soundart
Just another myblog.arts site

Category: Thinking & Doing Sound

Categories
First Year Thinking & Doing Sound Visiting Practitioners Visiting Practitioners

Sampling:

Throughout my work, I decided to use sampling. This is a new skill that I have adopted and although it reaches a more contemporary audience I found the concept intriguing and it provoked a lot of wider moral reflection in me. Since it was coined in the late 1970’s it has become more and more popular among several genres of art. Vicky Bennet is a widely known Sound Artist who famously uses sampling to her advantage in order of creating art. Her piece ‘The Sound Of Ehe End Of Music- People Like Us’ portrays Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodger’s pieces being distorted and played to her contrasting artwork and 60’s rock music shaped onto graphic images of Vietnam war footage. Despite its highly juxtaposing ideas and aesthetics, it works in unison to create its perfect artistic harmony.

Many could argue that sampling is classed as a form of copying; Stealing other people’s work. However, art is produced to be shared and shown off and in order of taking someone’s work, it only plays to its purpose. I almost see it myself as a compliment. To have the desire to involve someone else’s artistic practice within your work speaks to me as if you admire their artistic creativity and would want to use it to enhance your work in places you couldn’t. 

As an artist myself I could see the negative effects of this and the annoyance of someone taking credit for something they didn’t 100% do. However, as long as the artist mentions who and what they have sampled and does this in only a complimentary way then I do believe that this is ok. Finally, I believe that the sampled work must go alongside the artist’s artistic touch and should not be the prime characteristic.

Despite the questions about sampling I will continue to use this but ensure that I am certainly sticking to my own set of rules and guidelines to keep this morally correct.

Categories
First Year Thinking & Doing Sound

Are Cliches Good Or Bad?

When discussing the origin of the word cliches it is a French-derived word that originally states that it is a piece of artwork that has become ‘overused to the point of losing its meaning’. Cliches have the potential to ruin the effect of your work and provoke emotions or feelings that were not originally aimed to provoke. As a creator, this is a problem as when I produce my art I make it intending to create certain effects and moods. Theirs washed down meanings can paint your work with a cheap tacky effect stopping it from becoming meaningful art.

Due to cliches overuse; humans are trained to respond and recognise the aesthetics of what they are trying to capture. For example, a creaking door and crows squawking instantly make people think of horror and a haunted atmosphere. Despite it not being original; people naturally think about the connotations that come with it. When making sound pieces such as soundscapes; it is important to create clarity so the listener is aware of what is going on. I wanted to produce realism within my piece so the narrative that went alongside the soundscape was effective and believable. When creating soundscapes for both a beach and a city proved difficult. Due to the sound being my only medium; I was limited on what I could use to make the environment of the story obvious. Cliches were the one thing that served true clarity to my work. They serve instant and realisable effects that universally people will understand.

Overall Cliches are not entirely a bad thing to use within your work and it truly depends on the context and aim of your piece. If you strive for originality and abstract meaning – cliches are not your friend. However finally if you want clarity and instant clear directed feeling then cliches will provide this to your work.

Categories
First Year Sound Artists Thinking & Doing Sound

Soundscaping:

Soundscaping is an acoustic environment made by sound to imitate an environment for humans. This was first coined by the Canadian composer Murray Schafer in the 1960s. Schafer was a naturalist composer who centred his work around realism. I took inspiration from Schafer’s work; he quoted “A soundscape is any collection of sounds like a painting is a collection of visual actions”. This can be fascinating, I believe it’s possible to portray any type of environment even better than a composed piece of music can. By capturing a sense of reality soundscaping serves me as the composer an opportunity to immerse the listener into my work. Playing with realism makes the listener believe they are the main character immersed by the feelings the composer is trying to create. When creating my audio podcast I chose to use soundscaping throughout the entire piece. I aimed to create the most realistic performance possible. Adding narrative audio on top will make the story clear and effective, almost as if the listener can paint the story inside their heads. As I continued this creative process I found that the more immersive the piece – the more it affected it became to the listener.

