Add photos and or video from the final exhibition
Analysis of my my exhibition.
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Exhibition Preparation
There are a few things that I want to do before the final exhibition. This includes taking some photography to support the 'slave to time' concept that inspired and informed our cinematic flaneur project and make a sound-scape that displayed our concept for aural terrains.
Aural Terrains Performance
On the right is the the DVD cover that Chris kindly designed for us from footage of our performance at the St. Paul Street Gallery.
The performance was difficult to judge from the viewpoint of a performer so I have decided to create a sound-scape so the performance can be judged from every point in the room for better analysis of the sounds situations that can be created.
All in all I am happy with how our performance concept, I felt that the St. Paul Street performance was not as effective as our first performance that we carried out in front of our class, I put this down to several things. Firstly there was a much larger number of people 'out of the loop' when we first performed, this gave us a much larger opportunity to affect different people in different ways. Secondly when we performed the first time we had only our team performing and this gave us a greater level of control of what the acoustics in the room where. One alteration that I am glad that we added was the composition in the end; I feel that because St. Paul Gallery's was so tall and had such a large level of reverb the building of the sound level was a lot more challenging than in the chromakey room so I felt having a rhythm to settle into in the last 15 seconds of the performance piece really aided in the understanding of our concept as a whole.
Below is the audio from our live performance at the St. Paul Street Gallery.
Pre-performace
On the right is the props that we will have set up to create to help Chris in creating an authentic looking performance.
There are lots of plugs for him to play with and several components that should all appear to be a semi-complex setup. The role of this 'fake performance' is essentially crowd control. We are working with the premise that the crowd will need to be quiet and respectful for our 'rude' sounds to have maximum effect. Chris will introduce our piece and inform the crowd that " it will be very quiet so can he please have a respectful audience"; after this we require him only to look authentic and provide a focal point for the audience that looks like he is doing enough for them to believe he is performing but that perhaps it is too quiet or not going quite right. We want the atmosphere to be as awkward as possible as this will promote annoyance, embarrassment and other negative feelings towards the perpetrators of the inappropriate noise in the crowd.
We are quite nervous about the upcoming performance as there is no way of knowing how the space will be set up when the whole class is setup there. We also are quite aware that we are relying on many individuals outside the group to make noise for us from all angles in a simultaneously subtle, annoying and natural manor. We earlier on decided that we wanted the sound to be authentic and live as we feel it is a lot more relevant to our concept to have real people producing real sound but in the lead up to the actual performance it is one less thing that we can control.
One thing that I find comforting about this though is that we are proposing that all sound is relevant, so no matter what our volunteers produce it can't really be wrong, it might only be less effective than hoped in aggravating the crowd.
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| 'Rude Awakening' Props |
We are quite nervous about the upcoming performance as there is no way of knowing how the space will be set up when the whole class is setup there. We also are quite aware that we are relying on many individuals outside the group to make noise for us from all angles in a simultaneously subtle, annoying and natural manor. We earlier on decided that we wanted the sound to be authentic and live as we feel it is a lot more relevant to our concept to have real people producing real sound but in the lead up to the actual performance it is one less thing that we can control.
One thing that I find comforting about this though is that we are proposing that all sound is relevant, so no matter what our volunteers produce it can't really be wrong, it might only be less effective than hoped in aggravating the crowd.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Annoying Composition
This piece is a response to what we thought might be a potential problem in the understanding of our performance. We do not want our performance to be too 'exclusive' as some art is; because the majority of the piece is actually performed at the expense of the audience (who were initially only going to find out if and when they realised what was going on) we did really want to let everyone who was still clueless at the end in on the gag.
We have done this by composing a few rhythmic bars that will be carried out after a cellphone going off in the crowd. (At which point the fact that members of the crowd are actually performing and not just being rude should become clear.)
We have also decided on some specifics for the final performance; this includes a name for the performance... we will call it ' A Rude Awakening'. This a nice play on words and will aid the audience in understanding our concept when it is reflected upon. We have also decided on having Chris C as our 'performer' at the front of the room; we will set him up with plenty of props and will choreograph his near-silent and intended very awkward performance slot at the front of the room.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Annoyance Performance Concept
On Friday we all presented our concepts to the class for critique and input from our peers. We performed with a much better response than we were expecting and that has boosted our team confidence going into the week of the final performance.
Our performance concept involves subverting the attention of the audience by staging a quiet 'performance gone wrong' on stage that we ask the audience to be particularly quiet for; unbeknown to the audience however is the real performance is going on in the crowd around them. We are going to have a number of actors infiltrate the audience and produce annoying sounds that will get progressively louder and more obnoxious.
