2007-12-08T12:15:00.001-08:00

Intervention sound based onto the act of hearing

video Rafael Adaime

The performance works with the idea of signboard holders who advertise the buying of gold on the street. In this performance the artist to offers the sound subject – AURI – as a product.

radio interview with Matt Lewis

> > L I S T E N < <

following how to participate via Internet

art and pictures by Dona Faleiros

Performance

A person wearing a signboard on which BUY AURI (a play on words, signifying the precious audio object) is written will situate themselves in the same commercial district as the other sign wearers where the act of listening will be commercialized, the sign holder offering to pay them to listen – they will also have a tripod with CDs and a computer with audio data. The listener will choose the format of the music: either CD or digital data if they have an MP3 player /mobile phone /or pen drive onto which to transfer the data. On receiving the sound material the listener will receive R$1.50

Hearing as immaterial production

The ubiquity of MP3 players, cell-phones and the access to music through Internet file sharers – such as Emule, Soulseek, Kazza – has provoked disscussion around the buying and selling of music. It has also provoked recording companies to find new ways in which to sell us their products and has seen a radical transformation whereby the concentration is on the selling of portable gadgets on which to access music and information.

The BUY AURI performance seeks to dislocate the Web-Based musical market, questioning listeing as consumption by selling the act in an urban space. If the market place has been radically changed, the same seems to have happened with the act of listening . Why buy music if it is possible to get it for free? What is the sense in having to pay to listen to music? There is another way of perceiving the situation. Thinking to the extreme we should ask ourselves, why can't we invent a new market order? Instead of paying to listen music, perhaps we should be paid to listen!

Thinking about the diversity and quantity of sound media available today, listening is under a incessant sate of consumption. What the mobile gadgets transmit is not just music, but a listening behaviour, often in a bubble, where it is not important what you are listening to but the consumption of listening. In this context, hearing is a productive act, these products generating a virtual congestion in the market. BUY AURI tries to deal with some of these aspects that relate to listening and related strategies to a perception economy.

How much to listen?

The price reflects the current commercial rates of the Internet based sites that commercialize this kind of transfer. The average being R$1,50 to listen to around 3 minutes of music.

Sound Material

The MPEG/audio algorithm compresses the audio data in large part by removing the acoustically irrelevant parts of the audio signal. That is, it takes advantage of the human auditory system's Reticular Ear's inability to hear quantization noise under conditions of auditory masking. The idea is to use the bands of frequencies that are on the threshold of audibility, that MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) allows and with which portable devices and earphones operate.

Esta obra está licenciada sob uma
Licença Creative Commons.

How to participate by Internet [limited period]

Send your email, name and bank account to giulianobici@yahoo.com.br with the title BUY AURI

R$ 1,50 will be deposited into your account and you'll be sent a sound file or a link by email.

Performances

November 2006 Av. Paulista event Respública.

October 2007 SESC Pompéia event Música Livre.

translation and english review
Vinicius Lambert /Alex Monthfort / Matt Lewis

GIULIANO OBICI acts like a researcher and multimedia artist with emphasis in sound design. He has recently completed a Masters in Communication and Semiotics (PUC-SP 2006) researching “Hearing Condition: medias and sound territory” supervised by the composer Dr. Silvio Ferraz. Giuliano has a Psychology degree (UEM – 2004). The main themes of his research are: hearing, subjectivity, technology and power. He co-produces the radio program Ubitatá with psychiatric patients and runs a free software and hardware real time sound interaction course in SESC – SP. He is one half of the duo N-1 with the musician Alexandre Fenerich and founder of sound art group MURO.

. buy auri