Journal 10

Journal 10 : Respond to/review/compare & contrast three student pieces presented in our final class meeting (12/10); one of these pieces may be yours, if you choose.

Keep in mind that to complete this assignment, you must access these projects online and listen to/watch the full pieces, not just the excerpts presented in class.

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[FIRST PIECE]

"Artificial Insurgents" - Ryan Little

I really enjoyed this piece, from beginning to end. I thought it was brilliant to use computerized, text to speech voices. It's a simple technique, but the script and how it was strung together made such a powerful, eerie, epic audio piece. By having so many voices, it creates the feeling that there is a whole army of rebellious pieces of technology. The conversations that the different technologies have with each other made the piece so much more real. I especially enjoyed the part where the stream was interrupted with a human coming into the room, hushing the technologies. The "restart" moment when things were played backwards and sped up was also a wonderful way to end and tie the piece together, creating this sense of urgency, or almost action to start the "tech rebellion". Such simple techniques, like text to speech, reverse, and minimal layers, but put together wonderfully and brilliantly, creating such an impactful and imaginative piece. 

[SECOND PIECE]

"Psychosis: I Hear Voices" - Michael Nguyen 

The fact that this was inspired (and I could clearly tell) by "Donnie Darko" made me already ready to like this piece. Once I heard it, I could clearly tell the influence by this film. The simplicity of the techniques and layers were minimal, yet it created such a strong, powerful narrative and sense of paranoia. The portrayal and representation of paranoia and anxiety was successfully executed through the clever use of several layers of voices playing at the same time. The added effect of these layered voices with lowered pitch and grainy quality really helped orient me in distinguishing between internal characters and external characters. The script was also created successfully in making me feel as anxious and nervous for the roommate character and the main character's well-being. 

[THIRD PIECE]

"Sine A Light (Chopped and Screwed)" - Azad Mukujian

I greatly appreciated the intent and motivation for this piece, not just because it was dedicated for a friend but also for the fact of making it known that a world-renowned band was problematic in their music because of cultural appropriation. I thought that the literal chopping and screwing of the pieces of the song was effective in reclaiming the song back from the Rolling Stones. The deterioration of the quality of the song was a successful way of protesting against such cultural appropriation, which is still a huge issue in today's music.

Journal 9

Journal 9: 
Revise your preliminary proposal (describing what you decided about the elements discussed in journal 8) and then relate your project #3 proposal idea to BOTH what you did in previous projects AND at least one of the pieces we listened to/watched/experienced in class
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My idea for my final project completely changed the more I thought about how I wanted to spend my last assignment. Being a leader in the Filipino American community on campus, issues regarding my cultural identity and cultural history is a big part of my identity and is important to me. The idea that came to me was inspired by the St. Louis' World Fair where thousands of Filipinos were imprisoned as an exhibit. One popular one was of the Igorot tribe because it was "exotic" for their diet to consist of dogs. 

At the moment I am focusing on just the sounds, but I have not dismissed the idea of utilizing images into the piece as well. If I did images, I would probably have still images of different aspects of a fair such as a crowd of people, or still images relating to the story, such as bars of a carnival exhibit, or eyes of an Igorot person.

In terms of the sounds, I wanted this piece to be like a soundscape and audio walk combined (if i wasn't able to choose one or the other). Somehow, I want to bring my listener back in time to the 1900s when this event happened. This would be similar to the way I did my first project which was like an audio walk where I took the listener through a journey of a typical day of mine. However, I want minimal narration and more focus on the environment I create, almost like a soundscape, such as Lockwood's "Hudson River".

To achieve this, I plan to use pre-recorded found sounds of different things, such as ambient sounds of a murmuring crowd, footsteps, crying, barking, etc. I also plan to alter certain sounds to create a more impactful feeling, such as repeating words or phrases to get a jarring effect on the listener, such as the piece "I Am Sitting in a Room". Possibly with effects such as speeding up the repetition, or slowing them down, adding reverb as it goes on to create a dream-like effect. To create a fuller space, I would play with panning to get sounds from both left and right.