Op-amps – The work horse of analog electronics

With this workshop we plan to approach the world of analog signals by teaching everything about operational amplifiers (Op-amps) the work horse in electronic circuit design. The Op-amp is the basic electronics building block, it can make almost everything you’ll need to transform/condition any analog signal (mixing, buffering, inverting, amplifying, comparing) or be used to create oscillators, filters and many other building blocks of analog synthesizers.

Intended for electronic enthusiasts, musicians and artists that already burn their fingers with diy electronics (everything from circuit bending to arduino) and wants to go deeper in the subject consolidating their electronics knowledge in a hands-on-it workshop environment where theory and practice goes hand in hand.

Program: Basic notions of voltage, current and resistance | Understanding audio and voltage signals | Electronic symbols lexicon | Interpreting and drawing schematics | Simple attenuator exercise | Expression Pedals | The Operational Amplifier | Inverting op-amp | Simple mixer exercise | Simple splitter exercise | Simple amplifier exercise | Non-inverting op-amp | Led signal monitoring

The digital universe keeps expanding, from the desk and the laptop to our mobile screens and beyond. Wired objects, buildings and city streets are part of our daily landscape, a chaotic and noisy electronic environment where fiber optics and radio waves intersect and connect everything to everything else.

While we speak of clouds and are invisibly linked to them, a vast and heavy infrastructure is needed to support the internet: from transoceanic submarine cables to large data centers on the edge of town, from servers and robots to call center and factory workers. Global capitalism makes noise. When so many of the world’s decision processes are hidden from view, or recombined and filtered through the 24 hour news cycle, what is the role of sound in understanding contemporary politics?

How can we decipher, reveal, or keep the world’s secrets by listening to its digital communication system?

Computers talk to each other all the time, in code and in voltage, almost telepathically and at the speed of light. This is a conversation that excludes those of us unable to read between the lines or who are deaf to this soft music. To live in the world today is to be surrounded by a constant humming, the body electric, the senses extended and transformed by all that we own, all that we have built. We live inside the machines.

What does it sound like?

Submissions for this Open Call have been divided into four categories, taken from Benjamin Bratton’s notion of The Stack:

CLOUD – traces of a heavy infrastructure behind the metaphor

NETWORK – flows, wires, signals, and transmissions

INTERFACE – the tangible in-between: tools, materials, spaces

USER – the voices, the mind, the flesh

PARTICIPANTS

_blank // Barcelona, Spain

Aline Dufat // London, United Kingdom

ARTxFM // Louisville, Kentucky USA

Carlo Patrão // Portugal

Elisabetta Senesi // Florence, Italy

Estelle Rosenfeld // Ramsgate, United Kingdom

Fernando Fadigas // Lisboa, Portugal

Jan Van Den Dobbelsteenr // Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Jeff Kolar // Chicago, USA

Jenni Stammeier // Helsinki, Finland

Joanne Lam // Toronto, Canada

João Bento // Lisboa, Portugal

John Barber // Vancouver, USA

K. Novotny // Łódź, Poland

Kevin Logan // United Kingdom

Kristiana Clemens // Kingston – Canada

Luke Eldridge // Market Harborough, United Kingdom

Marcus Neves // Vila Velha, Espírito Santo, Brasil

Mark Hardy // Chicago, IL, USA

Matt Warren // Hobart, Australia

Miguel Lucas Mendes // Lisboa, Portugal

Osvaldo Cibils // Trento, Italia

Peter Lenaerts // Brussels, Belgium – Sydney, Australia

Random Order // San Francisco, California – London, United Kingdom

Salomé Coelho // Paris, France

Sierra Mitchell // Chicago, Illinois, USA

Simon Serc / Pharmafabrik // Slovenia

Tom White // London, United Kingdom

Virginie @ OSX // @ OSX, Portugal

WORKS

:: A November History . 14:14 . _blank // Barcelona, Spain
A November History is a piece created from my Firefox history from November 1 to November 21 2013. The history file was exported as text and then opened as sound, so what you hear is not an arbitrary data sonification, but the fourteen pages of the original text file.

:: String . 20:00 . Aline Dufat // London, United Kingdom
String is a sonic translation of these words that I type with the keyboard I am currently using.
In computer science, a string is any finite sequence of characters such as letters and punctuation marks.
Computers function as one of our primary tools for communication. We use them constantly: at work, at home, to work, to communicate with others, to entertain ourselves. They have become so much a part of our everyday lives that we take them for granted. They have become an extension of ourselves. They create a hybrid space between our physical and digital world.
“We live inside machines”
By using a coil microphone, String captures the electronic signal of each letter from a French keyboard on a Macbook Pro. The keyboard is made from active components that emit electronic signals. Each letter sounds differently because of its position on the keyboard.
String is a 00:20:00 composition that attempts to transform the characters of our current alphabet into an hybrid audible language – bringing to the foreground the ‘invisible’ sound of this common tool that connects us to the world.

