Sonic Design Evening

So last night's event was a success and it was really fun to see people enjoying my work. I'm really happy with the way that everything turned out.

Christian was a huge help setting everything up with me, and he found this shopping cart somewhere downstairs in Loeb, so that we were able to get everything upstairs in one trip!
This is what it looked like once we got it all set up.

Three 13" TV's, 3 mixers, 3 dvd players, 3 sets of headphones, 2 VCR's, 1 converter, lots of cables.






Final product.

Documentation for Final Portfolio

Nature Photography

Memory

This work holds quite a lot of personal significance as it exists for me as a kind of memory box of images from a summer spent in British Columbia. That summer was a very important one for me and when I decided to devote myself to a year-long project, I wanted to make sure that it be something that was going to retain its personal significance over this extended period. This project certainly has done that for me and every image, whether broken down or completely distorted, triggers my storehouse of memories and puts me right back in the frame of mind that I was in at the time that I shot each image.

I have made this piece as much for myself as for an audience and I hope also that it reflects on memory itself as a concept and considers the digital image as a flexible memento that functions simultaneously as a personal artistic expression and document of internal emotions.

Documentary Film and Self-Reflexivity

Much of the inspiration for this work comes from my new understandings of documentary film and the differences of approach between the realist tradition, the direct cinema and cinema verité approaches and self-reflexive documentary practice. I relate the production of informational documentary films with the practice of documenting nature through photography, and I have made attempts to dispose of the notion that a photographer like a filmmaker can ever be unbiased, neutral or objective.

Under the influence of filmmakers such as Agnes Varda and Jean Rouch I have attempted to insert myself into the piece by bringing attention to method and exposing digital images as representations rather than objective records. Through the use of inter-titles and the distortion of images I have chosen voice rather verisimilitude and tried to bring awareness to the construction of this piece.

Sound/Image Relationship

For a long time I have been interested in pairing image with sound and it is something that I originally began investigating in MUSI 3604 when I sewed together a number of short video clips taken through an O-Train window. I have chosen for this project however to include still images and to deal with photography as an artistic medium and I am drawn particularly to the way that music, especially mellow or soothing music has a way of subtly enhancing the experience of photographed images.

I hope that what I have achieved through these three short slideshows is an experience of nature and its representation through digital art within a sonic environment that mixes well with the colours and light and shadow on-screen.

Simultaneity

This collection of three slideshows is meant to be played on three television screens with three separate sets of headphones. The reason that I feel it will be interesting to display them this way is that it allows for a dual experience of these works of art. On the one hand the three slideshows can exist simultaneously for the viewer who is standing at a distance and watching the images play out in a loop. On the other hand each slideshow can be a personal and individual experience for the viewer who has encountered the exterior view and made the choice to come in for a closer look and listen.

By placing the headphones on her/his head the viewer becomes attached to the image and is able to experience the work within a small personal bubble, which produces a link that did not exist at a distance between the audience and the work of art.

Execution

Trees: This is the first video that I completed for the collection. The music was written and recorded in Cubase SX and I began by playing with my piano plug-in called “The Grand,” and a midi insert called “Density” which adds random clusters of notes to the keys that you press. I liked the layered piano sound, but abandoned the “Density” insert for some regular delay and reverb once I had exported the track as audio. I also included a soft organ sound from Tassman that I had adjusted and used in my initial portfolio idea about an airplane flight. The drums were put together in Reason with some hip hop loop samples that I took apart so that I could create my own patterns. The forest ambience included in the song are all sounds that I either recorded myself or borrowed from The Freesound Project (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/) for my work on the Jinsaburo Oikawa exhibit entitled Sea, Stealth, and Suzuko: The Suian Maru Centennial Exhibition at the Japanese Canadian National Museum in Burnaby B.C.

Sky: This piece does not include any ambient sound effects, but I have manipulated a backwards piano track to sound somewhat reminiscent of an airplane engine. Throughout these three soundtracks I have chosen to include piano as a dominant feature in order to tie them together aesthetically. I utilized the same technique of building my drum tracks in Reason here, and I have also included a manipulated Tassman sound as a melody feature.

