Exhibitions (current)

Projects

  • The Aural Ecosystem – Zach Poff The Aural Ecosystem (a collaboration with N.B. Aldrich) applies the generative structures of nature to audio synthesis, creating an ‘ecosystem’ that develops over time. https://www.zachpoff.com/projects/the-aural-ecosystem/
  • BUG – Mark Bain and Arno Brandhluber -(2009) BUG The new building at Brunnenstraße 9 in Berlin’s Mitte district was recently hailed by Artforum Magazine as “a retroactive manifesto of ’90s-era hypercontextualism” and, more simply, “gorgeous”. What their praise didn’t recognize, however, is that this mixed-use space is not just something to look at but a building to listen to; passers-by can plug their headphones into the inconspicuous silver jack embedded in the building’s concrete and literally hear the otherworldly orchestrations of the structure itself. http://www.planet-mag.com/2010/architecture/nika-knight/bug/
  • Citizen Sense The Citizen Sense project is led by Professor Jennifer Gabrys and is funded through a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. The project, which began in January 2013, investigates the relationship between technologies and practices of environmental sensing and citizen engagement. https://citizensense.net
  • Coal Fired Computers – Yoha A one-hundred year old, 18-ton showman’s steam engine powers a computer with 2.5 tons of coal. Black lungs inflate every time a database record of miners’ lung disease is shown on the computer monitors. It feels like you’ve been invited into a fun fair, but one where the rides log their own accidents – a fun fair run by people who long ago became indistinct from the machines they maintain. http://yoha.co.uk/cfc
  • Deconstructed Anthems – Ekene Ijeoma
    Deconstructed Anthems is a music performance and light installation in which a self-playing piano or music ensemble deconstruct the Star-Spangled Banner, repeating it multiple times, removing notes at the rate of mass incarceration, and ending in silence.
    https://studioijeoma.com/Deconstructed-Anthems
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sclFitSV3Fc
  • Electrical Walks – Christina Kubisch (since 2004)
    Since the end of the 1970s Christina Kubisch works with the system of electromagnetic induction, which she developed from the basic technique to an individual artistic tool. In 2003 she started her research on a new series of works in public space, which trace the electro-magnetic fields of urban environments in the form of city walks. The first Electrical Walk took place in Cologne in 2004.
    http://www.christinakubisch.de/en/works/electrical_walks
  • The Environmental Sentinel – Frances Whitehead Environmental Sentinel is a 3 mile climate-monitoring artwork and landscape intervention created as a key feature for The 606, a rail adaptation project under construction in Chicago, scheduled to open in May 2015. The artwork will consist of a planted line of 453 native, flowering trees Amelanchier x grandiflora (Apple Serviceberry), whose five-day bloom spread will visualize Chicago’s famous Lake Effect in spring and fall. http://franceswhitehead.com/what-we-do/environmental-senteniel
  • Flight Lines – Ellie Irons + Dan Phiffer Flight Lines is an ongoing computer vision project that monitors our skies as they become home not just to birds and planes but to drones and extreme weather events. Growing out of our interest in the ecology of the Anthropocene, the project is an effort to document the skies as they are today, with the knowledge that they are rapidly evolving and have different characteristics in disparate locations. http://ellieirons.com/projects/flight-lines/
  • Forest (for a thousand years), etc – Janet Cardiff and George Burres Miller These artists are well known for “sound walks” that merge sounds and narratives with a person’s movement through an actual location and also works that include multi-channel speaker arrays to create immersive experiences. Her Long black hair – https://phiffer.org/hlbh Forest for a thousand years – http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/magazine/janet-cardiff-george-bures-miller-and-the-power-of-sound.html
  • Heat and the Heartbeat of the City – Andrea Polli (2004) Heat and the Heartbeat of the City (launched on turbulence.org Dec. 1, 2004) is a web site that presents a series of sonifications (musical compositions created by directly translating data to sound) that illustrate these dramatic changes focusing on the heart of New York City and one of the city’s first locations for climate monitoring, Central Park. As you listen to the compositions, you will travel forward in time at an accelerated pace and experience an intensification of heat in sound. https://www.landviews.org/articles/heat-ap.html
  • I Grew a Corn for a Plant Concert – Martin Roth
    The artist wired five groups of corn plants to five music devices, forming a biofeedback system. Control signals were generated by measuring the electrical resistance of the plants’ vegetable tissue, which in turn activated the MIDI synthesizers. Viewers were encouraged to interact with and touch the plants, which affected the sounds being played. The audience and cornfield were not just participants but actors, acting together—in concert—to produce the work.
    http://martinroth.at/en/igrew-corn-for-a-plant-concert/
  • Listen to wikipedia – Hatnote A realtime web project that turns every edit of a Wikipedia entry into a sound. Whenever someone adds information, you hear a bell, and when they delete something, you hear a string plucked. http://listen.hatnote.com http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/11/11/listen_to_wikipedia_made_by_engineers_stephen_laporte_and_mahmoud_hashemi.html
  • London Sound Survey The London Sound Survey collects the sounds of everyday public life throughout London and compiles past accounts to show how the sound environment has changed. This is a very interesting project that uses many different “sound mapping” strategies to examine the sonic life in london in numerous ways. http://www.soundsurvey.org.uk
  • Maritime Messaging – Katherine Behar In Maritime Messaging: Red Hook, a performance commemorating the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, artist Katherine Behar trained an artificial intelligence on the history of Red Hook in order to help the water to tell its story. Using underwater sound recordings, Maritime Messaging, produced in collaboration with PortSide New York and Pioneer Works, stages a mock conversation between the water of Red Hook and a digital assistant app that invites the water to send messages and translates its gurgles into words. https://pioneerworks.org/programs/maritime-messaging-red-hook/
  • Music for a Quarry – Walter Fähndrich In Music for a Quarry (1999) by Walter Fähndrich, clear tones call across the natural amphitheater of the Hoosac Marble Quarry from ten speakers, equally spaced along its circumference, for fifteen minutes of twilight every evening. Working with the latitude and longitude of the quarry, a computer program begins the music at the same solar time (rather than clock time) each night. The start time (near 8 or 9pm in summer, near 4pm at the winter solstice) changes as the spatial relationship between the earth and sun changes. The first tone appears at the precise moment of astronomical sunset, a moment that is both permanently fixed and changing daily. During this fifteen-minute period, the burden of comprehending the physical space shifts slowly from the eye to the ear as the sounds are traced to their sources. http://massmoca.org/event/walter-fahndrich-music-for-a-quarry-2/
    http://www.musicforspaces.ch/en/C2.html
  • 100% Philadelphia Rimini Protokoll
