Here is a video with gold pigment and alcohol and some acrylic fixative. The idea was that the alchohol would evaporate overnight leaving the fixed gold pigment in the place the wave form left it (another attempt at producing a physical drawing) THe end result did not turn out that well however there was slight evidence of the patterns made in certain parts.. if you look at the first seconds of this video though, the wave form seems pretty present so i thought it was pretty promising but it the actual product was not as hoped... maybe it just has to be the right day and needs to be tried again... also, when thinking about how to get rid of the tray sides, i was scared of cutting away at it for fear that the flakes would not be fixed enough and everything would fly off when snipped! Either or, its worth more explorations in the future.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Final Project Reflections:
I definitely became most interested in working with sound this semester as its so abstract as a material. I think what attracts me most is that since I don't have much solid experience with using sound as an art material (i do play a little guitar and had taken a synthesizer course this semester which aided in my interest for sure) everything that i did with it was so amazing! Im not sure what that means other then its a step back into what we talk about as a purest exploratory phase in my own creative development. I believe too that through this, my painting practice will be greatly affected. We will see what happens next I suppose!
For my final project, I used Sound, Drawing/Painting, and Environment as my parameters.
The project came out of working with sound and looking back at some previous artists I had researched. I wanted to use find a way to "legitimize" sound as a physical material since it became clear that many people do not necessarily regard it as one. I think its understood that sound has an energy or a physical push, commonly experienced by the vibrations heavy bass produces. So, i wanted to find a way to show that visually and in real time.
I knew water would work for well for this and when thinking about the project, whale sounds seemed like a perfect outlet for this. Using the same programs and deconstruction/reconstruction ideas, i developed this sound to set the "Environment" I know this isnt really a "sound class" or so much an intensive studio class but its really meant to be listened to in stereo so headphones are most appropriate (also- in the end it didnt matter because i only bought one transducer for the project since i didnt know if it would really work!)
Moving forward, I researched different ways people turn things into speakers and most included different types of transducers pushed against the wood or material. There are several ways to use recycled speakers too but there wasnt really any magic in it. I did try some of these things with metal rays and old speakers that I have (im a garbage picker!) and it really didn't vibrate the same way id hope. So, looking further, I found something called "bass shakers" which "gamers" use by putting in their seats or i guess people who want to feel music coming through their chairs. I really didnt know what it actually did besides vibrate (would there be sound coming out too? unsure) but i was able to find one for $15 so i went for it and it was great! It produced sound, vibrated accordingly and was small and cheap! SO, I strapped it on the back of a metal plate, put some water for vibrations, and made a little enclosure for the unit. I had a mini desktop amp (which was also garbage!) and attached it to my mp3 player and played the soundscape.
The original plan too was to make "drawings" by placing paper directly above the waves (in colored water) and hopefully the wave would rise just enough to touch the paper. This didnt work out at all as as soon as the wave touched the paper, it pulled it right down due to adhesion property. I tried a board as well to circumvent this but it didnt really work out as it was way too hard to coordinate the paper or board to be just the righ hight (which ended up being about .5mm or so). The wave itself seemed to be enough of a drawing for me in the end.
Anyhow, the whale sounds worked well in vibrating the water in different ways but it really got interesting when i used an analog synth to manipulate sounds in realtime. This allowed me to see differences between sounds, volumes, pitch, etc and how they effected the wave formations. Many surprises and just weird things happened: patterns were not necessarily dependent on pitch, low pitches didnt necessarily mean more wave activity, different sounds make different shapes and formations, etc...
In the end, the project seemed a perfect way to explain to students that sound is a physical material that can move things and be manipulated in very real ways. Its also a great way to engage students in that really no matter what and no matter how many times you see it, its always beautiful and incredible!
Here are a few images and a some videos - its really a live performance thing but the pictures are kind of interesting...
I definitely became most interested in working with sound this semester as its so abstract as a material. I think what attracts me most is that since I don't have much solid experience with using sound as an art material (i do play a little guitar and had taken a synthesizer course this semester which aided in my interest for sure) everything that i did with it was so amazing! Im not sure what that means other then its a step back into what we talk about as a purest exploratory phase in my own creative development. I believe too that through this, my painting practice will be greatly affected. We will see what happens next I suppose!
For my final project, I used Sound, Drawing/Painting, and Environment as my parameters.
The project came out of working with sound and looking back at some previous artists I had researched. I wanted to use find a way to "legitimize" sound as a physical material since it became clear that many people do not necessarily regard it as one. I think its understood that sound has an energy or a physical push, commonly experienced by the vibrations heavy bass produces. So, i wanted to find a way to show that visually and in real time.
