Shifting focus from beneath the surface to above the surface and on the rocks in San Francisco Bay, composer Brian Belet's 8-channel Sea Lions Mix has also been selected for performance SEAMUS 2011. Based on the processed cries of sea lions mixed with the voices of Belet's family, Sea Lions Mix is timbrally rich and sometimes comical.
Khubchandani also did the sound design for the film, using the sounds of birds, wind and water contrasted with the rattling drones of machines to underscore his themes. Like the images, the sound slips easily back and forth between realism and the logic of dreams. Kyma played such a large role in this transformation, it even gets a credit at the end of the film!
...everything Kyma-X can do will make your brain explode in a very messy but not necessarily unpleasant kind of a way.
...it's not so much a soft synth, more of an audio construction kit, like Reaktor or SynthEdit, but on a shop full of steroids.
...You don't just get total control over audio, you get a brain-expanding education in how to think about sound.
...it's a few hundred steps beyond what's possible with a synth construction kit.
...Kyma has the unique ability to morph sounds, melting them into each other like plastic. This is completely different to the usual crossfade effect, because pitch, timbre and rhythm all change simultaneously.
The project also invited the Chinese general public to describe their favourite sounds of the cities that they live in. Those descriptions, along with audio recordings, are contained within the book and accompanying CDs. Many of those favourite sounds are ambient ones, less and less frequently heard as Chinese society changes at its current ferocious pace.
200 page book (English and Chinese) + 2 audio CDs, Edited by Yan Jun and Louise Gray. Published by Horizon Media in Beijing, China.
"Sound And The City might be termed an intimate art project. It speaks to the general public, not the selected public, instead of being proudly ahead of it’s time, it intervenes in the lives of the contemporary Chinese public; it encourages people to feel and share, rather than criticize or display miracles. The seven UK artists who made projects for Sound And The City have composed sounds in the most environmentally friendly ways. They invite us to listen again to our own cities and our lives. We have made this book because we want to share and listen with more people." – Yan Jun