    Your view of Philadelphia may vary widely depending on what neighborhood you live in, how much money you make, whether you are black, white, Latino, Asian, or a combination, on the street or in a mansion, single or married, divorced or widowed. The city means radically different things to different people because of how they experience it—beliefs, politics, concerns are often the results of people’s isolated experiences. Everyone knows there are others who differ radically from themselves—they can read the statistics. But what happens when those “statistics” share a stage together? What happens when those hot button issues are addressed live to 100 true representatives of the cross section of the city? What side of the pie chart would you walk to? Who will stand apart? Who will fall back into the majority? http://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/project/100-philadelphia
    http://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/#medium-32
  • Poetics of Outerspace –  Caroline Devine
    Devine has taken data from NASA’s Kepler missions to create individual compositions that occupy each floor of the 29 metre high tower, built in 1758. Each composition can be thought of as a subset of this set of data, and a mapping of the range of frequencies and information gathered by the missions to a more manageable human scale. The compositions from each star’s data are positioned according to their age, frequency range and the number of exoplanets they host, moving upwards through the tower, which could almost have been custom built for the installation. […] As you ascend through the building, you’re also moving light years through the universe, outwards towards the different solar systems with their exoplanets and changing resonances. Just as musical instruments resonate with frequencies, so can the stars and planets, and it is this resonance that Devine has scaled for the human ear.
    https://www.thewire.co.uk/video/caroline-devine_s-poetics-of_outer_space/o=2024’a=0’a=0
  • Safari 7 -Scape Studio Safari 7 is a self-guided tour of urban wildlife along the 7 subway line. Safari 7 circulates an ongoing series of podcasts and maps that explore the complexity, biodiversity, conflicts, and potentials of New York’s ecosystems. Safari 7 imagines train cars as eco-urban classrooms, and invites travelers to act as park rangers in their city. http://www.scapestudio.com/projects/981/
  • Sonic Kayak –  Kaffe Matthews,  Dr. Kirsty Kemp, Dr. Jo Garrett,
    The Sonic Kayak is a musical instrument with which to investigate nature. Kayaks rigged with underwater environmental sensors generate live music from the marine world, providing the paddler with an extra dimension of senses with which to explore the underwater climate, while enabling citizens to gather important climate/environmental data.
    https://fo.am/kayaks/
  • Soundmap of the Black Hills, Sounding Western – Jennifer Heuson Sound plays an important part in the production of tourist experience and imagination. It works to mediate cultural memory, national identity and history for heritage tourists. Using the Black Hills as a primary case study, this site documents and maps the range of sounds used to evoke and preserve “Wild West” experiences for regional tourist economies. It offers a sonic tour of the region as an initial attempt to document the forms of frontier aurality common to tourism in the American West. http://www.soundingwestern.org/
  • Specimen Box – The Office for Creative Research
    Specimen Box is an exploratory visualization & sonification tool built for Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit by The Office for Creative Research. The Office for Creative Research is a multidisciplinary research group exploring new modes of engagement with data, through unique practices that borrow from both the arts and sciences. OCR clients are research partners, helping to pose, refine and ultimately solve difficult problems with data. http://www.spring2018.soundthemound.com/2018/02/15/specimen-box-sonification-2015/
  • Stillspotting (Guggenheim) The Guggenheim Museum’s stillspotting nyc was a multidisciplinary project that took the museum’s Architecture and Urban Studies programming out into the streets of the city’s five boroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Every three to five months, from June 2011 to October 2012, “stillspots” were identified, created, or transformed by architects, artists, designers, composers, and philosophers into public tours, events, or installations. http://stillspotting.guggenheim.org
  • Ton-Raum Tu Berlin –  Bernhard Leitner (1984) The «Sound-Space TU Berlin» is a permanent, sound installation located in the main building of the Technical University of Berlin. In a cube-shaped passageway cum room in which three corridors meet, Leitner built a sound-absorbing covering, with 42 hidden speakers distributed over the wall surfaces. Leitner sees the space as an electronic instrument from which an immaterial architecture can be retrieved using complex, programmed compositions. In the process, he liquefies architectural qualities such as proportion, tension and weight, by making these characteristics temporal and flexible. In the reverse, the constructional coordinates offer the structures for a musical event.
    http://www.bernhardleitner.com/works/indexLoadContend/152?CAKEPHP=635f8c3a9473b81effae65a5a27c4921
    https://idw-online.de/en/news?print=1&id=601769
  • Two Trains – Sonification of Income Inequality on the NYC Subway – Brian Foo The goal of this song is to emulate a ride on the New York City Subway’s 2 Train through three boroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx. At any given time, the quantity and dynamics of the song’s instruments correspond to the median household income of that area. For example, as you pass through a wealthier area such as the Financial District, the instruments you hear in the song will increase in quantity, volume, and force. Stylistically, I want the song to exhibit the energy and orderly chaos of the NYC subway system itself. https://datadrivendj.com/tracks/subway
  • Vibrating Matter Situating Sound – Rachel Shearer Public urban sound project, Auckland NZ This is an in depth description of the artist’s site specific sound project and is a good example of the way that a theoretical foundation can (and must) co-exist with practical concerns about site and the users of the site. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4w8kPKedvsVOXF4dFFXMThHS3c
  • You Are Here – Jenn Stucker Funded by the City of Toledo’s One Percent for Art Program, You Are Here Toledo Project (YAH) was a series of large one-of-a-kind outdoor “dots” affixed to various public sidewalks throughout Toledo to promote positivity and enhance our sense of place. Using the circular shape of a dot (at three feet in diameter); Northwest Ohio artists, designers, and students were asked to make a powerful visual statement in response to their assigned dot’s location. One hundred (100) dots mark the city, each containing a QR (quick response) code that allows smartphone users to learn more about the artwork, its location and its artist. http://www.sisudesign.com/#/yah/ http://youarehereproject.com
  • You Are Here – Dan Phiffer An experimental journalism-distribution network. It leverages small, inexpensive, open-source wireless routers to deliver compelling, location-specific content to communities around New York. http://youarehere.network
  • You are NOT here – Dan Phiffer You Are Not Here (.org) is a platform for urban tourism mash-ups. It invites participants to become meta-tourists on simultaneous excursions through multiple cities. Passers-by stumble across the curious You Are Not Here signs in the street. The YANH street-signs provide the telephone number for the Tourist Hotline, a portal for audio-guided tours of one place on the streets of another. http://youarenothere.org/about https://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-43207720091016