Water: I took a different approach to writing this piece, but tried to tie it in with the other tracks through the piano. This piece was executed almost entirely in Reason with various sounds loaded into different tracks of the NNXT Advanced Sampler where I also loaded several effects such as EQ, reverb, delay, and distortion. Once satisfied with the musical track in Reason, I exported it and then loaded the entire song as a .wav into Cubase where I added additional manipulated water sound effects from the Jinsaburo Oikawa project.

Editing: The digital images were all edited using either Photoshop or Picasa 2 image editor and loaded into Windows Movie Maker where the soundtrack was also added. Changes of light and colour were achieved gradually by creating a variety of iterations of the same image and cross-fading them with the movie editor.

-Kristie Taylor, April 2007.

Well things are going amazingly well with my project lately... I feel like it's really starting to unfold and I'm narrowing in on a final product. I have finished up the first section of three (the trees section) and am finishing up the music now on the second section (skies).

I've been thinking too about presentation, and I'm wondering if it would be possible to have three small screens playing each of the three sections in loops with a set of headphones at each station. It would be set up like a linear narrative in a way (kind of an emphasis on the construction of the whole thing)... beginning, middle, end... and you could choose to stop at each station like that in sequence... or you could just stand back and look at all three screens as they flip through the images in a continuous loop. I like that element of choice... and I think it would draw the viewer in to see it as a whole then as a sequence in its three parts. (These are thoughts that are coming to me based on this piece being shown in a museum-like space).

There are of course difficulties... like getting three screens of relatively the same size... headphones I could probably provide.... I don't know, we'll see.

Current Thoughts

Well I've sort of let the gender representation idea go, but I am keeping the issues related to authorial voice and the constructed nature of art.

I'd like to comment on the common misconception that what nature photography is doing is simply capturing reality without mediation; the beauty of nature that would have existed exactly as the photograph shows were the author present or absent.

I feel that this notion is entirely impossible and that all photographs need to be thought of as images which are mediated by technology and authorial intent and that photographs (like documentary films) are not unbiased records but are highly constructed extensions of the artists' creative vision.

The issues of time and change are very important to why I feel that a photographer is creating art rather than recording simple facts. Things such as swaying branches, rushing water, and cloudy skies are beautiful ephemeral moments that photographers design into aesthetically pleasing creations within the frame. How can that not be creating art?

So I'd like to emphasize the idea that photos are chosen and calculated and I want to emphasize this by using photo editing to disturb, but also heighten my own nature photography. I'd like to bring awareness to the choices that I've made in creating this slide show and show that every photograph is taken from a particular perspective; that the camera is not simply recording reality as it exists, but rather is shaping that reality.

PLAN:

1) I have decided to split my slide show into three sections: Water, Trees, and Skies.
2) I'd like to comment on my choices and the manipulation that I've contributed to the finished product (perhaps in a Godardian way i.e. "I did this, I did that"... inter-titles or voice-over??)
3) The slide show will be an artistic product i.e. beautiful images and pleasant music, but it will be self-aware.

INFLUENCE:

Steve McQueen - Once Upon a Time
-Uses images from 1977 Voyager space probes which are intended to pictorially describe life on earth to other beings.
-Incorporates soundtrack with glossolalia or "speaking in tongues."
-"explores the artist’s interest in the relationship between sound and image, particularly between language and representations of our world."
-http://www.southlondongallery.org/docs/exh/exhibition.jsp?id=102

Thoughts

Well I haven't had much time lately to do much physical work on my project (because of final assignments and exams), but I've certainly been thinking about it a lot in between everything else.

I've been thinking about everything I do in relation to this project, and the most interesting connection that I've come across so far, came about while I was writing an essay on the male gaze in cinema and literature. In thinking about all the ways that women are objectified/aestheticized on screen and in words, I noticed that I'm doing the very same thing with my photographs of trees. I have been doing some photo editing, fragmenting trees into their various parts, leaves, bark, roots, branches... and giving them polished and pristine appearances (sort of a magical progression between light effects and colours) and I noticed that this is exactly what filmmakers and writers are doing to dehumanize women and transform them into fetish objects. In the book Lolita, if you've read it, a young girl's anatomy is fragmented by the author which then causes the reader to inadvertently sympathize with the pedophile who seduces her. She becomes reduced to her various body parts; similar to Hitchcock’s depiction of women, and similar to my photo editing of images of trees.

