Journal 8

Journal 8 : final project preliminary proposal DUE 11/24 by 9am

(in preparation for one-on-one consultations with me, times TBA)

Describe in detail: What sounds (and images) you will use, how you will get them, how you will alter and compose them, and with what effect in mind.  What do you want to express or explore in this project?

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For my final project, I don't want to include images because I want to focus solely on the sounds I use. At the moment, I am thinking of combining both recorded sounds and ready-made sounds online to get a variety of sounds. To alter and compose them, I am interested in playing with each sound's unique beat, tone, pitch, etc. and play with the musique concrete idea. I don't feel like I really explored the possibilities of musique concrete last time, and I really enjoyed others' projects that really sounded like music and had a beat and rhythm to them. For now, I want to explore the unique sounds of objects to make a musique concrete piece. Possibly mixing lighter sounds like bells and chimes, with the drones of machines. For now, I'm not sure if I want to make that symbolize anything, or if I just want to purely explore their sound qualities. 

Test Pattern

TCS121: Intro to Sonic Arts

November 19, 2015

Blog 7

Ryoji Ikeda "Test Pattern"

Imagine your experience of these versions.  How is this piece different in each of the two venues? What is the same?  How is this "one" piece, or not?  What are the implications of this for sound art?

Ryoji Ikeda's "Test Pattern" piece was incredibly engaging and fascinating to me. I found that the venue inside (at certain camera angles) positioned people into the work. At certain angles, it made the people in that space appear to be placed in a digital broken realm. In the other version outside in New York, it was more of a spectator experience because the audience isn't physically interacting with the piece, but rather engrossed in the sound and watching the visuals quite separate and distant from them. What is the same for both, however, is the appreciation for the synchronistic experience of the sound and visuals, giving a satisfaction to the audience. Especially from the first version where the piece was located inside, I found it to be a campaign or message about people and technology. With the flashing lights visual and the static, tech music that matched, and the people interacting or placed on top of those visuals, seemed to be this message about how engrossed society is with technology and how the world seems to have gone "silent" with each other in this otherwise "noisy" buzzing tech-focused world.

Musicless Music

TCS121: Intro to Sonic Arts

November 7, 2015

Blog 6

Musicless Music Videos

Watch one of the music-less music videos along with the original. Compare what you see, hear and feel. How does the sound change the message of the music video?

        

         For the song Stay, by Rihanna, the musicless music video has a comedic mood as opposed to the original music video, which has a more serious, depressing mood. The musicless verision was just a snippet from the beginning of the original. The scenes for this version was Rihanna removing her clothes and moving in the water-filled tub. There are close ups of her sad face as well as her bare stomach. The only things I hear are the movements she makes in the water as well as her moans and the gurgling of her stomach. Basically, the sounds she makes as if this was the recording they made while filming the music video (but in the video description this was a parody). When they zoomed in on her stomach, you can her her stomach gurgling, and later you hear sounds that make you assume she farted in the water, adding to the humor of this parody. In the beginning it made me feel touched, to see the intimacy of this filming, thinking that this was the actual raw recording of the music video. However, I was confused when I thought she had farted, but thinking this was the real video of her. Later I read the description and comments, realizing the video was a parody with inserted audio, which I then thought made the whole experience funny and clever. This changed the original message of the music video, which was made to be a serious, emotional, moving and sad piece, to one of humor and awkwardness to see a well-known celebrity as Rihanna to fart and moan in a bathroom. 

Textuell and data.flex

TCS121: Intro to Sonic Arts

November 3, 2015

Blog 5

Reading: Caleb Kelly's Sound p. 80-86, 162-165

Audio: Oval's "Textuall" and Ikeda's "data.flex"

1. Describe the sounds you hear in "Textuell" and "data.flex."  Try to use more adjectives, and avoid describing the works in terms of genre or other music you've heard (which your reader may not know).  How are the sounds in these two pieces the same? Different?
1. The sounds I hear from both audio pieces are very "tech/electronic" sounding. Textuell has a constant beat and rhythm, with consistent sounds, such as a tiny ring every so often, as well as certain "instruments" that make the same sounds over and over. It sounds like it was created digitally, or at least it sounds like recordings that were then manipulated digitally to sound electronic. There isn't a huge shift or change in the piece. At certain moments there is a slight shift which transitions into a new tempo, but overall, the piece is rather constant. 
2. Ikeda's data.flex is similar in that it sounds like it was digitally created. However, it starts off with random static sounds that make it seem like the file is broken, then transitions into the actual piece. Like Textuell, it has a consistent beat and use of the same sound elements over and over again, such as a static ringing sound that pops in and out. It's different in that it does have elements and moments in the piece where it abruptly stops or shifts, whereas Textuell was more subtle in its shifts. 

1. Describe how the sounds make you 'feel' in all senses of the word.  Do you have a physical reaction? An emotional one? Describe.  Also write about how you listened to the works (in headphones? a noisy room? late at night while sleepy?).  Did the conditions of your listening contribute to your response to the pieces?
1. The sounds from both pieces made me feel at ease because the beats were in a constant tempo, with not huge surprises. It made me feel like I was in an electronic, futuristic, almost dystopian mood because I associate tech sounding audio with dystopian futuristic movies. The static elements of the pieces also made me think of the buzzing of electronics or the static and sounds of when they are broken. I listened to the pieces late at night in my room with one earphone, because my earphone set is broken. I feel the conditions of my listening helped me focus on the audio, because I did not have any other distractions. However, if I had both earphones functional, I would feel more immersed into that intended audio environment these artists had in mind. 

1. Analyze the pieces (and your response) in terms of time vs. duration as set out by Cox in his article (above).
1. The pieces were created to play within a certain time period, and only lasts for a certain amount of time. However, these pieces could be repeated for an unlimited duration because at the beginning and end of the pieces, there is enough breathing space to loop the songs without sounding like it was unintentional.