Stranger than fiction

Win a copy of Haunted Weather by David Toop

With thanks to author and sonic artist David Toop, here are some gems from his latest book, Haunted Weather (We have 10 copies of this excellent book to give away as prizes in our competition - see below for details of how to enter.)

You can listen live to sferics, tweeks, whistlers and other Very Low Frequency sound produced by the Earth's atmosphere and picked up by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama at http://spaceweather.com/glossary/inspire.html

In Soundscape Newsletter http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/WFAE/home/newsletter, composer and pianist Tadahiko Imada wrote about the early Showa period (1925-1989) custom of gathering to hear the sound of a lotus flower blooming at Ueno Park's Sinobazu-no-ike pond in early summer. 'However, the frequency of that sound is approximately 9-16 Hz,' he writes. 'As we normally hear sounds within a frequency range from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, people were unable to actually hear the sound of the bloom of a lotus flower. But the loved and wanted to to listen to that phantom sound. The experience was a kind of communal auditory hallucination.'

At the Molecular Gastronomy Research Centre in Bristol, research is being conducted into the sounds of food, how the sound of a particular food can influence its taste. Dr John Prinz has studies the way in which the sound of mastication enhances the perception of texture. Chewing sounds such as a crunch provoke immediate delicate adjustments of tooth and jaw action. Chef Heston Blumenthal was given a demonstration by Dr Prinz: 'He gave me a set of headphones and a piece of chewing gum, and then asked me to chew so that my jaw closed in time with the recorded crunching noise coming through the headphones. Something really bizarre happened: the noise triggered a signal in my brain, which in turn stopped my jaw from closing, almost as if I had lost the full use of my jaw. Subconsciously trying to counter this effect, I ended up bashing my teeth together while chewing the gum.'

To win a copy of this amazing book, simply answer the following question:

What is the world's loudest insect?

Send your answer to julian.treasure@thesoundagency.com. We will draw the 10 lucky winners from all the correct answers we receive.

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