Visualization often wins out over sonification when it comes to making data clear. But sound has one key advantage: it can make time and scale apparent, by tapping directly into our perception of forward time.

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto, born well into the Nuclear Age in 1959, uses that property to chilling effect. The sounds in “1945-1998″ are made still more unsettling in their rendering as tranquil, musical sounds rather than explosions. Quietly, World War III is waged not in wartime, but in the 2053 nuclear explosions that erupt mainly in thermonuclear tests (led, ironically, by the United States). This isn’t just political noise, either; the scale of thermonuclear tests has made virtually everyone reading this site a child of the fallout of the testing age, quite literally. And this falls on the anniversary of the deadly blasts detonated by the US to close World War II.

The 2003 work was dedicated as a kind of universal message, thanks to its rendering in sound:

This piece of work is a bird’s eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world

Sound, after all, can convey real messages, not only about our past and tragedy, but about our future.

Hosted by the people working to end nuclear testing worldwide
Via our friend David Auerbach at Digitalfix.

It’s easy – and partly appropriate – to appreciate the bleeps and blips of homemade and bent circuits as noise-making insanity. But as Peter Edwards (casperelectronics) and E-Squared walked us through their creations at the April installment of Handmade Music, it was clear that compositional exploration was at the heart of the work. Edwards talked about trying to be freer with sound and get away from techno, using handmade creations that helped him shake musical habits. E-Squared described studying the intricacies of classic Roland drum machine and synth circuits, then re-imagining them in fantastic new creations that allowed them to turn their table of gear into an interconnected sound-making machine.

Etsy’s Eric Beug and Make’s Collin Cunningham – makers themselves, both – captured the results in video. See also the MAKE: blog post:

Scenes from the Last Handmade Music

But Handmade Music doesn’t have to be limited to just Brooklyn. We’ve gotten a number of inquiries about creating these events elsewhere, and I have some ideas for how CDM can help you organize and promote such events. To start the ball rolling, let us know if you’re interested in organizing (not just attending) such an event. No commitment, but it’ll help us put together a group of people. Fill out the embedded Google Docs form below or head directly to the form:

Handmade Music Around the World

Submission form:

[Direct poll link, in case the embed isn't working]

Takuro Maizuta Lippit, aka dj sniff, writes in thanks for the international outpouring of support for the STEIM music and art research center in Amsterdam, which faces potentially losing government funding. Some readers raised some questions about why STEIM is asking for support, and what the institution’s significance is — a reasonable question — and Taku provides some background here:

What makes STEIM an unique place is that it emphasizes on supporting independent artists with experimental and adventurous ideas in the live electronic art world. These artists tend to be young up-and-coming or outsiders to specific genres and established scenes. The projects may seem like "pet projects" to other people, but often the artists themselves believe these experiments will have significant merit to the future of artistic expression. History has showed us that often innovation comes from the outside rather than the inside.

Although the support for these artists is quite minimal (we only offer space and advise), STEIM is able to continue this because of structural funding from the government. If not, we would have to write grant proposals for larger projects that appeal to specific funders. This will change the whole character of STEIM and go against the basic philosophy of what it was founded upon.

I came to STEIM as a DJ/Turntablist who wanted to play improvised music using tools that i built with Max/MSP and physical computing. STEIM opened their doors to me and provided a safe ground where i can freely experiment and develop my methods and aesthetics. Even though there are not many DJ and turntablists that come to STEIM, I truly feel like I am part of a community of artists that believe technology and new tools, however much of a pain in the ass they maybe, do create new artistic expression.

We are very grateful to the domestic and international support that are being voiced. We are planning special events in the following weeks to show our stand and hope pull through this situation.

I have to say, I was having coffee with CDM contributor Mike Una yesterday and trying to think of other research centers for music and art around the world, and STEIM is on a very, very short list. We’ll keep in touch with them as the situation evolves. For what it’s worth, I agree that the Dutch government isn’t under any kind of obligation to support STEIM, but then, that’s not the point: it’d be a real disappointment if they didn’t continue their unique and brave support of a one-of-a-kind resource.

Previously:

Help Save STEIM, Dutch Music Research Center; Monday Deadline

Some time ago I had chatted about building an informal international network of music sites so you can easily find more content in your native languages (which even for many readers here is not English). We’ve got a lot of work we’re doing on what we call CDM3, so I’ll try to make it happen as part of that, hopefully in the next couple of months.

There’s a horrible misconception that music technology is the domain of white guys who speak either English or German. (Erm, yes, I don’t do much to counter that — shout out, my nerdy, pale guy friends.)

But think again. One of the best music production sites on the Web in any language is the Spanish-language Hispasonic (and we have a strong readership in Spanish-speaking countries even here on CDM). Clearly, music technology and the Web itself are growing in popularity all over the planet, as diverse communities grow and start talking about this stuff in their native tongues. Hispasonic was already one of the most mature, and they’ve just gotten a terrific redesign (Hispasonic 2.0). In fact, it’s not the absence of these communities — it’s the fact that the rest of us don’t pay enough attention.

Hispasonic is happy to let you share in their success. To celebrate the 2.0 design, they’re giving away a special version of the lovely Nebula Reverb (VST – Windows), complete with eleven presets designed by Jorge Ruiz (a total of 450 MB of presets, downloadable separately).

Nebula HS (Hispasonic Edition) Reverb, Tutorials, Presets

Updated: Just to demonstrate how multinational this effort is, noou notes in comments:

Hey! You forgot to mention that Acusticaudio (the creators of the Nebula plugin) are from Italy! BTW once you learn Spanish the road to Italian is much easier…

Italy is another country that has produced many developers, designers, artists, and musicians who are expressive with technology. (Take that sentence, apply it to multiple centuries, and it’s an understatement for many nations of the world. Except the US; we haven’t been around very long.)

So go have a look. Brush up your Spanish, and check out the tutorial on the plug-in. (The download page is helpfully translated to English.) Subscribe to the RSS feed, and see if some of that high school Spanish starts flooding back. (It’s like riding a bicycle, really.) Just be sure to enjoy it fast, before Elton John demolishes the Internet.