Audio Walking Tours

Freshkills Artists

  • Mierle Ukeles Mierle Laderman Ukeles has worked as the first and only official artist-in- residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation since 1977, where her projects have included Touch Sanitation (1978-1984) and Flow City (1983-1996). She regularly installs another project, The Social Mirror at the Freshkills Park Sneak ‘Peak’ fall festival. Listen to Ukeles’ ambient art project that captures the sounds of various birds at the former Fresh Kills Landfill, 45 Species of birds found at the Fresh Kills Landfill http://freshkillspark.org/os-art/percent- art
  • Ben Kauffman What would happen if, instead of allowing my garbage to be taken to a landfill, I kept it close? This question was the driving force of There Is No Place Called Away, a research-based art project and installation. The motivations of the project were to both learn about the workings of modern landfills and re-consider a facet of our society that is often ignored. Beyond an intellectual inquiry, it is meant to bring a subject often defined by distance nearer to the body. http://www.benkauffman.com/There-is-No-Place-Called-Away
  • Dylan Gauthier a Brooklyn-based artist who works through a research-based and collaborative practice centered on experiences of nature, architecture, landscape, and social change in a time of ecological crisis. Gauthier is a founder of the boat-building and eco-art publishing collective Mare Liberum and of the Sunview Luncheonette, a co-op for art, politics, and communalism in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. http://work.floatingcity.us