In essence the real performance will be all around the people that are there to watch. The statement in this piece is that we need to re-tune our ears and mind to consider that the sound that we produce is as valid as that that we gather to watch be performed.
Our performance concept involves subverting the attention of the audience by staging a quiet 'performance gone wrong' on stage that we ask the audience to be particularly quiet for; unbeknown to the audience however is the real performance is going on in the crowd around them. We are going to have a number of actors infiltrate the audience and produce annoying sounds that will get progressively louder and more obnoxious.
In essence the real performance will be all around the people that are there to watch. The statement in this piece is that we need to re-tune our ears and mind to consider that the sound that we produce is as valid as that that we gather to watch be performed.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Performance Space
Today we formed our group to work with on the final project for the Aural Terrains brief. I will be working with Anneke and Chris C on our final project.
We also checked out the St. Paul Street Gallery where we will be performing if our work is not 'space specific'. We participated in some interesting tests performed by Rob and started to explore our performance space visually and with Rob's help, aurally as well.
There will be some interesting challenges with the space provided, the space is approximately 5 stories tall so there is a lot of reverberation to be taken into consideration. The area is also relatively small so the audience will be packed into quite a small space.
This trip has given us some aural considerations to discuss as a group so we can perform to optimally for the space.
We also checked out the St. Paul Street Gallery where we will be performing if our work is not 'space specific'. We participated in some interesting tests performed by Rob and started to explore our performance space visually and with Rob's help, aurally as well.
There will be some interesting challenges with the space provided, the space is approximately 5 stories tall so there is a lot of reverberation to be taken into consideration. The area is also relatively small so the audience will be packed into quite a small space.
This trip has given us some aural considerations to discuss as a group so we can perform to optimally for the space.
Week 3 Improvisation Workshop
To start the week we had an awesome improvisation workshop with Chris O Conner. I found this really useful and insightful as I has essentially no musical background (a feeling shared by many) and it really helped to have a workshop to get us starting to experiment with and enjoy sound.
There were some interesting observations I made from the workshop, on both a group dynamic level and on a personal note. I really enjoyed how people contributed a lot more when we turned out the lights, for someone who is new or lacks confidence this really seemed to produce an anonymity that allowed people to relax and experiment.
On a personal level I really enjoyed the sound of everyone singing... I think this was an instrument that people had quite a good feeling of, where as the clapping game was largely about coordination rather than awareness.
Altogether I think the practice with instruments at the end was the most helpful as we tried out all the different ways to play including a 'scribble' or trying to hit the 'sweet spot' ... the best noise achievable from a particular instrument.
Chris definitely has provided some much needed food for thought before the upcoming final project.
There were some interesting observations I made from the workshop, on both a group dynamic level and on a personal note. I really enjoyed how people contributed a lot more when we turned out the lights, for someone who is new or lacks confidence this really seemed to produce an anonymity that allowed people to relax and experiment.
On a personal level I really enjoyed the sound of everyone singing... I think this was an instrument that people had quite a good feeling of, where as the clapping game was largely about coordination rather than awareness.
Altogether I think the practice with instruments at the end was the most helpful as we tried out all the different ways to play including a 'scribble' or trying to hit the 'sweet spot' ... the best noise achievable from a particular instrument.
Chris definitely has provided some much needed food for thought before the upcoming final project.
Audio Circuit Improvised Performances
The end of week two was celebrated with our group improvised performances, many thanks to Seb, Corey and Emma who performed with me.
I found the performance really interesting as our group had elected not to rehearse and instead to perform in front of the class in our first time together.
I think that this decision really forced us to listen and respond to each other instead of going through the motions as we might have if we had practiced prior to the performance.
One difference I really noticed between us and others was that we really wanted to make sure our piece wasn't too short as we felt that a lot of the previous performances had been cut short just as they were beginning to evolve into something that was really working well.
A regret of mine was that my circuit was hugely quieter than the others that I was performing with and thus was often drowned out during the performance. Although this was an interesting dynamic that was a point of difference in our performance and I continued playing past when the other instruments were stopped and this was very subtle and produced a more gradual fadeout towards the end of the piece.
Altogether I was really impressed with the week as I have very limited experience with electronics and it is very satisfying when you surpass your own expectations.
I found the performance really interesting as our group had elected not to rehearse and instead to perform in front of the class in our first time together.