Categories
First Year Sound Artists Thinking & Doing Sound Visiting Practitioners

The advancement of technology and how it has affected creative performance:

Christina Wheelers lecture made me reflect on her views on creative performance. Christina talked about the endless opportunities in which performance and sound art can be presented. She asked questions such as, where and how should the audience be positioned? Where should the performance be shown? How should they hear the sound, and where would the sound be played. In my previous blog posts, I have talked about the importance and effects spatiality can have upon sound; how the room in which sound is played is an additional instrument in itself. In a study by ‘Yueying Li’, she claims “an increasing number of theories and studies addressing spatial topics have argued that these two fields are closely linked and one would not be complete without the other”. Without exploring speciality your sound would have no uniqueness and space within the audio. I truly believe that this area has only been able to be truly explored due to the rise in technology. Before the 1900’s sound was limited and concert halls stood as the heart for live performance. This generic positioning of audience and performer has been able to outlive itself thanks to new realms of technological advancements. With arrays of speakers and microphones; sound can be heard from different directions meaning that the audience themselves can also change direction. The advancements in a film it has allowed a parallel for sound and can create artistic performances in any format or area.

Thanks to these advancements it has not only allowed space to affect the initial audio and recording it has also allowed effect to take place during performance. Experimenting with your surroundings can change the way in which the audience portrays your piece. I find this interesting as I believe it can add another layer to my work and create a more immersive experience. Vicky Bennet showed us a clear example with her exhibition performance ‘Gone, Gone Beyond 360’ where she incorporated the visuals of a 360-degree screen. After all, the way your listener views your piece is the most important aim of creating it in the first place. I hope to use this in future performances to capture a true aesthetic and mood in line with my artwork. It will help me go to that extra length of expanding the listeners mind and opening areas for them to feel my work rather than listen.

In conclusion advancements within technology have allowed room for us to break the barrier between audience and performer and create harmony for everyone to experience art at its fullest capability. The advancement of technology and how it has affected creative performance:

Categories
First Year Thinking & Doing Sound

A Reflection Upon My Finally Art Piece & My Artistic Process

Corruption On Childhood Innoncence:

My piece is a reflection upon the corruption of childhood innocence. It mirrors a short journey through life; showing how adulthood and added stimuli from the outside world can destroy innocence. I hoped to portray the negative effect it can have upon life. In this piece, I will be writing about my journey and the reasons behind my creative process.

Originally I wanted to represent how childhood innocence blinds people from the class divide and how your economical status is inevitable due to where and who you are born to. My idea was to take a field recording of private school children playing and state school children playing. However, this created some moral barriers and was not entirely ethically correct. From this, I decided to reflect the piece on something a little more personal – my experiences entering adulthood and my perception of life as a whole. 

The piece begins with very little sound and noise. A piano key and low pitched thudding in a rhythmic pattern. To me, this highlights the sound of a heartbeat showing connotations of new life. A heartbeat is what every human share. No matter who you are! This represents a human stripped down to its bare; naked from any outside influence or complexities. The sound is pure with no added other noise. I have played the piano from the age of 4 and chose to include this instrument to represent the heartbeat as it is a personal view of my life. As the piece develops and the beating continues extra noise is added including an increased raw which slowly takes dominance of the piece. This is the corruption from the outside world creeping in and taking over your purity.

As the piece moves on to the next part, I include a field recording taken from an old childhood video from my dad’s recording camera. These videos are something entirely personal to me and my life as it is a true representative of my life growing up. I decided to include a recording from one of my childhood assemblies. This recording involves many young voices, talking, and general chatter while we all play with each other. I liked this recording as I thought it fit the brief of my piece perfectly. The children (including me) are unaware of the camera recording them meaning their conversations are natural and pure. In their eyes, there is no outside influence on their conversation which represents to me how childhood innocence is dependant upon outside corruption. I added reverb and delay along with tampering the volume to go up and down throughout the recording. I used this to create a wave effect and intentionally show how slowly over time certain parts of your life take away that childhood innocence. Adulthood creeps up on your life and I truly believe from my experiences it has not been sudden. By creating a waved effect upon the sound by editing the recording it highlights slow corruption and the process of puberty. Silent parts of the piece demonstrate how I began to feel lost and out of place through my teenage years. Despite the fact, the pieces still going on the silence is lonely and creates a feeling of isolation – mirroring my emotions undergoing my journey into adulthood. 

As a sufferer from anxiety and paranoia, I often refer to my head as a “wasps nest”. Throughout the end part of the piece, I wanted to present this and the disarray that life has upon your mental state. The piece then begins to build in intensity through volume and added sounds. I started to include rhythmic beats and percussion as it shows a representation of adult working life and the routines in which we bind ourselves. It begins to get chaotic with several different noises and sound effects ranging from many different synthesisers, midi inputs and field recordings. Banging sounds taken from field recordings are used to add to this disordered sound, highlighting how problems and stress in adulthood life shatter your innocence. The noise ranges in pitch volume and type of recording which I hoped would portray severals paths of influence on the brain and the disordered stimulus it can create. Adults face multiple types of stress which is what I hoped it would indicate. 

