The porcupine and the car
It was interesting in the porcupine and the car to be reminded that human senses limit the amout of information that we have to process (there is more information in the environment than we see, smell, hear, taste etc, there are things that we have no sense to be able to measure.) When you make a visual or sound piece you are delibrately limiting the information that you want to present and that is significant to your meaning.
It talks about the 'information deluge' and deciding what not to record is important. I can identify with the realisation that it takes a long time to listen to and edit recorded sound, to find the pieces that i want to use. There comes a time when I must stop recording and decide to work with what I have, because otherwise I'm just collecting more and more that is not really useful.
I thought it was interesting to think about how western music is founded on silence but other music such as indian music is founded on a drone note that decides what harmonies can be played with it. This is interesting to think of in my sound piece, are there background constant sounds that are built up from, or is the basis silence?
It helps me to think about a process of understanding the technology, gaining technical experience, knowledge, craft and technique, because I am only just beginning experiments in sound (and animation). The task of finding the unique characteristics of the medium is important, to understand what sound or animation can do, how it is different to other mediums, how to make the best of the medium I'm using, and how to learn the technical skills that let me do this.
He talks about video as being 'surrogate sensory perception systems' that are similar and different to our own senses. He talks about the things people hear and see when other senses are deprived, like in a floatation tank or a soundproof room, showing that even though we think we are 'windows' on the world letting information through unedited - we are actually changing and involved in what gets sensed. We cannot remove ourselves from our own sensation.
He stresses that what is not said is important. What is ambiguous is interesting, and multi-faceted. The gaps in recognition allow user perception to be involved in the meaning, and involving the interest.
'The limits are more in the user than in the tools' and 'technology is far ahead of the people using it' I think this is true, and people get sidetracked by always chasing new technology, when we have barely skimmed the surface of what current technology can do. This is important in not letting myself feel overwhelmed by not knowing anything about animation or sound. I can be comforted that I can aproach and explore from angles that I can imagine and learn technology to do what I can imagine, rather than trying to learn the technology and do what I can do.
Structure
The space for the piece is 60 to 90seconds. Over this time my elements will set the scene of the bar, introduce the atmosphere, and then begin a naration that ties the bar into the theme of one square metre. The bar noise will include layers of people's conversation, drink noise, glasses clinking etc. The bar noises need to set the scene and be the focus of attention at the begining including focus on actual conversation. Then the bar noise needs to fade down to allow the narration to be heard over the top.
The narration will pause and the ambient noise becomes the focus again, almost as if in the private world I can narrate and be heard louder even though the bar noise continues underneath. Then the piece will finish with the bar noise again, hopefully with a good snippet of conversation. I hope to also use repetition of recorded sounds like glasses clinking and pouring beer, as a repetition through the piece.
I'm working on telling a story through the narration, about the things I hear in conversation. Even though the space behind the bar is very small (one square metre) I hear a lot of interesting things.
Whats your take
I am exploring two ideas for my sound piece.
The idea of square dancing, I am thinking of including square dancing music that abstracts, and the sounds of people's feet dancing, the sound of the barn-dance type calling of the dance steps. I think this will be hard to have access to, but I will try to find a barn-dance to record at. Also I can get music off CD, and record the other sounds, I would like to layer the barn dance music and maybe abstract it or use repetion of elements, or use some of the loops from the audio program to abstract the music. Also I would then be able to record fake speaking of calling the dance moves to layer over the piece. It would reference futurism by being abstracted, and by taking folk-type music and abstracting to modern music, maybe by using loops of other noise and instruments. It could be a barn-dance in the small confined city with futurist noise, and cramped space.
My other idea is probably easier for me to get material for. I have recorded some ambient noise at work and it will be easy for me to record more. I work serving beer, and it is in a small space. There are lots of coversations that are interesting that I can record at work. I would like to layer sound effects and conversations and narration to make the theme of one square metre more developed rather than just ambient noise.
Rage
It is very interesting when you start to critically look at how sound and visuals interact. It is something that I take for granted, but now that I am conciously looking for it, it is fascinating.
In Rage there are many different examples of ideas of co-ordination of sound and visuals. There are many examples of montages that show visuals of people singing in time with the song. There are visuals with flashing or rythmic changes in time with the beat of the music, there are story type visuals which don't seem to directly relate to the sound, often the visuals seem quite removed from the sound, they don't tie together enough or feel a bit artifical in tying together just by the people moving their mouths or dancing in time with the sound.
Its intersting to wonder what is possible for animation that we are doing. (I don't really know but I expect that it would be really hard for example to animate realistic lips moving in time with spoken or sung word.) Some other issues I can imagine would be trying to coordinate even just a rythm - rythmic elemnts in the visual and sound piece that need to coinside, I think that would be very difficult to do.
Night air
The night air program is inspiring. The way the sound has been built up an layerd is very effective. There are spoken narration sections, interviewed words, music and sound effects that have been brought together to create a new work that fits together so well. repetition of sounds, breaks from a background music track, and then returning to the background track provide a unity to the overall work. Repetition of key words or phrases, and good levels of sound at different points lead the ear through the work.
