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Academic Centers for Athletes Draw Donors
More than a dozen university athletics programs have added lavish new facilities in recent years, and academic-services budgets are soaring, a Chronicle survey finds. (Photograph courtesy of Texas A&M U.)
College Employees Value Campus Environment, Survey Finds
When a Chronicle survey asked college employees what they value about their jobs, they put the physical environment in which they work at the top of the list.
Rise in Tornadoes, Floods Poses Risk to Colleges
What if the sort of extreme weather that has left the University of Iowa inundated in floodwaters is not a freak event? What if it is a sign of things to come? (Photograph by AP Images)
Other News
After Hurricane Gustav, Campuses Clean Up
Cleanup crews scoured Gulf Coast campuses, removing downed limbs and repairing broken windows, while students and staff members forced out by Hurricane Gustav waited for word that they could return.
Lessons From Katrina Improve Colleges' Evacuations for Hurricane Gustav
College officials across the Gulf Coast were cautiously relieved when initial reports suggested the damage wasn't severe.
College of Southern Idaho Cafeteria Goes 'Tray-Less'
Students are also wasting less food because they no longer have the option of overloading their cafeteria trays, says the college's food-services director.
New campus buildings
Multimedia
A Green Building as a Billboard for Science
(A 2006 Chronicle video)
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About Buildings & Grounds
Buildings & Grounds is written by Scott Carlson (left) and Lawrence Biemiller (right). Scott Carlson writes about architecture, facilties, energy, and sustainability, among other topics. Lawrence Biemiller writes about architecture and facilities and contributes to Notes from Academe. What's happening on your campus? Let us know.
Playing Soon at Tufts U.: Soundgarden
The library at Tufts U. will feature a sound sculpture, from which visitors can hear sounds from around Boston. (Courtesy of Tufts U.)
Most sculptures are meant to be seen. But this month Tufts University unveils a sculpture designed to be heard.
Harmony in the Age of Noise, which will be installed on the roof of the university’s library, is a little tricky to describe. Its creators call it a sonic observation post. Tufts’s efforts to explain what that means involve opaque terms like parabolic gazebo and psychoacoustic maps.
 Testing the sound dial |
Basically, it will be a structure under which visitors can listen to sounds from one of three sources: a live feed from outside a campus building, student-made recordings from around Boston, or sound clips people have uploaded to the projects Web site. The online component will allow a person to send a message to someone else by having the recipient stand under the gazebo at a specified time.
Creating that experience requires technical precision. The structure is designed so that sounds can be heard beneath it, but not outside, and visitors will use a digital sound dial to choose the sound they want to hear.
The project, put together with help from Tufts students and a local Brownie troop, was dreamed up by a Tufts anthropology professor, David Guss, and a sound artist, Bruce Odland. In a culture that they say privileges visual information, Harmony is intended as an intense sonic exploration of our world, according to Mr. Guss. Yet he admits it’s tough to explain the effort without relying on words that have to do with sightlike gazebo, which, by the way, is thought to be a corruption of the Latin for I shall see.
After the exhibit at Tufts, Mr. Guss and Mr. Odland hope the installation can move to a different campus. If that works out, another college will have to explain what the heck it is.—Beckie Supiano
Scott Carlson | Thursday April 17, 2008 | Permalink | Contact usComments
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Harmony in the Age of Noise is an intentional soundscape installation. What is “tough to explain” about it, is that it is bringing together a collection of technologies that have never been used together before. The idea is that we live in a society that is visually oriented, and as a result, has forsaken the audio. On a day to day basis, we experience an audio-visual disconnect – that is the unintentional noises we encounter every day are tuned out to accommodate for what is a sight-dependent society. The project is a multi-layered piece that encourages those interacting with it to become aware of their sonic environment.
Visitors do not control the piece, rather the piece uses capacitance sensors to encourage user engagement. The piece was not created by students and a brownie troop; rather, it is the result of collaboration between NY artists Bruce Odland and Mark McNamara, with the help of skilled composers, sculptors, carpenters, astrophysicists, sonic engineers, structural engineers, and students of all ages – including a brownie troop in Chinatown Boston that Bruce held a workshop with.
As someone who has spent much time and energy collaborating with the people involved and working on this project, I am, quite frankly, shocked and disappointed at the amount of misinformation in this article. For substantive and informative discourse on the piece, please visit the website for Harmony in the Age of Noise:
www.age-of-noise.net
or, you can listen to the feature on NPR:
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=08-P13-00015&segmentID=6
— Sarah Moshontz de la Rocha Apr 18, 04:38 PM #