Most of the catalysts behind the development of this project came from personal thoughts and experiences but here are some other artists whose work has also had an influence.
Pictured above, David Aitken's work Migration has a beautiful complacency to it. It examines relationships between a space and it's inhabitants. Viewing this work as an installation like it is in the image above would be a completely different experience than watching it on a small screen like I have, but the key ties for me to this work are intimacy and relationships.
Joyce Hinterdings' work EarthStar - made with partner David Haines - shown above is elemental and electric. I find this work particularly engaging because of what it invokes - a reverence towards the elements that grant life on Earth and our universal insignificance.
27/5/11
An amazing thing happened in class this week; the problematic amplifier in the main edit suite finally produced a stereo mix. As having a stereo sound display is crucial to the presentation of this work, it seemed that presenting this project as a stereo mix gave people a much better understanding of how it'd been pieced together and what it was about. Since the last time I'd presented it a couple of weeks back, I'd worked on tidying up the visual element to make it run in a more seamless fashion. The reaction I received was largely positive and the class were in agreeance that this work should be presented as a Triptych; Left Audio Channel - Center Visual Channel - Right Audio Channel.
The critique also raised the issue of a title which I had considered in earlier development, I've settled on the main title being Spirals, the subtitle being Invocation of Sacred Rhythm. This title aims to remain simple like the work itself and still encapsulate enough information about the intention and presentation of spiraling, septagonal rhythms.
14/5/11
Piecing together the visual component was certainly made a lot easier by having the sound constructed first. Because I made the sound component, I knew exactly when each change had to occur, which saved me from having to trace back through the audio file to find key points. I wanted to keep the visual component as one that was supportive to the sound, not overbearing. The footage was constructed by shooting a sequence of 7 candles from a bird's eye view perspective, each being consecutively lit and then later blown out in an anti-clockwise direction. The 7 candles represent the 7 stages of rhythm present in the sound and are aimed to articulate the relationship between the two rhythms. I chose candles for their organic light and ritualistic connotations - a simple visual and conceptual treatment.
By using some simple cropping and timecode manipulations, I pieced together a sequence to represent each rhythm track and aligned them visually, just as they are aurally, to create the final product. The visual editing process was a steep learning curve, one that may have got the better of me if I'd not had the knowledge of the sound timeline construction. Adobe Premiere did put up a fight but after losing my project moments before exporting the first time, I received some useful help with formatting and exporting and finally won the war I'd unknowingly waged.
9/5/11
Visuals Complete.
4/5/11
Here's the Audio Split into the left and right channels to give you a better idea of how it fits together;
Left Channel;
Right Channel;
Now put the two together, and here's the final product;
2/5/11
The Sound component for my final project is complete. After showing the class last week I received some positive reactions so hooray for affirmation.
Realising that the below Synopsis is no longer completely relevant (slight change of direction) I'd better detail the theoretical approach to this project, as it is pretty 'theory heavy'.
My focus for this work is Patterns and Rhythms that exist and occur through Sound.
A lot of the time when I'm walking around I'm thinking about the Sounds around me like a rhythm, using my footsteps as a basic tempo count, I often make up little beats tapping on my pockets with my hands and using whatever is in my pockets as well, for instance; my keys jingle like a tambourine/hi hat, my wallet is thick with cards I don't need and made of leather so it's like a low Tom and my phone is a plastic flip-phone so that's like a snare. There's also differentiating sounds available across the chest, stomach and thighs. So this, and the ongoing 'Symphony' if you like, of urban spaces are the main catalysts behind this idea.