:: L/o/u/i/s/v/i/l/l/e S/o/u/n/d/s . 19:51 .ARTxFM // Louisville, Kentucky USA
A sampling from the ambient environment in Louisville, Kentucky as translated into digitial audio, this piece, created specifically for online listening, provides an audio journey into the daily life of this vibrant American city.

:: Misophonia: The Bitter Sound of Food . 30:00 .Carlo Patrão // Portugal
This radio piece portrays the struggles of a Philophonic with Misophonia. Sourced from hundreds of different sound clips found over the Internet, this radio piece dives into the world of Misophonia, chewing on the concepts of annoying sounds and easy listening.

:: Scrolling Chaos . 15:00 . Elisabetta Senesi // Florence, Italy
The audio piece is a collage of binaural sound recordings taken from the daily web I have lived in several part of Europe where multi layered streaming radio voices, network interferences, even harmonies and pleasant tunes merged together in a cross-country loop.

:: What the Birds are Saying . 07:23 . Estelle Rosenfeld // Ramsgate, United Kingdom
What the Birds are Saying’ is re-creating this assault on the brain constituted by a twitter timeline. A lot of tweets are scheduled with programmes like HootSuite or TweetDeck and are just a script for computer talking to each other.
We notice this constant overflow of information making it very difficult to focus on any in particular and the addictive need to keep on top of it and what is happening where, when and with whom. Yet we get some glimpses here and there of something beautiful or interesting.

:: SE30vsMax . 03:25 . Fernando Fadigas // Lisboa, Portugal
SE30vsMAX é um diálogo entre computadores de diferentes gerações. Uma peça sonora realizada em 2008 a partir do clássico SE30 da Apple Macintosh processado através do software Max/Msp.

:: Data Meltdown . 06:51 . Jan Van Den Dobbelsteenr // Eindhoven, The Netherlands
This is the total data meltdown.

:: GSM Buzz . 14:59 . Jeff Kolar // Chicago, USA
GSM BUZZ is an audible investigation of electromagnetic interference patterns between mobile phones and computer speakers.
GSM BUZZ captures bursts of electromagnetic radiation when mobile devices connect to cellular towers. The buzzy bursts are a result of overcrowded cellular networks transmitting data in rapid succession, one after the other, every 0.004615 seconds.
GSM BUZZ explores these synchronized interference patterns as source material. Each track uses a different generation of mobile wireless Internet to manipulate the repeated humming signals.

:: First thing in the morning . 10:18 . Jenni Stammeier // Helsinki, Finland
Try to start your day with stillness. Prevent stress and anxiety. There are thousands of possibilities to meditate online. Just do it.

:: I Can’t Hear You . 00:50 . Joanne Lam // Toronto, Canada
Synopsis: Attempts to communicate over the internet are not always easy. A simple voice conversation can be eroded down to noise, rendering speech into glitch, with as little as one bad internet connection. The result is a dialogue of meaningless sounds rather than human words – a complete failure to communicate.

:: Inside the Machine . 17:17 . João Bento // Lisboa, Portugal
Plug in the internet cabel.
Switch on computer. Surf in the internet. Listen the sound of the machine.
Capturing everything with a contact microphone.
Fuck the machine .
Bye
Switch Off

:: Internet Soundscape . 20:00 . John Barber // Vancouver, USA
Imagines sounds of the Internet. Provides an aural narrative of electronic communications facilitated by the technology and machinery of the Internet, a worldwide network of networked computers.

:: Packets . 07:43 .K. Novotny // Łódź, Poland
“Packets” is an exploration of the hidden world of hyper-connectivity. The sounds that make up the piece are built entirely from the signals invisibly transmitted through the aether every day.
Specifically, the sounds are all based on a capture of WiFi network traffic from in and around the artist’s location. This raw packet data was then translated into audible sound, then processed into the composition you are hearing.

:: Error FourForty . 04:40 . Kevin Logan // United Kingdom
Error codes are enumerated messages that correspond to faults in a specific software application, they are typically cryptic and mean very little to the average end user.

:: Internet Freedom in the age of Construction . 13:55 . Kristiana Clemens // Kingston – Canada
A noisy perambulation leads to a meditation on the meaning of freedom within 21st-century consumer culture. Mix equal parts soundwalk, slam poetry, synthesizers, synesthesia; shake in some urban decay and add a healthy dollop of digital information overload. Stir and serve; rewind and repeat.

