Category: Portfolio

Visual Music

“Visual music can be defined as time-based visual imagery that. establishes a temporal architecture in a way similar to absolute music.”

It฀is฀commonly฀assumed฀that฀each฀sense฀has฀its฀proper฀sphere฀(e.g.฀sight฀is฀concerned฀with฀color,฀ hearing฀ with฀ sound฀ and฀ taste฀ with฀ flavour). in฀ noisy฀ surroundings,฀ speakers฀ can฀ be฀ understood฀ more฀ easily฀ if฀ they฀can฀be฀seen฀as฀well฀as฀heard

https://www.ninelyraeproductions.com

Nine Lyrae is a synaesthesia exhibition at the Oxo Tower. It showcases over 20 different artists in partnership with Brunel University London. I looked into the work of Ninghui Xiong who is a visual artist and researcher based in Beijing, China. His case study on Music Visualization & Emotion Expression on BACH’s Face made me think about how I should be using colour in my piece and made me think about the different colours that represent different emotions and feelings for people that are hard of hearing. For my piece it would be a good idea to use red’s and blue’s when the sound is intense and threatens and using yellows and greens when the sound is calming.

Portfolio Wider Research – WeirdCore

Weirdcore is an anonymous audio visual artist who has worked with Aphex Twin, Arca, Tame Impala, M.I.A, CHARLI XCX and many more current artists. Their art is really unique and inspiring to me on this project, in particular the music video they made for APHEX TWIN for his song T69 Collapse, the video merges animation and real life scanning of buildings (maybe through google maps) to create something hallucinatory and beautiful. The live face mapping that they did at Aphex’s 2017 Field Day set was something that I could try to implement into my final piece as it would be interesting to merge that with puredata gem’s functions.

Weirdcore does live “sound-reactive visuals, some react to the bass, some the mids, others the highs, and so on,” this is what I have been experimenting with in puredata so it’s cool to see how complex and intricate I could make the Audio Visual piece.

The other thing I find inspiring about weirdcore is the implimentation of popular cultural icons and celebrities that make the work more relatable and nostalgic. In my piece it would be good to include imagery that the audience can relate to and find nostalgic.

puredata Further Experimentation

Today I learnt how to load pictures and videos into puredata with the pix command. This experimentation has completely changed the way I can use Gem as I can now overlap shapes and pictures and modulate them with puredata commands.

For my final piece I want to mix real photos I have taken with gems shapes and use randomised sequencers with samples to create an AV generative video.

Experimentation for Portfolio – Puredata

I have been experimenting with the Puredata plugin Gem to create visuals that react with audio. At first I found it really hard to get the hang of and was on the verge of giving up all together, I couldn’t seem to get any sound and the Gem plugin wasn’t showing visuals, after a night of downloading different versions of both puredate and Gem I finally got it to work. To begin with I just started with simple objects such as spheres cubes.

After experimenting for a while and from the help of YouTube I managed to start experimenting with flashing lines and adding objects onto of this.

Now I had found objects and a colour scheme that I thought looked good together I began to experiment with adding sound. I created an 8 step sequencer that played a kick drum every 1st and 3rd step with a different percentage of playing for the other 6 steps. When. the kick drum was played it changed the size of. the outer cube. I also added hi-hats on every step that rotated. the inner cube on its X axis.

Performing Sound – Jose Macabra

For my fictional live performance I will be playing at Peckham Audio as it is available for private hire with 80 people seated and the rest standing. For the live show rider I will require a projector and I will also use strobe lighting.

Venue – Peckham Audio

Artist Name – The Sentinel

The Sentinel is an audio visual artist who uses coding to create a mix of photography, videography and coded shapes. They create generative audio which the visuals react to, producing an immersive and unique experience.  Join us for a night of immersive generative audio visual work from the artist The Sentinel.

This event will contain flashing images.

Exhibition Name – 010101

What’s the aim of a sound art performance?

Create a memorable experience?

Taking risks, creating experiences, vulnerability, 

Create awareness about a social or political situation?

Virtuosity exposure?

Improvisation, feedback,

What makes a good performance?

Suddeninfant 

Ryoji Ikeda – use of visuals

What makes a good sound art performance?

Flow state, confidence, 

How should we choose our artist identity and show concept?

Why do we want to perform? Performance is a form of escapism

Why do we love sound art?

What do we want to give our audience? An experience and emotions

Ryoji Ikeda 8th of November

Today I went to see Ryoji Ikeda at the Barbican. The night started off with the artist Rachika Nayar who performed a beautiful ambient set without visuals, the set consisted of beautiful evolving pads and progressive chords that filled the room. For most of the set I kept my eyes closed and the music took me to another place. Whereas for Ryoji Ikeda’s set I had my eyes wide open staring at the screen and couldn’t take my eyes away even if I tried. Ryoji Ikea played his album Ultratronics in full, it blew me away. I had never been to an audio visual performance before but now my interest in the form of art had peaked. The visuals completely captured the essence of the music and made me interested in how I could replicate this myself. I did some research and found that he uses puredata, I had used this last year but only for audio. My favourite part of the experience was the ending when he added colourful imagery of the sun, planets and molecules combined with glitchy code and ambient audio to create a breathtaking scene.

Participatory Sonic Practise

During this lecture I learnt the important role of audience interaction when creating an art piece, it is important to have the audience interaction so that your project can be funded.

Paulo Freire

Students have no knowledge and are filled with knowledge  by their “expert” teachers. Bell Hooks, Teachers and students should  learn together and be critical about the situation they’re in. Critical dialogue, questioning the situation you’re in. Theatre of the oppressed. Image theater. Invisible theater (taking theater outside of the theater, outside), Forum theater (short play eg 10 minutes about oppression, things are driven to worst possible conclusion, using audience to interact and fix the situation), cardboard citizens, 

Claire Barclay –  The Millenium Hut 1999

Amy Culter

Why does it always rain on me? – Travis.

Amy used cut-up technique with a range of pop songs that included phrases about rain and stitched them together with time stretching to create a really interesting body of work.

Pathetic Fallacy, Medley ( the two meanings of Medley is what Amy found interesting), Lullaby, Litany, Aria, Symphony, Repertoire, Echo, Sampling.

Amy is not a classically trained musician and uses a video editing software to almost write her compositions as an essay, she uses another DAW for effects and also pedals.

Vigil for Oro – simplicity of filmmaking, small military island, can navigate with eyes closed because off how small the island is, torch light filming which gave. it an uncanny digital feel, romantic science of isolation, expedition

Black Hole Cinema (RCA) – Astronomy and cinema, observatory, black hole fishing (if energy runs out we can harvest. energy from black holes, Adam brown), black holes are opposite of cinema, peppers ghost,

She used the audience as the soundtrack for a nature documentary, the audience produced unwanted sounds such as coughing, laughing, clearing throat, sneezing and the audience would get annoyed at these sounds as they thought they were interrupting the film when really they were providing the soundtrack. This made me think about how I could sue the audience as part of my piece.

David Toop – Sinister Resonance, The woods show to me answer and the echo rings. “Rain and tears are the same” , rain has became so polluted that the government predicts that none of it is safe.

Amy doesn’t look towards music as inspiration but looks at research in an unconventional way and does research on rain, black holes and nature instead.