Umashankar Mantravadi is a sound recordist and technician who has spent the last ten years building low-cost ambisonic microphones and using them to document musical performances and take acoustic measurements in archaeological spaces.

His development, the Brahma microphone, is a four-headed ambisonic microphone designed to capture spatial sound environments in detail.

During this workshop, he discussed the history and significance of ambisonic microphone design, its relevance to audio recording and reproduction, and the possibilities of spatial listening.

12 mins read

These are a set of field notes written by ISRO artist in residence, Pratyay Raha about our last field trip to Valparai in Tamil Nadu. This is a set of notes on our regular series on acoustic ecology, listening and environmental sounds.

Field notes

Monday, December 5, 2022:

We started with an introductory session by Dr. David Picherit (Anthropologist and Researcher at CNRS France) He briefed us on the project which he termed ‘Sensitive Approach to Forest’. The key areas of exploration discussed were:

6 min read

On June 22nd, the team at TheISRO conducted a research field trip to Janapada Loka, a folk museum in Ramanagara, on the Bangalore-Mysore highway. Established in 1994 under the aegis of the Karnataka Janapada Parishat by H. L. Nage Gowda, Janapada Loka exhibits a vast display of village folk arts and artefacts of Karnataka.

With The I.S.R.O’s foray into archiving through building LEKHA, an art archival platform, this visit was intended to understand current practices of maintaining such large collections and identify possible opportunity areas, especially in the digitisation of artefacts and exhibits, which could possibly impact design decisions about the structure of LEKHA.

3 min read

On the 17th of September, Dr Lokesh Boregowda, the head of the Samsung AR vision labs of Samsung R&D, Bangalore visited TheISRO to present a talk on what it would take to build the metaverse and the factors that would go into building it. It was a brief overview on all the various actors that would play a part in this paradigm shift of immense proportions. He outlined the roles of each of the players in the industry.The talk was attended by both Srishti students as well as people from the general public.

12 min read

Updated: Oct 28, 2021

Felix Deufel is a media artist based in Germany, he works intensively with 3D Audio as format and medium for different purposes. During his BangaloreResidency at The Indian Sonic Research Organisation in 2017, he established the 3D SoundLab Bengaluru and held the first 3D audio workshop in Bangalore. He also collected a huge archive of field recordings, played two sound performances and a DJ set.

7 min read

Updated: Aug 2, 2022

This article seeks to discuss metadata in the context of sound archives. It is informed by ongoing research at The I.S.R.O to build LEKHA.CC, an art archival platform from the ground up. Building on The I.S.R.O’s work in sonic research, special emphasis has been placed on sound, as a medium, to be significantly represented on LEKHA from the beginning. LEKHA thus aims to democratise archiving as a process through a usable and accessible platform, which can support a myriad of file formats.

4 min read

Updated: Jul 6, 2022

Open Invitation Recording Trip

On 28th of May 2022, A team of 5 individuals embarked on a trip to the Rocky hills near Magadi, about 40 kms from Bangalore. Their intention was to capture sonically, what this 2.5 billion year old, geological structure.. The 2 day recording initiative was focused on capturing space, vastness, stillness and reactions in the varied landscapes surrounding these rocks. The project aims to provide a perspective for the world we inhabit, without making the human being the largest player in the game. Anchored in The rocky landscape of Ramanagara, Karnataka, an ancient geological site, this team is trying to give the rocks, the trees and the animals and the non-human life the role of protagonist in their stories, leaving man as a witness in the vast scale of space and time around him.

8 min read

This article aims to explore AI’s role in music and introduce a few public tools that musicians can use to incorporate AI and machine learning in their practice.

Artificial Intelligence for Music production can be broadly categorized into two areas: music information retrieval (MIR) and generative music. While music information retrieval sounds intimidating, all this involves is using AI to analyse any sound data and extract certain information from it, such as the key, its texture, its frequency range, etc. This information can then be used to modulate or edit the original sound file to change its key, mood or other components. Generative music on the other hand is concerned with the creation of ‘creative AIs’ that can produce music on their own.

3 min read

Part 1 of this blog post covered generative music which involves an AI producing a music piece on its own, mimicking human creativity. This idea has probably scared a few of you who believe that one day AI will take over the world and replace humans at their jobs. However, the reality of the matter is that long before that happens (if it happens), AI will serve to augment the abilities of humans and let them do things they could never have done before. AI has already transformed many professions through its applications as powerful tools for professionals to harness, and music is no exception. This section covers some of the AI tools available to musicians today.

Inter-Species Communication

Experimenta 2015

ApsaraModular Synth

Story of light