Research Labs

  • Senseable Cities The real-time city is real! As layers of networks and digital information blanket urban space, new approaches to the study of the built environment are emerging. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed—as are the tools we use to design them. The mission of the Senseable City Laboratory—a research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—is to anticipate these changes and study them from a critical point of view. http://senseable.mit.edu
  • Civic Design Data Lab The Civic Data Design Lab works with data to understand it for public good. We seek to develop alternative practices which can make the work we do with data and images richer, smarter, more relevant, and more responsive to the needs and interests of citizens traditionally on the margins of policy development. In this practice we experiment with and develop data visualization and collection tools that allow us to highlight urban phenomena. Our methods borrow from the traditions of science and design by using spatial analytics to expose patterns and communicating those results, through design, to new audiences. http://www.civicdatadesignlab.org
  • Sensory Ethnography Lab (Harvard) The Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) is an experimental laboratory at Harvard University that promotes innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography.  It uses analog and digital media to explore the aesthetics and ontology of the natural and unnatural world. https://sel.fas.harvard.edu
  • Citizen Sense The Citizen Sense project is led by Professor Jennifer Gabrys and is funded through a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. The project, which began in January 2013, investigates the relationship between technologies and practices of environmental sensing and citizen engagement. http://citizensense.net/about
  • CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice) Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) is a research centre of the University of the Arts London dedicated to the exploration of the rich complexities of sound as an artistic practice. Our main aim is to extend the development of the emerging disciplinary field of sound arts and to encourage the broadening and deepening of the discursive context in which sound arts is practised. http://www.crisap.org
  • Sound and Music Sound and Music’s vision is to create a world where new music and sound prospers, transforming lives, challenging expectations and celebrating the work of its creators. Besides the promotion of new music and composers, this organization also sponsors some interesting educational initiatives like A Minute of Listening http://www.soundandmusic.org
  • Cresson – research center on the sound space & the urban environment (site in French) An architectural & urban research team, founded in 1979, at the National School of Architecture of Grenoble. Originally centered on the sound space, the CRESSON has based its research culture on a sensitive approach and located inhabited spaces. This research is based on original multidisciplinary methods at the crossroads of architecture, human and social sciences and engineering sciences. http://aau.archi.fr/cresson http://lcv.hypotheses.org
  • Sound Studies Lab The Sound Studies Lab was founded in 2011 by Holger Schulze. The foundation phase of the lab was funded by the German Research Foundation DFG at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg.The lab invites young and experienced scholars and artists to do research on the sonic sensory aspects of individual lives and in heterogenuous societies, cultures and historical eras. The lab operates in mobile, experiential and field-based research environments. The basic research strategies of the lab are field research, critical analysis & sonic artifacts. http://www.soundstudieslab.org

Journals

  • Sensate Journal – Online Journal Our mission is to provide a scholarly and artistic forum for experiments in critical media practices that expand academic discourse by taking us beyond the margins of the printed page. Fundamental to this expansion is a re-imagining of what constitutes a work of scholarship or art. http://sensatejournal.com
  • SoundEffects An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience SoundEffects brings together a plurality of theories, methodologies, and historical approaches applicable to sound as both mediated and unmediated experience. The journal primarily addresses disciplines within media and communication studies, aesthetics, musicology, comparative literature, cultural studies, psychology and sociology. In order to push the boundary of interdisciplinary sound studies into new areas, we also encourage contributions from disciplines such as health care, architecture, and sound design. http://www.soundeffects.dk
  • Journal of Sonic Studies How can we understand the impact and importance of sound, both on an individual and a general cultural level? JSS thus provides a platform for theorists and artists who would like to present relevant work regarding the sonic environment. http://journal.sonicstudies.org

Readings

 

Arable Labs

Art and Environment

  • Bjørnsten, Thomas – Renegotiating Data Ecologies through Trees, Soil, and Pigs’ Lungs …a number of contemporary artists are working critically with re-defining how we engage with data and digital technologies in different ways. In this article, the theme of ecological modes of engagement is discussed through three art works/projects: Frances Whitehead’s art project, The Environmental Sentinel (2014-2016). YoHa – Coal Fired Computers; Martin Howse – The Earthcodes Project. http://spheres-journal.org/renegotiating-data-ecologies-through-trees-soil-and-pigs-lungs  
  • Evental Aesthetics – Sound Art and Environment VOL. 6 NO. 1 (2017) Guest Editor: Gascia Ouzounian Evental Aesthetics is an independent, international, interdisciplinary journal dedicated to philosophical perspectives on aesthetic practices and experiences. http://eventalaesthetics.net/latestissue
  • Højlund Marie and Kinch, Sofie – Alarming Atmospheres – Embodied Sound Habituation As Design Strategy In A Neuro-intensive Care Unit Nurses working in the Neuro-Intensive Care Unit at Aarhus University Hospital lack the tools to prepare children for the alarming atmosphere they will enter when visiting a hospitalised relative. The complex soundscape dominated by alarms and sounds from equipment is mentioned as the main stressor. As a response to this situation, our design artefact, the interactive furniture Kidkit, invites children to become accustomed to the alarming sounds sampled from the ward while they are waiting in the waiting room. Our design acknowledges how atmospheres emerge as temporal negotiations between the rhythms of the body and the environment in conjunction with our internalised perception of the habituated background. By actively controlling the sounds built into Kidkit, the child can habituate them through a process of synchronising them with her own bodily rhythms. Hereby the child can establish, in advance, a familiar relationship with the alarming sounds in the ward, enabling her to focus later more on the visit with the relative. The article discusses the proposed design strategy behind this solution and the potentiality for its use in hospital environments in general. From the Journal of Sonic Studies http://journal.sonicstudies.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=sonic;cc=sonic;sid=07d56ca1302520446eb6a26ddeefa5c4;rgn=main;view=text;idno=m0601a02
  • Kahn, Douglas – Earth Sound Earth Signal. University of California Press, 2013 Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts, from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Douglas Kahn begins by evoking the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing along telegraph lines and the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard through the first telephone; he then traces the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s and beyond. http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520257559
  • Petrao, Carlo – Botanical Rhythms: A Field Guide to Plant Music. Sounding Out! Participatory art including plants might help dissipate plants’ invisibility. Someauthors argue that meaningful experiences involving a multiplicity of senses can potentially engage emotional responses and concern towards plants life. In this article, I map out a brief history of the different musical and sound art practices that incorporate plants and discuss the ethics of plant life as a performative participant.
    https://soundstudiesblog.com/2018/02/26/botanical-rhythms-a-field-guide-to-plant-music/
  • Wright, Mark Peter  – Post-Natural Sound Arts This article examines three archival representations that form the basis for a Post-Natural Sound Arts.  Although contemporary practice is discussed within the section “Representation and the Dangers of Aw[e]ful Listening,” that particular emphasis will be addressed another time. Rather than create a conventional survey or claim an exclusive territory, I hope to open up new modes of enquiry that can inform a way of rehearing environmental sound arts. Specifically, I want to reassess the roles of silence, technology, and subjectivity and fuse them into broader claims of an acoustic ecology. From the Journal of Sonic Studies 14 https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/292319/292320/0/0