I think that this decision really forced us to listen and respond to each other instead of going through the motions as we might have if we had practiced prior to the performance.
One difference I really noticed between us and others was that we really wanted to make sure our piece wasn't too short as we felt that a lot of the previous performances had been cut short just as they were beginning to evolve into something that was really working well.
A regret of mine was that my circuit was hugely quieter than the others that I was performing with and thus was often drowned out during the performance. Although this was an interesting dynamic that was a point of difference in our performance and I continued playing past when the other instruments were stopped and this was very subtle and produced a more gradual fadeout towards the end of the piece.
Altogether I was really impressed with the week as I have very limited experience with electronics and it is very satisfying when you surpass your own expectations.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Circuit Bent Radio
I have found a portable radio at home so am having a go to see what sounds I can get out of it. I would like to hopefully distort what is playing live on the radio so that the same result will never be repeated twice.
This is an awesome example of some of the sounds that might come from the finished product click here.
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| My radio to be 'bent' |
This is an awesome example of some of the sounds that might come from the finished product click here.
Switching to the Prototype Board...
After bread-boarding up the circuits we then had to move them to a prototyping board. This proved to be a lot more challenging.
This is my successfully 'Champ' circuit (amplifier). I am very proud to say that it works and also that I have added an on/off switch, an inlet so that I can plug in multiple sound-making devices and a potentiometer (variable resistor) to control the volume.
Instead of creating one of the circuit diagrams we have been given for a 'noise making' device I am going to see if I can find some old electronics around home that can be circuit bent. I really like the idea of reusing and recycling components and also the potential for odd noises to come out of the shell of a toy that usually has a predictable sounds.
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| This is my 'Champ' with adjustments on a prototype board |
This is my successfully 'Champ' circuit (amplifier). I am very proud to say that it works and also that I have added an on/off switch, an inlet so that I can plug in multiple sound-making devices and a potentiometer (variable resistor) to control the volume.
Instead of creating one of the circuit diagrams we have been given for a 'noise making' device I am going to see if I can find some old electronics around home that can be circuit bent. I really like the idea of reusing and recycling components and also the potential for odd noises to come out of the shell of a toy that usually has a predictable sounds.
Circuit Bent Furby's
This to me is an interesting circuit bending project because as well as dealing with audio there is also a performative aspect as furby's are animated. There is a real eerie feel to these modified creatures but I do like the potential for customisation.
As an after note, I have found that I have thrown out my furby... this is good and bad, furby's seem quite a common electronic to circuit bend and that might reduce the challenge if I could simply follow a tutorial online. However I was really excited about the animation that a toy like a furby provides supplementary to the warped audio.
If you want to view a 'furby-bending' tutorial click here or here.
As an after note, I have found that I have thrown out my furby... this is good and bad, furby's seem quite a common electronic to circuit bend and that might reduce the challenge if I could simply follow a tutorial online. However I was really excited about the animation that a toy like a furby provides supplementary to the warped audio.
If you want to view a 'furby-bending' tutorial click here or here.
Circuit Bending
We have all started by making the same two circuits, one is a microphone and the other is an amplifier. Bread-boarding has been a really good introduction into the subject as it has been relatively achievable and all in all a really satisfying introduction, the challenge I think will be in creating a noise making circuit that is different from others in the class.
Friday, October 01, 2010
Sound Palette
I have included only the sounds that I have actually used in my composition as we took over 40 field recordings and displaying them all would be too much data.
Click here to get zip file of sounds used in my individual composition.
There was a wide variety of sounds that interested us and I think we did a good job of getting out there and satisfying our need for aural experimentation. Although the large number of recordings made their processing difficult in the limited time-frame I am glad that we followed the impulse through.
Click here to get zip file of sounds used in my individual composition.
There was a wide variety of sounds that interested us and I think we did a good job of getting out there and satisfying our need for aural experimentation. Although the large number of recordings made their processing difficult in the limited time-frame I am glad that we followed the impulse through.
Finished Audio Compositions
We were asked this week to create two compositions from our field recordings, one as a team composition and one as an individual composition.
Group Composition
Our Group composition has not been as effective as I might have hoped. We got quite enthusiastic with our recordings and have in effect recorded too much to process in such a short time. We have two major themes in our recordings; one is dark sounds, that we created in the structures at North Head while the other is a steep contrast and is domestic sounds captured from within our own homes.
To process this much information and to deal with the opinions of an entire group we decided to randomly select a number of recordings and combine these with the aim of working with exactly with what each recording contained and and not trying to control their content. This idea stemmed from the idea that all sounds are vibrations and thus cannot be right or wrong although conventional music would have us believe otherwise.
