the Hemisphere speaker array. And forget the odd looks of other speakers for a second: this sounds downright practical. It weighs just 17 lbs., but contains six Polk Audio db525 fullrange drivers. It sits on a surface. Sound fills the space, but it actually comes from the location where you’re playing. And at US$599, many of you can afford it.

Most importantly, with the flat base on the new model, you can finally discourage alien beings attending your gigs from trying to play interdimensional space hockey with it. I get kicked out of more clubs that way . . .

(Don’t miss the history of the device assembled there, with shots like the 1997 model shown below — bless those Princeton sound wizards!)

Edirol, the audio/video gear folks that are part of Roland Group, have a trio of announcements about new hardware. Let’s deal with them all at once, because Roland model numbers make my head hurt:

New MIDI: Yes, new MIDI interface hardware. (MIDI will never die, folks.) What’s groovy about them? The US$89 UM-3EX has a built-in USB hub — chain them and/or rack mount them(!) and you’ve got some serious multi-port MIDI. Sure, some will be building a monster studio with this using lots of vintage keyboards . . . I’ll be building some weird interactive setup with sensors. Don’t mind me, though; I’m insane.

Updated Audio: Edirol’s UA-1EX is simple, but it’s got a lot going for it: super-small, cheap (US$99), and now 24-bit / 96 kHz and ASIO-compliant.

Portable USB Speakers: Here’s the cool announcement — USB-powered, portable speakers. The MA-1EXare perfect for portability: there’s even a cable wrap for wrapping up the USB cord, and you’ll never need to plug in power. No pricing yet.

So, will you be adding those portable speakers to your bag? Key question is how they sound. Check the specs: they deliver a whopping 0.75 Watts of power! (Hint: you’re going to want the bass enhancement, because that’s basically nothing.) Then again, they may be tiny, and they’ve got digital outputs in case you want to . . . uh . . . well, I don’t really know why they have those. Anyway, could be nifty in a pinch; I’ll let you know once they’re out. And I’ll certainly be grabbing that new MIDI interface.

More hardware coming: Unless no one told Edirol the huge NAMM show is still a couple of weeks away, I think you can expect bigger announcements later on this month. Stay tuned, MIDIskateers!

Artist Abinadi Meza has created a remixed composition of the “lighthearted” sounds of the movie Jaws (think drunken sailor sounds and off-key clarinet blasts), into a piece that wlll only be played underwater. To hear the output of the submerged speakers, you have to strip to your skivvies and float in the ocean. Title: Soft Jaws. Details of the project plus an MP3 for landlubbers are available from PS122 Gallery’s Artwurl zine.

Speaking of this, have any of you experimented with underwater speaker placement? (or simulating it digitally?)

How do you get a group of people in Milan to lounge atop, cuddle with, and hump a bunch of soft cone-shaped blobs?
Easy: feed a channel of synthetically-generated music to each blob so,
as they rock and move, soothing interactive music fills the air. The
result, says visitors, ranges from "very comfortable" to "very erotic."
But everyone from kids to adults looks like they're having a laugh riot
– the sign of a very successful installation. The Sonic Garden has video and photos, though not many construction details. (via Ektopia)

Here in the blogosphere, we only care about up-to-the-minute technology, right?

On the contrary. We still find these talking balloons pretty damn cool. (via a huge post on the MIT Media Lab from Make:blog — go ahead, waste the rest of the afternoon)

State-of-the-art 1995 technology, so get cracking: a piezo sensor
mounted to the front face of the balloon lets the ballon's aluminized
mylar body act as both microphone and speaker. In layman's terms: the
balloons can talk to each other. (Don't say "I invented talking
baloons" and expect to get far in academia, though. The proper term, as
in creator Joseph Paradiso's article for the IBM Systems Journal –
fine bathroom reading, by the way — is "The Interactive Balloon;
Sensing, Actuation and Behavior in a Common Object.")

Yes, that's right, they don't talk to each other, they actuate each
other. Now go, read the paper, and build yourself some baloon speakers
for your next gig.

Want speakers that are even more compact? Why not just build
them when you need them? NYC Japanese importer Compact-Impact has US$45
collapsible build-on-demand speakers
that measure just 3" cube and weigh only 225g, thanks to popypropylene
and, you know, cardboard. They're passive, 2 watts (that's right, two) so don't expect much sound. But maybe you should consider making miniature mixes just for them?