The importance of varios sections of layered sound builds up in volume, and fades out to the background behind another foreground sound as the piece progresses. This provides a unity even though there are many sounds to tie together.
I think I would like to make my sound piece have different layers as background, spoken word, ambient sounds, sound effects or samples and music. It is very effective to use repetition, and abstract the sound pieces to tie them together.
Listen
I have been recording sounds. It is interesting to think about things that would be good to have recorded. Once I start listening for sounds, I hear things everywhere that I wouldn't have otherwise heard. It is like when you are looking for photos, you see photos everywhere.
I have recorded sounds in my house, on the bus, at work, at uni, I have also experimented with making sounds deliberately to record. It is difficult to make sounds which sound exactly as I imagine I want them. It shows me that I am not aware of sounds, and sound creation as I am about visual creation of images. I think it is a comment on our visual literacy that we find it much easier to capture and notice images than sounds. But when I am aware of looking for sounds, I hear them everywhere. (It is the same with sight, but I am far more used to capturing images with a camera than I am in capturing sounds with a sound recorder)
Futurism and audio art
Russian Futurism focused more on the audio and performing arts aspects of Futurism (more than Italian futurism). They embraced the noise and sounds that the mechanical revolution had given them.
Russian Futurism begun in 1912 with an article called A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, which called for new linguistic innovations, dislocated syntax, and strange word placement as elements of spoken word.
Kruchenykh and Khlebnikov, as well as Wassily Kandinsky, Nikolai Kublin, and composer Aleksandr Scriabin experimented in alternative sound creation.
Khlebnikov wrote a futurist play called Zangezi: A Supersaga in Twenty Planes. The hero of the play is a man who attempts to explain the language of birds, stars, insects and gods to a gathered mass. He manages to do this by creating a new language.
Russian Futurists made radical innovations in music. Wassily Kandinsky assigned each individual note a certain colour. He used dissonance in almost all of his works, and challenged the idea the sound must coincide with the actions on stage. Kandinsky is more known for his visual art than his audio art, but there is a great deal of his visual art that was inspired by his music. He would ‘see’ colours in music and paint what he saw. Then he would challenge audiences to guess which musical score inspired which painting.
In my audio piece I want to record some modern city noises, like the futurists. I want to experiment with spoken word and recording ambient conversations, to explore everyday usage of language rather than stricter gramatical usage, like the futurists broke away to use. I also like the idea of thinking towards the animation, with sounds corresponding to colours. If an abstract sound piece about one sqare metre could trigger futurist visions of the sound illustrated and animated.
One Square Metre
The length one metre has been defined in different ways over time. Measured by arbitary local customs, pendulums, fractions of the size of the earth and according to the speed of light. Maybe my sound piece could explore the differing definition of one metre over history and what this means for people's perception of space and their need for accuracy.
I could explore the way accuracy has increased so much in our lives today, and our scientific ideas and needs for accuracy have progressed so much, but rely on the same priniples as they did when people first started defining one metre.
Also look at the univeralising nature of definitions of space and time, the way a meter is now defined in terms of how far light travels in a certain time. This is an interesting concept to expolre for a sound/animation piece, because it links together space and time. Sound varies in how fast it travels so it wouldn't work as a constant definition. Maybe I could expolre that sound is not as constant in speed as light.
In 1790 one metre was measured by the length of a pendulum which took one second to swing. This was because they wanted a more standard unit of measurement because there was so much local variation.
In 1791 they decided a better measurement for the metre is a ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole.
In 1889 at the first General Conference on Weights and Measures they made a standard bar from platinum that measured exactly one metre at the melting point of ice. (this remeined the standard till 1960)
A metre is now defined as the distance travelled by light in absolute vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second. This is a more standard definition because light travels at the same speed everywhere.
One square metre reminds me of buying floor coverings like carpet or tiles by the square metre.
One square metre reminds me of square dancing, where people dance in a square pattern, and change partners, I think it is like a barn-dance type of dance.
One square metre makes me think of people locked up in detention centres, like refugees or political captives. In a tiny space people go crazy and are locked up against their will, often never knowing if or when they'll be released. Maybe I could explore a person who flees for their life to Australia, and gets locked in a detention centre where they don't speak the language and don't know when they'll ever get let out or sent back. And all the things they think about in the tiny overcrowded detention centre. Or maybe a political prisioner detained suspected of being a terrorist, but not having any rights. I could make a soundscape of being trapped in jail or detention.
One square meter makes me think of queing, like at the supermarket or bank, when people feel like they are closer than my personal space. And even though the people are standing so close to eachother, they hardly ever talk to eachother. I could record conversations that people have while waiting in a que. It could explore the way in modern life there are people all around us, standing very close, living next-door, but we can feel lonely, and never even talk to the person standing in a que with us. Like the isolation of modern life, or the strange conversations people have with strangers on the bus. Or overheard conversations that people say on the bus, but that are quite interesting stories that they are telling on the bus and everyone can hear, even though it is a private converstation.