Design and Ethnography Methods

  • An Ethnography Primer – AIGA. Great design always connects with people. Designers inspire, provoke, validate, entertain and provide utility for people. To truly connect, designers need to have compassion and empathy for their audiences. Designers need to understand the relationship between what they produce and the meaning their product has for others. And they need to observe the people they are designing for in their own environments. An Ethnography Primer produced by AIGA (Scribd).
  • IDEO Method Cards (ask faculty to consult hardcopy)
  • Gimmy, Gregor – Shadowing. Sense. (2006) Barcelona (pdf provided by faculty)
  • Laurel, Brenda – Design Research. Methods and Perspectives. Cambridge: MIT (2003)
  • Martin, Bella and Hannington, Brice – Universal Methods of Design Rockport Publishers (2012)
  • Pink, Sarah – Doing Sensory Ethnography. 2nd ed. Sage Publications, 2015.
  • Sappi, and David Eagleman – Haptic Brain, Haptic Brand: A Communicators Guide to the Neuroscience of Touch. Sappi, 2015.

Freshkills and Parks

  • Freshkills Park Planning document Preliminary document that contains the plans for FKP, the Contains many links to additional resources, drawings from Field Projects (the winner of the parks competition), timelines, maps etc.
  • Educational Alliance Guides Freshkills Park offers classroom resources and field trips that center around three major topic areas: biodiversity and the environment, history and social studies, and art and design.

Garbage, Waste

Placemaking

  • Lydon, Mike, and Anthony Garcia, Andres Duany. Tactical Urbanism: Short-term Action for Long-term Change Island Press, 2015. The authors begin with an in-depth history of the Tactical Urbanism movement and its place among other social, political, and urban planning trends. A detailed set of case studies, from guerrilla wayfinding signs in Raleigh, to pavement transformed into parks in San Francisco, to a street art campaign leading to a new streetcar line in El Paso, demonstrate the breadth and scalability of tactical urbanism interventions. Finally, the book provides a detailed toolkit for conceiving, planning, and carrying out projects, including how to adapt them based on local needs and challenges. http://islandpress.org/book/tactical-urbanism
  • Markusen, Ann, and Anne Gadwa – Creative Placemaking, Markusen Economic Research Services and Metris Arts Consulting, 2010. A white paper for The Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a leadership initiative on the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the United States Conference of Mayors and American Architectural Foundation https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/CreativePlacemaking-Paper.pdf

Service Design (includes design for public sector)

  • Bason, Christian. (2013) “Design-Led Innovation in Government (PDF).” Stanford Social Innovation Review. Spring 13.
  • Bason, Christian (ed) (2014) Design for Policy. Gower
  • Blomkvist, J., Homlid, S. (2010) “Service Prototyping According to Service Design Practitioners (PDF)”. ServDes Conference 2010
  • Dragoman, Liana; Drury, Kristina; Eickmann, Andrew; Fodil, Yasmin; Kühl, Kaja; Winter, Benjamin (2013). Public & Collaborative: Designing Services for Housing. New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (PDF), Parsons DESIS Lab, Public Policy Lab.
  • Hinman, Rachel. The Mobile Frontier. A Guide For Designing Mobile Experiences by Rosenfeld. Intro chapter (FAQs pp. vi – viii and Chapter 1, pp. 1 – 10).  [Fogelman: reserve]
  • Julier, Guy and Moor, Liz (2009) Design and Creativity. Policy, Management and Practice. Berg
  • Meroni, A. and Sangiorgi, D. (2011). Design For Services. Gower.
  • Miettinen, S. and Valtonen, A. (Eds.) (2013). Service Design with Theory. Discussions on Change, Value and Methods. Rovaniemi: Lapland University Press
  • Polaine, A., Løvlie, L., and Reason, B. (2013). Service Design. From Insight to Implementation. Brooklyn: Rosenfeld Media
  • UK Design Council et al. (2013) Design for Public Good. SEE Platform. Sharing Experience Europe. Policy Innovation Design.
  • What is service design? By Service Design Network http://www.service-design-network.org/intro/
  • Stickdorn, M.; Schneider, J. (2010). This is Service Design Thinking. Basics – Tools – Cases. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers
  • Service Design Tools (comprehensive collection of service design tools) http://www.servicedesigntools.org/