:: Attention Span . 11:19 . Luke Eldridge // Market Harborough, United Kingdom
The Internet is conversation. Computers talk zeroes and ones, corporations insist that if we bought this then we might be interested in that, celebrities share revealing hotel room photographs and ordinary citizens discuss last night’s TV. It’s a wall of sound.
But every so often something breaks through the wall and captures our collective attention. Something big. A typhoon: 3,500 dead, 1,000 missing, 500,000 homeless, lives shattered. We post, we share, we favourite, we like.
We are alarmed and focus our attention on the situation.
We sympathise with the victims and emphatically demand a resolution.
We begin to see the scale of the problem and the sacrifice required by all of us to solve it.
We gradually lose interest as the next alarming situation displaces this one.
And then we return to our own desires.
‘Attention Span’ relays actual tweets from 11th November 2013 in the aftermath of two competing global news stories.

:: Time, job, and network . 08:18 . Marcus Neves // Vila Velha, Espírito Santo, Brasil
This is unedited soundscape of 8 minutes of job in my office. Sounds of ambient, keyboard, interference captured by the recorder, increase noise of computer processor, together with music and internet call. Overlapping tasks and sound.

:: Mandala 2 . 09:09 . Mark Hardy // Chicago, IL, USA
Layered lo-fi recording of computer servers in an office with ambient recording of sparse traffic outside the office.

:: Systematic Dissemination of Viruses . 12:46 . Matt Warren // Hobart, Australia
The web contains data good and bad. We use it for good and bad. It’s up to the individual to define those two extremes. I sometime see parallels in a computer virus and a physical, human one or a psychological one. Each one can render it’s host incapacitated.

:: 101011 . 13:08 . Miguel Lucas Mendes // Lisboa, Portugal
This is a piece made by converting Mozilla Firefox into a raw data file. Previously recorded sounds were then added using a sequencer in random mode, from sources like the pod, computer, tv, iphone, cd players, etc. The result is then mixed with composed beats.
Tones of #101011
A tone is produced by adding gray to any pure hue. In this case, #101011 is the less saturated color, while #010120 is the most saturated one.
taken from: http://www.colorhexa.com/101011

:: soundart15november2013 . 07:42 . Osvaldo Cibils // Trento, Italia
soundart15november2013. single, soundart for carrito of Trento. RolloSONIC software and osvaldo cibils. soundart 15 november 2013.

:: Arpa no more . 06:40 . Peter Lenaerts // Brussels, Belgium – Sydney, Australia
no words. just listen.

:: Flowing Through the San . 07:06 . Random Order // San Francisco, California – London, United Kingdom
As one of the primary infrastructures in Northern California, the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, is seen as a pathway for the coming and going of information and data. We navigate digital spaces daily and it affects how we relate to physical spaces, which in turn invites questions on definition of reality itself. For our new piece The San we decided to test these questions through sound.
Field recording capturing soft and continuous hum of the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge is the starting point for our composition. The field recording is subsequently thrown into imperceptible mass of cyberspace and played back numerous times for the digital to reveal itself in a time-lapse conversation. This transatlantic Skype call and response choir builds up layers of a core audible substance. The San’s actual hum resonates with its own cables in the ethereal channel of cyber-reality.

:: Ceci n’est pas le son de l’internet . 05:11 . Salomé Coelho // Paris, France
This is an exercice to answer the question “What does the internet sound like?”. “Can i answer bladldlabdbda?” Said Warhol in a TV interview. Now, his answer is also part of this answer to the question of sound of internet – at least for me, at least this evening, at least moments ago, at least in this place.
It could be a love story with the internet, within the internet or with all the things that are outside of it like the noisy chair where I am sited down; the irritating sound of an old computer and a too slow internet conection.
The sound of the internet is also all the silences and everything that we can’t hear when the conection is overload; when what we’re listening and watching is interrupted by the frantic overlapping open tabs. Isn’t precisely in in this range – interruptions, stuttering, slowdown – that we remember that the internet exists?

:: The conversation . 11:23 . Sierra Mitchell // Chicago, Illinois, USA
An audio record of two people who haven’t seen or spoken to each other in over 13 years; trying to connect. Typing a conversation. Within this is a rhythm and a urgency.

:: Set/Reset . 05:49 . Simon Serc / Pharmafabrik // Slovenia
The sound of asynchronous flip-flops.