In a way I felt like I was immorally ripping my trees into pieces just as filmmakers and writers often do with their female characters. It’s strange though in a way to worry about objectifying a tree. A tree seems already to be like something not worthy of moral consideration (in this way anyways). But it felt wrong to me. I had been thinking of trying to represent my thoughts on trees in a truthful way through a visual essay accompanied by my own voice with musical undertones… in a sense getting closer to the spirituality that I see in trees. After thinking about the project in reference to depictions of women in literature and film though, I feel like I’m betraying that whole idea.

I’m thinking now about getting to the bottom of this issue and thinking some more about what exactly I am trying to do by beautifying my images of trees (giving them more than what’s already there, and fragmenting them into abstracted images of the whole). I am really going to consider gender and representation and how this can be applied to something which is completely divorced from the moral human side of things. I am talking about nature, about a plant, and I think it’s really interesting that I am feeling concerned about moral representation. I’m going to do some more reading on gender identification (Freud, Laura Mulvey), and see if maybe I can critique the objectification of women by objectifying a tree. (Sounds like a nifty idea, but I’m going to keep on working through it.)

For now (the next two weeks or so) before I go home for the Christmas Holidays, I’m going to continue with my music-making and photo editing. The photo work has been quite painstaking (I’m making lots and lots of copies of iterations of the same picture with minute changes of colour and light, and I plan on joining them in an imovie montage). The more I work, the more I think, and even though my idea is not solidified at this point, I think I’ve finally figured out my working method… and that is to plod along and let the ideas take shape as I work creatively.

Things are going well, and sorry for the long and unfocused blog, but it really helps me to do it. (Any advice or ideas that you have to offer, I would love to hear)

Thank you.

I'm thinking now about working around a theme of nature, and trees in particular... and the different forms, textures, and light effects that I can play with with photographs of trees. Combing through my photo collection, I noticed that trees make up a large portion of my subject matter and in a search to find something personal to build my art around it seems that trees are an obvious choice. How much more personal can you get than having a tree perminantly imprinted on your skin in ink?

I am still developing my idea, but am throwing myself into it without overthinking to see what comes of my creations. I have been photo-editing and working on a rather abstract piano piece with lots of midi effects on the piano sound distorting and creating a thick texture.

Change of Heart

I have decided to leave my old idea behind due to the fact that it was not engaging me as an artist, and because I had chosen the idea for the wrong reasons. I really want to be working on something that I care about, and for that reason I am switching over to something which I feel will interest me more, and in the end turn out a much more interesting product.

At this point I am still attempting to simplify my new idea and to outline it in a practical way.

Tools for new Project:
-Photoshop
-Cubase SX
-Reason
-Tassman Synth
-Acoustic instruments
Preliminary Concept: (Still under construction)
-I have been thinking about the divide which exists between computer music (including synthetic sounds) and organic music (consisting of pure audio recording) and the ways that these two realms are often pitted against one another. In my own music this generally is a choice that I feel I have to make. I need to ask myself, will I be writing computer generated music? or will I be writing un-aided acoustic music?

What I would like to comment upon though, is that maybe these two areas should not be thought of as opposites or enemies and that they do in fact, work exceptionally well together. People are often of one philosophy or the other, but I would like to sit directly in the middle and show how each of these areas can work together.

At the moment I am thinking of doing a slide show of still photography that is accompanied by a musical track and I would like to incorporate an element of abstraction through photo-editing and music processing to bend something acoustic into something more synthetic and less musical. I would like to develop a focused theme however, and to create a solid and unified work.

The idea that I am working with at the moment involves a progression towards abstraction and a looping back, towards simplified acoustic music, and I am considering using my photos to flow from themes of nature, towards human life and human production and industry, and then moving to abstraction of form and then gradually back to nature. With the music I am thinking of moving from something musical and acoustic to something synthetically produced and then towards abstract sound.

Inspiration Stills:



Thinking: Things that are jumping around in my head right now include... how am I going to make this personal/something that I care about? How am I going to incorporate photography (something I love)? Subjects I enjoy: Nature, travel, children, faces, familiarity... What do I care about musically? What kinds of music do I enjoy making?... my instrument is: my computer, piano, guitar, voice, flute, whistles, uke, thumb piano???

Im still attempting to calm my body and slow my brain so that I can bring it together and figure myself out a little bit so that I can start producing.....