5 min read

On the 5th of January 2022, sound designers and sound artists, Felix Deufel and Nikhil Nagaraj facilitated a day-long workshop at the Indian Sonic Research Organization (theISRO), Bengaluru. After touring India and Germany with their latest 3D audio production/performance If we Vanish, Felix and Nikhil wanted to pass a few of their skills on to empower students, sound artists, producers and other practitioners to work with spatial audio.

3 min read

This is a step by step tutorial that shows the process of building a Brahma Ambisonic microphone. You start by modifying a Zoom H2n and converting it into an ambisonic microphone by following these simple steps. This tutorial was written and compiled by Sai, Dhanya, Sushmita, Aayush and Sudhanshu with the help of Umashankar Manthravadi.

Introduction to Brahma Microphone

Brahma Microphone is an ambisonic microphone made by modifying the Zoom H2n microphone. The Zoom H2n is the successor of the H2 microphone. The Brahma microphone can be used as a portable ambisonic recording device. The capsules in the Zoom H2n are small and convenient to use but capture more noise. By introducing bigger (14 mm) capsules that capture less noise in a tetrahedral array to the Zoom H2n microphone, it can be modified as an ambisonic microphone.

1 min read

Soundchains - Virtual Artistic Exchange program hosted at TheISRO and supported by Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Bangalore and THE STORY LAB@The Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology has hit the halfway mark. The collaborating artists, Sergey Khismatov and Chaitanya Krishnan are working hard to create a VR and spatial audio experience based on one of Sergey’s composition’s titled ‘Zoophony’. For Sergey, this project is the culmination of a decade’s worth of collecting sounds of animals.

Oct 29, 2021 . 6 min read

This was an interview conducted with Mr. Umashankar Mantravadi by Yashas Shetty. The interview was conducted in January 2021 and explores “acoustic archaeology” and its tools. We’re still working on the accuracy of the transcript but this is what we have so far.

Recording the Oggu Performance in Anupu.

Picture courtesy: Mr. Umashankar Mantravadi

4 min read

Introduction to Sound Synthesis and Computer Music Interfaces through Creative-Coding Experiments in JavaScript

In October ’21, we conducted a ten-day workshop for students of the Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology, where we introduced the participants to the fundamentals of Computational Sound using p5.js — a creative JavaScript library. During the first half, participants were given a contextual overview of computational sound, where they were presented with a history of electronic music instruments and interfaces through certain documentaries and readings. During this time, they also started exploring p5.js as a creative coding environment. Initially, they undertook experiments with text & image, and later went on to explore sound synthesis using the p5.js sound library.

21 min read

Updated: Oct 8, 2021

This was an interview with Umashankar Manthravadi by Yashas and the students of the Build your own D.I.Y radio station workshop. The interview was conducted on 19/08/2020 and covers various topics including radio in India, censorship during the Emergency and other related topics. Mr. Umashankar Manthravadi life’s work was also a part of a retrospective at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt at Berlin.Sudipto Sanyal from Radio Quarantine, Kolkata also joined us for this interview session.