Taking this idea of rhythm and percussive patterns, I started experimenting with different measures of rhythm, such as time signatures and meter. In playing around with varying time signatures, I developed this idea of a rhythm that starts as a very simple structure and expands to become more complex - in a way that it 'spirals' out on top of itself. This is where it gets theory heavy. So starting in the center of the spiral, with the tempo set to 120bpm ((beats per minute - a pretty standard tempo) no need to complicate things further) I pieced together an evolving rhythm meter using a reasonably conventional drum kit;
Beats/Measure - Sound - Count
1/4 - Straight count of Hats - 1,1,1,1
2/4 - Hats and Bass Drum - 1,2,1,2
3/4 - Typically associated with Jazz - 1,2,3,1,2,3
4/4 - 'Common Time' - 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4
5/4 - Getting Progressive - 1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5 (Often counted as 1,2,3,1,3)
6/4 - Further Complexity - 1,2,3,4,5,6,1,2,3,4,5,6 (Or 1,2,3,1,2,3)
7/4 - F'n Hard! - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6,7 (Usually 1,2,3,4,1,2,4)
So that's a rhythm spiraling outwards on top of itself. Then I thought; "What if you have one rhythm spiraling outwards synced to another spiraling inwards?" Theoretically, if you took the progression above and had the same thing going the other way (7/4 back to 1/4) then they should fill each other out - as in, always equal 8/8 or 2 sets of common time, 4/4. Sounding a bit too much like math? My problem exactly.
The problems I faced were these;
1. Thinking this analytically doesn't make you feel very creative - it's a workout for the hippo-campus!
2. What looks good on paper may not actually work at all.
3. Syncopation being so crucial to the success of this structure, I couldn't trust my own abilities to be consistent, let alone accurately play ridiculous measures like 7/4.
To overcome the syncopation issue, I played each of the individual rhythms as consistently as I could, and then aligned the recordings to the timecode - usually I would use seconds/m.s but given the nature of this project the bars&beats timecode was mandatory. I'll spare you the details of quantisization but basically it's a very finicky process in which you zoom right in on the wave forms of the sound and align them with the markers of the timecode. It's a time consuming process and one best saved for a rainy day, I find it a lot easier to do with percussion and vocals than more fluent wave forms like stringed instruments.
The problem with having two drum tracks going at once is that even if they are properly aligned, how can you make it not sound jumbled, too busy or sporadic? I quickly realised that having them hard-panned to far left & right wasn't enough.
Using the quantifier thing (which I clearly still don't fully understand) I replaced one of the drum tracks with Sounds of hand percussion instruments - bongos and rhythm sticks etc. This helped to separate the two tracks but still make it possible to hear the constantly shifting relationship between them. It also gives a sort of tribal feel to what are otherwise pretty stagnate drum sounds - the sounds are so precise and consistent it sounds robotic but if they weren't it would sound like a mush of crap.
Once this was in place I simply added a bass guitar track for each rhythm track which followed the same evolutionary or de-evolutionary path. To keep the separation one was played on the lower strings and the other on the higher notes. I found the best place in the mix for these to sit was panned about half way to the other side of the drum track they follow. (i.e; Drum Kit panned hard Left, Low Bass panned half Right) Each had some simple effects added (equalisation and soft reverb) which fill out the center.
With that in place I can concentrate solely on the visuals, my plan for these is to keep them simple, and to basically represent what's going on with the sounds. That's enough typing for now, more to come soon!
-RL/080176
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Synopsis 16/03/2011
Within every sound, there is a story.
When I talk to you, the sound of my voice is telling you just as much about me as the way I appear in physical space.
In our current culture of visual bombardment, the messages carried in aural space are often received by our brain on a sub-conscious level or grouped with more tangible elements to disguise the power of sound as a stand-alone medium.
Within every sound, there is a story.
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Lumiere Homage Project 16/03/11
Project Guidelines: 52 Second Film, Black and White, No Sound, One Take.
Reflection: The aspect of the Lumiere films that I found the most captivating was that of the Flaneur. The conception of recording a moving image gave a new found objectivity to watching the world go by. For this reason, I didn't want to orchestrate an event but rather patiently record until something took place naturally. The value and authenticity of a naturally occurring event far out-ways that of a choreographed scene in this context. Another reason for working this way was to try to compensate for the rather in-authentic method of trying to create an old visual aesthetic using very modern equipment.
To a certain extent, I think the idea of the Flaneur has been replaced by that of the Voyeur in our current time, which is quite sad. Not everyone with a video camera is up to something socially inappropiate.
Personally I found the 'no sound' rule to be the hardest obstacle as this is otherwise the basis of my work and core to my expressive content, nonetheless I find the final shot to be reasonably well composed and this project certainly served its purpose to familiarise myself with the tools I'll need for this unit.