I knew water would work for well for this and when thinking about the project, whale sounds seemed like a perfect outlet for this. Using the same programs and deconstruction/reconstruction ideas, i developed this sound to set the "Environment" I know this isnt really a "sound class" or so much an intensive studio class but its really meant to be listened to in stereo so headphones are most appropriate (also- in the end it didnt matter because i only bought one transducer for the project since i didnt know if it would really work!)
Moving forward, I researched different ways people turn things into speakers and most included different types of transducers pushed against the wood or material. There are several ways to use recycled speakers too but there wasnt really any magic in it. I did try some of these things with metal rays and old speakers that I have (im a garbage picker!) and it really didn't vibrate the same way id hope. So, looking further, I found something called "bass shakers" which "gamers" use by putting in their seats or i guess people who want to feel music coming through their chairs. I really didnt know what it actually did besides vibrate (would there be sound coming out too? unsure) but i was able to find one for $15 so i went for it and it was great! It produced sound, vibrated accordingly and was small and cheap! SO, I strapped it on the back of a metal plate, put some water for vibrations, and made a little enclosure for the unit. I had a mini desktop amp (which was also garbage!) and attached it to my mp3 player and played the soundscape.
The original plan too was to make "drawings" by placing paper directly above the waves (in colored water) and hopefully the wave would rise just enough to touch the paper. This didnt work out at all as as soon as the wave touched the paper, it pulled it right down due to adhesion property. I tried a board as well to circumvent this but it didnt really work out as it was way too hard to coordinate the paper or board to be just the righ hight (which ended up being about .5mm or so). The wave itself seemed to be enough of a drawing for me in the end.
Anyhow, the whale sounds worked well in vibrating the water in different ways but it really got interesting when i used an analog synth to manipulate sounds in realtime. This allowed me to see differences between sounds, volumes, pitch, etc and how they effected the wave formations. Many surprises and just weird things happened: patterns were not necessarily dependent on pitch, low pitches didnt necessarily mean more wave activity, different sounds make different shapes and formations, etc...
In the end, the project seemed a perfect way to explain to students that sound is a physical material that can move things and be manipulated in very real ways. Its also a great way to engage students in that really no matter what and no matter how many times you see it, its always beautiful and incredible!
Here are a few images and a some videos - its really a live performance thing but the pictures are kind of interesting...
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
sa itle
explorations with sound and color
(originally posted before i showed the project in class. I was hoping this would be a "teaser" to anyone who may come across it. not sure if anyone looked at it beforehand but would be interested what anyone thought it was if they did.)
sa itle
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Birdscape
Using an old movie I took from the the coast in Iceland, I removed the sounds of the wind and seagulls using quicktime. Then, using Audacity and Sonosphere, i manipulated the sounds and repeated them on different tracks in different ways to make the soundscape...
Lesson Plan:
Through the cutting and piecing together a sound, using a single recorded sound from nature,students will learn that sound, much like traditional materials, can be manipulated to create new sounds and sound progressions (soundscapes).
deeper learning: deconstruction/reconstruction
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Richard David James
I chose Richard D. James, most commonly known under Aphex Twin, as an artist who uses sound in interesting ways. Although can be considered more of a musician and composer over a "sound artist" as we've spoken about in class (favorites of mine: certainly John Cage and Liz Phillips and who i discovered the first week of class, Finnbogi Petursson), I think what he did and does to electronic music is incredible. I've never been into dance music really but he opens up the genre of constant beats with new ways of organizing the rhythms and crazy textures. He also addresses "ambient music" in similar ways. In all of this, he was kind of a contemporary pioneer in electronic music really taking control and creating a whole new format.
I was also interested to see that in one of his works in the early 00's, a pretty rare ep, he released a track with mostly high pitch noises that could be decoded to form an image using the correct software which made me think of when I was working with the picture and sound. This was the clearest image I could find of it:
He also worked closely with Chris Cunningham for a number years making music videos/films with his music, and both art forms equally feed on each other. Here's an example:
I chose Richard D. James, most commonly known under Aphex Twin, as an artist who uses sound in interesting ways. Although can be considered more of a musician and composer over a "sound artist" as we've spoken about in class (favorites of mine: certainly John Cage and Liz Phillips and who i discovered the first week of class, Finnbogi Petursson), I think what he did and does to electronic music is incredible. I've never been into dance music really but he opens up the genre of constant beats with new ways of organizing the rhythms and crazy textures. He also addresses "ambient music" in similar ways. In all of this, he was kind of a contemporary pioneer in electronic music really taking control and creating a whole new format.
I was also interested to see that in one of his works in the early 00's, a pretty rare ep, he released a track with mostly high pitch noises that could be decoded to form an image using the correct software which made me think of when I was working with the picture and sound. This was the clearest image I could find of it:
He also worked closely with Chris Cunningham for a number years making music videos/films with his music, and both art forms equally feed on each other. Here's an example:
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
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