While I think it was a nice notion to combine different sound and allow their content to speak for themselves I do not think it produced a particularly effective result. There was a lot of pollution and accidental sounds that were used and this non selective process didn't really encourage cohesion within the piece.
North Head Composition (Individual)
For my individual recording I have used sounds exclusively from the North Head location. These sounds stood out to me for their dark quality as well as the fact that they seem to work together as they were either created or recorded while in one location, this helped me with the idea of a 'sound picture'.
There is quite a wide range of sounds in the clip, although I wanted to stay largely away from making it a musical piece I did decide to include a beat as it was the darkest and deepest sound in my palette and there was a large amount of resulting reverberation that really sets the mood of the piece.
I have also included voices captured from others touring the caves as they are usually of children and are high and thus give maximum contrast (as well as inspiring a level of concern in the listener in hearing children in such a dark setting.)
I have used the beat centrally in the composition while the voices play solely in the right ear and other sounds gravitating towards the left
My individual composition is quite different from our group composition in that with the group recordings we had such a range of contrasting recordings that we dealt with the composition by random selection. As a result the composition was made up almost entirely of domestic sounds and on reflection is a little lackluster, I think that a bit more critical reflection and educated selection could have produced a more conjusive piece of work.
Group Composition
Our Group composition has not been as effective as I might have hoped. We got quite enthusiastic with our recordings and have in effect recorded too much to process in such a short time. We have two major themes in our recordings; one is dark sounds, that we created in the structures at North Head while the other is a steep contrast and is domestic sounds captured from within our own homes.
To process this much information and to deal with the opinions of an entire group we decided to randomly select a number of recordings and combine these with the aim of working with exactly with what each recording contained and and not trying to control their content. This idea stemmed from the idea that all sounds are vibrations and thus cannot be right or wrong although conventional music would have us believe otherwise.
While I think it was a nice notion to combine different sound and allow their content to speak for themselves I do not think it produced a particularly effective result. There was a lot of pollution and accidental sounds that were used and this non selective process didn't really encourage cohesion within the piece.
North Head Composition (Individual)
For my individual recording I have used sounds exclusively from the North Head location. These sounds stood out to me for their dark quality as well as the fact that they seem to work together as they were either created or recorded while in one location, this helped me with the idea of a 'sound picture'.
There is quite a wide range of sounds in the clip, although I wanted to stay largely away from making it a musical piece I did decide to include a beat as it was the darkest and deepest sound in my palette and there was a large amount of resulting reverberation that really sets the mood of the piece.
I have also included voices captured from others touring the caves as they are usually of children and are high and thus give maximum contrast (as well as inspiring a level of concern in the listener in hearing children in such a dark setting.)
I have used the beat centrally in the composition while the voices play solely in the right ear and other sounds gravitating towards the left
My individual composition is quite different from our group composition in that with the group recordings we had such a range of contrasting recordings that we dealt with the composition by random selection. As a result the composition was made up almost entirely of domestic sounds and on reflection is a little lackluster, I think that a bit more critical reflection and educated selection could have produced a more conjusive piece of work.
Recording Adventures Day 2
On Day 2 Anneke and I returned to North Head to perform some further experimentation with using the decaying structures to produce sound.
What really drew me back to the tunnels was the eerie sounds that we got off the first day's recordings and the amount of natural resources that were there that could be used in the production of sound.
As I have progressed with this week's assignment I have become more interested in the production of sound rather than recording sounds at random. Initially we were trying to see what sounds we could observe without our own interference but now I'm looking as it more as each area is a type of instrument that has the ability to make sound but it requires a catalyst (ie. us) to bring out its potential. I find this quite a valid way to tackle the assignment and think that as our interaction level has increased with the production of sound so has our creativity and our engagement with the assignment.
I think the hardest part will be to refine the amount of audio we have recorded and chose just the key sounds to compose our pieces out of.
As shown on the map on the left we recorded at many locations over the 2 days that we went out. In hindsight we probably could have condensed the areas that we chose and got a similar results but we did enjoy the process and learned a lot over the course of the week.
For a quick run down:
At the pink location I recorded the beach from within a cave.
At the orange we recorded domestic sounds inside a home.
At the red location we recorded traffic on the harbour bridge.
On the purple we recorded inside the ruins at North Head.
And finally at the yellow we recorded inside a central city carpark.