Sensorium (and Sound related)

  • Caroline A. Jones. Editor – Sensorium – Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art MIT Press 2006 A book that accompanied an exhibition at MIT. An excellent look into different artists using an expanded approach to the human senses (or sensorium) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sensorium
  • Bull, Michael and Back, Les. Editor(s) – The Auditory Culture Reader. Berg Publishers, 2004 Filling a significant gap, this groundbreaking and multidisciplinary reader combines classic texts, interviews and original contributions by leading social and cultural theorists. It represents a landmark statement on a surprisingly overlooked aspect of our everyday experience. http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-auditory-culture-reader-9781859736180
  • Sterne, Jonathan. Editor – The Sound Studies Reader. Routledge Press, 2012 A collection of essays from the relatively new field of “Sound Studies” collected by Jonathan Sterne. The book is organized into themes including: Hearing, Listening, Deafness; Spaces, Sites, Scapes; Transduce and Record; Collectives and Couplings https://www.routledge.com/The-Sound-Studies-Reader/Sterne/p/book/9780415771313
  • Erlmann, Veit. Editor – Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity Berg Publishers, 2004 “’There’s no doubt in my mind that *Hearing Cultures* will become a classic in the developing field of sound studies. Not only does it offer inquiries into listening and hearing -which are pressing questions in the study of culture-but it also ranges widely across time and space, from Egypt to England, from the sixteenth century to the present. Think of it as mandatory reading, because it will be soon.”  — ‘Anahid Kassabian, author of Hearing Film http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/hearing-cultures-9781859738283
  • Cox, Christoph and Warner, Daniel (Editor) – Audio Culture, Revised Edition: Readings in Modern Music 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury 2017 Collection on sound with essays that fit into a variety of topics including: Noise Sound and Silence, Modes of Listening, Music in the age of electronic reproduction, The Open Work, Experimental Musics, etc https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/audio-culture-9780826416155
  • Schafer, R. Murray – The Soundscape: The Tuning of the World. Destiny Books (1993) This book is a pioneering exploration of our acoustic environment, past and present, and an attempt to imagine what it might become in the future.” This book and many of Schafers other writings connect to his interest in sound and the environment (or Acoustic Ecology) and the positive impacts of informed and empathetic listening.
  • Chion, Michel – Sound: An Acoulogical Treatise. Duke University Press 2016 Michel Chion’s somewhat formidable but excellent deep-dive into and unravelling of the work of composer and theorist Pierre Schaeffer (father of Musique Concrete). Very good sections on hearing and listening. https://www.dukeupress.edu/sound

Sonification of data

  • Bjørnsten, Thomas – From Particle Data to Particular Sounds: Reflections on The Affordances of Contemporary Sonification Practices Article describing how scientists are trying to think of alternative ways to deal with huge amounts of data generated by particle physics experiments related to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project. From the Journal of Sonic Studies 14 https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/220323/220324
  • Guglielmi, Giorgia – Meet the scientist who turns data into music—and listen to the sound of a neutron star
    From Science Magazine: “From stock trends to changes in Earth’s temperature, data that vary over time are usually represented in graphs and charts. How boring! What if, instead, one could listen to the sudden drop of a stock price or the steady increase of global temperatures? Enter sonification, the process of transforming flat data into mellow soundwaves.”
    http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/meet-scientist-who-turns-data-music-and-listen-sound-neutron-star
  • Alexandra Supper – Sublime frequencies: The construction of sublime listening experiences in the sonification of scientific data
    In the past two decades, the sonification of scientific data – an auditory equivalent of data visualization in which data are turned into sounds – has become increasingly widespread, particularly as an artistic practice and as a means of popularizing science. Sonification is thus part of the recent trend, discussed in public understanding of science literature, towards increased emphasis on ‘interactivity’ and ‘crossovers’ between science and art as a response to the perceived crisis in the relationship between the sciences and their publics. However, sonification can also be understood as the latest iteration in a long tradition of theorizing the relations between nature, science and human experience. This article analyses the recent public fascination with sonification and argues that sonification grips public imaginations through the promise of sublime experiences. I show how the ‘auditory sublime’ is constructed through varying combinations of technological, musical and rhetorical strategies. Rather than maintain a singular conception of the auditory sublime, practitioners draw on many scientific and artistic repertoires. However, sound is often situated as an immersive and emotional medium in contrast to the supposedly more detached sense of vision. The public sonification discourse leaves intact this dichotomy, reinforcing the idea that sound has no place in specialist science.
    http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.862.994&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Urban Interventions

  • Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good Spontaneous Interventions: design actions for the common good was first presented as the exhibition of the U.S. Pavilion at the 13th International Venice Architecture Biennale (Fall 2012). It documents the nascent movement of designers acting on their own initiative to solve problematic urban situations, creating new opportunities and amenities for the public. Provisional, improvisational, guerrilla, unsolicited, tactical, temporary, informal, DIY, unplanned, participatory, opensource—these are just a few of the words that have been used to describe this growing body of work. http://www.spontaneousinterventions.org/reading#intro
  • Silberberg, Susan, and Katie Lorah, Rebecca Disbrow Anna Muessig. Places in the Making: How placemaking builds places and communities, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2013. Places in the Making highlights the importance of people in defining place, a critical aspect that is all too often forgotten by those in architecture, planning, and other related disciplines. “The intense focus on place has caused us to miss the opportunity to discuss community, process, and the act of making,” the paper asserts. “The importance of the Placemaking process itself is a key factor that has often been overlooked in working toward many of these noble goals. As illustrated by the ten cases highlighted here, the most successful Placemaking initiatives transcend the ‘place’ to forefront the ‘making.’” https://dusp.mit.edu/sites/dusp.mit.edu/files/attachments/project/mit-dusp-places-in-the-making.pdf
  • Thompson, Nato & Scholette, Gregory The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. Art made to attach to buildings or to be given away? Wearable art for street demonstrations or art that sets up a booth at a trade show? This is the art of the interventionists, who trespass into the everyday world to raise our awareness of injustice and other social problems. These artists don’t preach or proselytize; they give us the tools to form our own opinions and create our own political actions. http://www.gregorysholette.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Interventionists_03_14_041.pdf
  • Zeiger, Mimi – The Interventionist’s Toolkit (4-part series). Places Journal, 2011. Mimi Zeiger tracks the emerging practices of what she describes as “provisional, opportunistic, ubiquitous, and odd tactics in guerrilla and DIY practice and urbanism.” Zeiger evaluates a loosely organized and evolving movement that deploys small-scale interventions — guerrilla gardens, seed bombs, mobile markets, inflatable shelters, etc. — to challenge the politics of market-driven urban development. https://placesjournal.org/series/interventionists-toolkit

Toolkits

Co-design and prototyping

  • Koskinen, Ilpo et al – Design research Through Practice. From the lab, field, and showroom. Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier (2011) Design Research Through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom focuses on one type of contemporary design research known as constructive design research. It looks at three approaches to constructive design research: Lab, Field, and Showroom. The book shows how theory, research practice, and the social environment create commonalities between these approaches. It illustrates how one can successfully integrate design and research based on work carried out in industrial design and interaction design. https://www.elsevier.com/books/design-research-through-practice/koskinen/978-0-12-385502-2
  • Sanders, E.B.N., & Stappers, P. J. . Co-creation and the new landscapes of design. In Co-design, p.1-16.  (2008) The evolution in design research from a user-centred approach to co-designing is changing the roles of the designer, the researcher and the person formerly known as the ‘user’. The implications of this shift for the education of designers and researchers are enormous. The evolution in design research from a user-centred approach to co-designing is changing the landscape of design practice as well, creating new domains of collective creativity. It is hoped that this evolution will support a transformation toward more sustainable ways of living in the future. Online here: http://bit.ly/9ShcNt
  • Sanders, Elizabeth B. -N., and Pieter Jan Stappers. Convivial Toolbox. Generative Research for the Front End of Design. Amsterdam: BIS (2012) Convivial Toolbox was written for university students (at both graduate and advanced undergraduate levels) from different departments such as design, psychology, marketing, business, communications, etc. It is also aimed at research practitioners and practicing designers. The first part of the book covers the underlying principles of generative design research, the second part presents cases and the third part is the how-to section. Throughout the book are 50 contributions from people all around the world that show generative design research in action. https://www.service-design-network.org/books-and-reports/convivial-toolbox-generative-research-for-the-front-end-of-design
  • Penin, L., Forlano, L., & Staszowski, E. – Designing in the Wild: Amplifying Creative Communities in North Brooklyn Cumulus Helsinki 2012 conference proceedings.  (2012). Increasingly, designers are becoming more active agents of sustainable change, moving from a relatively passive mode to a more engaged one that re-defines design practice as a clear strategic activity with a political agenda. Designers are occupying this emergent space in unprecedented ways and, therefore, it is only reasonable that designers begin to codify their socially-engaged practices by defining new models and approaches. https://www.id.iit.edu/artifacts/designing-in-the-wild-amplifying-creative-communities-in-north-brooklyn/
  • Valentine Louise (Ed) – Prototype. design and Craft in the 21st Century. London/New York: Bloomsbury(2013) Prototype enables design students and professionals to explore the significance of the prototype and its influence and bearing on the future of design. As the prototype is a model of something not yet built, a kind of future in the present, its importance in the development of the finished product cannot be ignored. It allows designers to understand what needs to be changed and what needs to be manipulated in order to create a product that successfully understands and navigates all the complexities of the modern world. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/prototype-9780857856821
  • Warfel, Todd Zaki – Prototyping: A Practitioner’s Guide. Rosenfeld Media (2009) [Fogelman: reserve] Prototyping is a great way to communicate the intent of a design both clearly and effectively. Prototypes help you to flesh out design ideas, test assumptions, and gather real-time feedback from users. http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/prototyping