:: Bats and Ping-pong (Trio) 2012 . 03:18 . Tom White // London, United Kingdom
The starting point was a short recording of attempting bat calls in France. The bats are there at the high end, but in the more prominent foreground you can make out a nearby ping pong match. I looked at the possible reasons for how this recording failed. Circumstance, technical or practical decisions? Embracing the result, I have combined three elements together for this piece: the original recording, a worked live version combined with tape and objects, and an attempt at cobbling together similar descriptive elements from found sources online.
(First broadcast on Or-bits 128kbps web project 2012)
:: Displacement Sites (2011) Film audio excerpt . 03:00 . Tom White // London, United Kingdom
This is an audio except from a film made in 2011. The majority of the sound has been sourced from Youtube videos of people screaming into cavernous spaces, steam trains echoing through mountainous landscapes and collaged together in hope to create an ecstatic audio accompaniment to the film.
:: The View From Ham Hill Stone Circle (excerpt) from Corrugated (Imminent Frequencies Release 2013) . 02:02 . Tom White // London, United Kingdom
Another example of using Youtube videos as source material, this time combined with reel to reel tape improvisation where concréte sounds are embedded in feedback and noise. Released in 2013 as a C60 cassette on US label Imminent Frequencies.
:: A Salute (To solitary performers) 2011 / Live recording from Phase: Unit 3.03 . 12:10 . Tom White // London, United Kingdom
An excerpt of a live recording from 2011 in which I attempted to combine multiple Youtube recordings of bagpipers demonstrating their pibroch skills awkwardly performing to no one but their webcams. The solitary performers would come together and create a multi-layered (if not discordant) live experience along with a triumphant singing end.

:: Voix_Humaine_byVirginie_at_OSX . 16:12 . Virginie @ OSX // Odemira, Portugal
An interpretation of the LA VOIX HUMAINE de Jean Cocteau

Control and Unpredictability nº3

Control and unpredictability is a series of sonic actions that are presented as performances and / or sound installations where the content of soundscapes is used as the primary material for composition.
The act of listening is always subjected to objective physical parameters and, on the other hand, to the subjective interpretation of the listener. Soundscapes, embedded in their own particular geographical and social references, are peculiar examples of how the same sound can result in so many different interpretations.

In this piece, a transformed and distorted version of the local sound environment is presented through audio processing and custom built instrumentation. The original sounds are re-thought and presented as a new soundscape.

No espaço que separa as coisas (In the space between things)
Installation (Photography and Sound)

Meeting the last person who lived in Sinel de Cordes Palace, nowadays home for the Lisbon´s Architecture Trienalle.

“Radio Terramoto” is a radio transmission from All Saints Day, 1755. We are not sure how or why the forty minutes were recorded, but having been discovered accidently it has proven to be an important record to the experience of the people caught in the Great Lisbon Earthquake. We follow our mysterious ghost recorder as starting in the Convento do Carmo where the people were gathered for the All Saints Day Mass. The first wave hits and the convent crumbles. As people run to the river, we follow their path as the buildings around us burst into fire and collapse. Finally reaching the river, only to be greeted by the water pulling out, revealing boat wreckage, pulling towards the ocean and feeding the giant wave that finally defeated our poor recorder. This is the moment the transmission ends.

In the last session, our conversation followed a GPS to map places and ideas. This time we will fix a spot – with our guest’s help – to find out how they hear, feel or represent a place or the Place. Does this Place have people, a memory and time? What sounds inhabit it? We will also chat about the Open Call for Radio Projects and try to apprehend if time is speeding on us with the number of cell phones and computer screens or if we just count it in a different way. We’ll still have time to look for echoes of another time with a radio fiction about Lisbon’s 1755 Earthquake or analyze an installation about Sinel de Cordes Palace or even take a look at Chris Marker’s filmography. Keep in touch, with ears glued to the radio.

With a musical career predominantly in the field of experimental music, André Gonçalves seeks to explore the potential of sound as matter, through the creation of electronic objects created or modified by him. The synthesizers are his labor and tool for developing melodies and sonic textures. These concert opens up the possibility to listen to a set of modular synthesizers and their potential in building a broad and enveloping sound tissue.

“LA JETÉE”, 1962, 28 MINS

Time travel, still images, a past, present and future and the aftermath of World War III. The tale of a man, a slave, sent back and forth, in and out of time, to find a solution to the world’s fate. To replenish its decreasing stocks of food, medicine and energies, and in doing so, resulting in a perpetual memory of a lone female, life, death and past events that are recreated on an airports jetée.

“SANS SOLEIL”, 1983, 100 MINS

“He wrote me….” A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
Sans Soleil is a meditation on the nature of human memory, showing the inability to recall the context and nuances of memory and how, as a result, the perception of personal and global histories are affected.