What really drew me back to the tunnels was the eerie sounds that we got off the first day's recordings and the amount of natural resources that were there that could be used in the production of sound.
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| Creating Sound at North Head Tunnels |
As I have progressed with this week's assignment I have become more interested in the production of sound rather than recording sounds at random. Initially we were trying to see what sounds we could observe without our own interference but now I'm looking as it more as each area is a type of instrument that has the ability to make sound but it requires a catalyst (ie. us) to bring out its potential. I find this quite a valid way to tackle the assignment and think that as our interaction level has increased with the production of sound so has our creativity and our engagement with the assignment.
I think the hardest part will be to refine the amount of audio we have recorded and chose just the key sounds to compose our pieces out of.
As shown on the map on the left we recorded at many locations over the 2 days that we went out. In hindsight we probably could have condensed the areas that we chose and got a similar results but we did enjoy the process and learned a lot over the course of the week.
 |
| Sound Recordings Map |
At the pink location I recorded the beach from within a cave.
At the orange we recorded domestic sounds inside a home.
At the red location we recorded traffic on the harbour bridge.
On the purple we recorded inside the ruins at North Head.
And finally at the yellow we recorded inside a central city carpark.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Office Sounds
During this weeks experiments I began thinking about the sound effects used in this song, towards the end they cleverly use a selection of common office products to supplement the music (approx. 1:38 onwards).
The song itself isn't what we are trying to produce but it does really demonstrate the variety of sound that can be collected from day to day sources and manipulated to make it musical or in the least pleasant to listen to.
The song itself isn't what we are trying to produce but it does really demonstrate the variety of sound that can be collected from day to day sources and manipulated to make it musical or in the least pleasant to listen to.
Radio Aporee
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| My Radio Aporee contribution at red arrow |
This location is interesting to me because this particular area is constantly in flux, I have lived in the Torbay area for my whole life and the cave is constantly appearing or disappearing because of the effects of erosion on the cliffs.
I found the recording quite soothing as you can hear bird life, waves and dripping water. The tranquil nature in the recording really is quite characteristic of the area, you get a slight removal from the weather outside causing a muffled effect on all the outside elements.
Recording Adventures Day 1
Today we have been exploring the greater Auckland area in a quest to satisfy all our initial recording concepts. The below photographs were taken at North Head one of the locations that we visited over the course of the day. This day for us was about experimenting with gathering any recording that the group was curious about.
One big thing that I noticed change through experimentation was our practice, my initial idea of recording underground at North Head was quite popular with the group once we got started, something that developed from that was a level of creating our own sound.
North Head proved a great venue because of the many broken or wrecked elements that were around to be experimented with, there was also a nice acoustic quality that came from recording in combined spaces. We have tried to stay away from being too 'musical' a lot of the sounds are rhythmic but I feel this does act to create a dark mood that suits the recorded sounds.
On review of the sounds we got I really like some of the starting elements, I do however feel that some of them are overdone as if we have tried to record too much at once and thus lost any purity of sound. I would be super keen to head back tomorrow with a bit more purpose and record some purer sounds as I think the location has some wonderful potential and a really dark ambient sound.
Interestingly the tunnels were also full of visiting families for the school holidays and we have found that a lot of high pitched children's voices have got into our recordings. Far from being a problem I actually really enjoyed the contrast between the high pitched child enthusiasm and the low pitch sounds created by us underground, I really want to experiment with combining these two when I come to editing my field recordings.
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| Underground |
One big thing that I noticed change through experimentation was our practice, my initial idea of recording underground at North Head was quite popular with the group once we got started, something that developed from that was a level of creating our own sound.
North Head proved a great venue because of the many broken or wrecked elements that were around to be experimented with, there was also a nice acoustic quality that came from recording in combined spaces. We have tried to stay away from being too 'musical' a lot of the sounds are rhythmic but I feel this does act to create a dark mood that suits the recorded sounds.
On review of the sounds we got I really like some of the starting elements, I do however feel that some of them are overdone as if we have tried to record too much at once and thus lost any purity of sound. I would be super keen to head back tomorrow with a bit more purpose and record some purer sounds as I think the location has some wonderful potential and a really dark ambient sound.
Interestingly the tunnels were also full of visiting families for the school holidays and we have found that a lot of high pitched children's voices have got into our recordings. Far from being a problem I actually really enjoyed the contrast between the high pitched child enthusiasm and the low pitch sounds created by us underground, I really want to experiment with combining these two when I come to editing my field recordings.
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| Our happy group (and Chris in a daisy chain!) |
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