Lectures / Talks / Videos / Podcasts

  • The Fresh Kills Story: From World’s Largest Garbage Dump to a World-Class Park Youtube – 54min Good introduction to FKP including the vision for the park, but importantly interviews with people along with images that explain what was like to live in Staten island while the landfill was active
  • Ellen Lupton Sensory Talk Typo International Design talks – 43min Wielding Gestalt laws, horror film, symphonic deletions and moonwalking bears, Ellen Lupton breaks down the concepts of visual thinking and visual storytelling to reveal that they might not be as purely visual as we think.
  • Jinsop Lee. Design for All 5 Senses TED Talk – 9min Good design looks great, yes — but why shouldn’t it also feel great, smell great and sound great? Designer Jinsop Lee (a TED Talent Search winner) shares his theory of 5-sense design, with a handy graph and a few examples. His hope: to inspire you to notice great multisensory experiences.
  • David Eagleman – Can we create new sense for humans? TED Talk – 23min As humans, we can perceive less than a ten-trillionth of all light waves. “Our experience of reality,” says neuroscientist David Eagleman, “is constrained by our biology.” He wants to change that. His research into our brain processes has led him to create new interfaces — such as a sensory vest — to take in previously unseen information about the world around us.
  • Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab Videos Harvard University’s acclaimed new Sensory Ethnography Lab supports original non-fiction media practices that explore the fabric of human existence through innovative combinations of aesthetics and ethnography. Below are the links to their video channels that have short edits of some of their work. YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB23B60570A47A23F Vimeo Channel – https://vimeo.com/channels/sel
  • Listening Across Disciplines Salomé Voegelin and Anna Barney, organizers project which brings together artists, musicians, scientists, technologists and social scientists as well as scholars and practitioners from the humanities to work across disciplinary boundaries on the recently emerging focus on sound and listening. The group organized a series of lectures around three themes: Listening to the Environment, Listening to Bodies and Materialities, Listening to Language Culture and Artifacts www.listeningacrossdisciplines.net
  • Hearing Modernity The 2013/14 John E. Sawyer seminar “Hearing Modernity” explores the world of sound studies. As the humanities turn away from the predominance of the visual domain and start exploring other sensory modalities, as the arts turn away from their traditional preoccupation with the work concept and toward a heightened appreciation of ecologies and soundscapes, and as the self-imposed limitations of C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” become ever more apparent, sound studies emerges as a new field that responds to multiple challenges at once. Site: http://hearingmodernity.org Papers: http://hearingmodernity.org/papers Lectures: https://vimeo.com/user15280323
  • Here’s The Thing with Alec Baldwin – WNYC Radio Episode: Brilliant Minds of Trash and Sewage New York City generates 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater every day. 16 million pounds of trash. Eight million pounds of recyclables. Think of the awesome engineering and effort behind making all of that “go away” without our thinking about it. Alec wanted to nerd out on those secret systems, and the conversations that resulted are fascinating and fun: you don’t get into this line of work unless you have a passion for it. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/452538242/here-s-the-thing-with-alec-baldwin

Blogs, Link repositories, etc

  • Center for Active Design The Center for Active Design is the leading non-profit organization that uses design to foster healthy and engaged communities. We take a multi-disciplinary approach to translating research into practical design solutions. We guide the creation and implementation of initiatives that respond to unique community priorities, and result in measurable outcomes. https://centerforactivedesign.org
  • Design Observer AIGA blog http://www.designobserver.com
  • Impact Design Hub Impact Design Hub is an online resource for people committed to designing a better world. The blog, directory, video channels, job board, and more provide information and tools for impact designers to do more meaningful work and tackle wicked problems. http://www.impactdesignhub.org
  • Service Design Network Service Design is crucial for all private and public organisations that want to innovate and improve their service strategies, offerings and the user experiences. The Service Design Network (SDN) is the platform to connect you with like-minded passionate service designers from companies, agencies and universities, and with curious innovators who embrace and apply this approach for the better of their organisations and for people http://www.service-design-network.org
  • Sensory Studies Site dedicated to Sensory studies. It includes the following resources: Research Directory, books of note, events of note, Sensory Curricula, Syllabi, Etc., Picture gallery, Sound Gallery, Sensorial Investigations, The Senses and Society, etc http://www.sensorystudies.org/
  • Sounding Out! Sounding Out! is a weekly online publication, a networked academic archive, and a dynamic group platform bringing together sound studies scholars, sound artists and professionals, and readers interested in the cultural politics of sound and listening.  Every Monday, our writers offer well-researched, well-written, and accessible interventions in sound studies, directing the field’s energy toward the social, cultural, and political aspects of sound and listening, particularly their differential construction of and material impacts on variously positioned bodies. https://soundstudiesblog.com
  • Sound Links John is a habitual saver of links about sound. Here is his repository. https://groups.diigo.com/group/sound-research

 

Exhibitions
Projects
Audio Walking Tours
Freshkills Artists
Research Labs
Journals
Readings
– Arable Labs
– Art and Environment
– Design and Ethnography Methods
– Freshkills and Parks
– Garbage, Waste
– Placemaking
– Service Design (includes design for public sector)
– Sensorium (and Sound related)
– Sonification of data
– Urban Interventions
Toolkits
Co-design and prototyping
Lectures / Talks / Videos / Podcasts
Blogs, link repositories, etc