Remember that crazy venue in Manhattan called Remote Lounge where every table had monitors showing feeds from surveillance cameras placed throughout the venue?  There used to be a performance series there called FTH.  I remember when Hygienists performed there and I have a small excerpt from the performance here.  What you can hear is me tweaking out on the Glove instrument while Aaron Taylor Waldman cuts up the turntables.  

Remote Lounge FTH Hygienists Excerpt

I just stumbled across this track I made for Pauline Olivero's Deep Listening class.

Prehistoric

Myth Busters suggest that plants do better with noise than with silence.  So then what type of noise is attractive to them?  Interestingly YouTube videos tend towards pink noise when layered. Pink noise is a type of sound commonly found in nature where the higher the frequencies the quieter they are (unlike white noise static). Here are 20 YouTube videos’ audio tracks mixed down and run through a frequency analyzer. 

						

						There is a curious bump up though roughly between 50 and 300 Hz.  I speculate YouTube's pink noise skews human because the human vocal range is between 85 and 250Hz and YouTube is full of videos of people speaking.

Pinkish Noise: The Sound of 20 YouTube Videos at Once

Sound scape created using recordings made in various regions of Germany in 2012 with Caitlin Foley.

Embrace

Is pink noise the golden ratio of sound? This is an hour long program by Caitlin Foley and Misha Rabinovich consisting of interviews with a neuroscientist and an artist, noise music, and field recordings. We hope you enjoy it!

Pink noise is known to have relaxing, meditative effects and is notable for its occurrence in nature. CDs and phone apps claiming to provide relaxation often include pink noise as the sound of ocean waves. It can also be generated electronically (e.g., for calibration of audio equipment) but it should not be confused with white noise. White noise is the sound of every frequency driven at maximum energy often associated with the harsh machine-like hiss of static. Pink noise, on the other hand, features an inverse relationship between frequency and volume, so that as the sound gets higher pitched it becomes quieter, and the same amount of noise power is distributed to each octave. Interestingly, the sound of many radio stations or YouTube channels playing simultaneously tends toward pink noise. The Pink Noise Salon investigates the value of pink noise as a means of filtering cultural over-stimulation. Additionally, the salon places the analog production of pink noise found in nature alongside human made pink noise as evidence of human integration with and impact on the environment.

Pink Noise Radio Salon

Pre-production of the track Bees at Velidoxi

mishawagon

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