Finally, the childhood recordings begin to come back into play and build up in sound as the chaos begins to die down. As a result, despite everything, your childhood will always be implemented in your life. It becomes your route for identity and carries on with you mentally throughout your entire existence. To end the piece I chose the heartbeats from the beginning sequence to start playing back again. I believe despite your influences and your positionality in life, everyone shares this process. By repeating the beginning I wanted to show a full circled effect – mirroring the circle of life. It shows me how everyone follows this process through and the heartbeats are leading onto someone else’s life. 

Everyone is born innocent and it is your life and society’s choices that destroy this. The frustrations, stress, and business of adult life take away your innocence bit by bit. Everyone shares this process and it is just a cycle waiting to happen. My goal was to produce this within my piece and I hope these visions come across when listening.

Categories
First Year Thinking & Doing Sound

Interactive Exhibitions Within Western Germany

After reading the article based on exhibition experiences within late 20th century Germany, I came to ask myself what works better for the art: including touch or not including touch? It is well known about Germany’s history under strict dictatorship rule throughout many centuries including only years before this article was discovered. During the end of the century, Germany took a new step towards freedom and began inheriting new waves of contemporary art within their lifestyle. Music became more experimental, and life found a new sense of freedom. However with the Berlin Wall still standing until 1989 Berlin still held a strict divide within society- highlighting an everlasting presence and control from the government. The debate of whether viewers were allowed to touch the art still tells me that western Germany still held a strong control over society’s actions. During Sehen und Hören, Josef Haubrich- Kunsthalle, Cologne 1974. They presented their work in a clinically white room with sealed windows- allowing no exposure from the outside world. The article states it “allegedly allows optimal concentration on their perception”. This feels to me as if the viewers were being forced to view the art in a certain way. Art is ambiguous and can sometimes be vague. People’s perceptions are based on their positionality and life context. The art should speak thousands of languages and meanings – dependent on the viewer and what their life had entailed. By shutting out any other influence stimulates a strict and regimented environment which contrasts the idea of a new, free Germany. Its militant environment mirrors the dictatorship past; allowing no flexibility during the exhibition. On the other hand, this could be viewed in another light. By blocking out any outside life during the exhibition could allow the opportunity for the viewer to forget existing oppression and current social ills happening in the outside world. Boycotting existing life can almost create a sense of calm and focus to experience the exhibition to its full potential. To me, the contrast between the white walls and the art almost creates a sense of divide – mirroring Berlin’s current state due to the Berlin Wall and the divide between Eastern and Western Germany. The art represents a sense of freedom away from strict rule juxtaposing the other side of the wall where rigid dictatorship rule was still held in place. These restrictions within the gallery could have had a greater effect and shown to the viewer what they would have seen outside anyway. They do the work for the windows meaning they’re not needed almost making it an immersive experience. Despite the fact, they didn’t want to do that.

Thinking about my future work, I will make the decision whether or not to incorporate touch within my piece. As already discussed earlier in my blog, I can clearly see the benefits of incorporating other senses to highlight the sound. However, I do believe that what senses you include is entirely down to the theme and focus of the piece. I will go away and think about my up and coming performance and decide whether I should or shouldn’t include this.

Categories
First Year Thinking & Doing Sound

Does Sight Effect Sound?

I recently visited the LUX New Wave of Contemporary Art at 180 The Strand. The exhibition focused upon how light and colour can affect the human being and their perception of reality. Every piece came along with a sound installation which got me thinking. The first room I entered (“I Can’t Breathe”) was 7 electrical screens surrounding you with visuals of a choir singing. Despite the words and the name of the piece being oppressive and negative, the sound was extremely soothing and peaceful. Its tranquillity resonated due to its surrounding speakers making you feel as though you were being embraced by the sound itself. This brought an extremely calming sensation to the room which contrasted with the juxtaposing lyrics “I can’t breathe”. However, despite the sound having such a calming effect I often wondered whether the bright warm coloured visual enhanced this effect. On the screens, they presented images taken from the choir in the church which were slowed down. Its tampered speed highlighted serenity and peace with no impression of rush. Big bursts of warm natural light hit the camera and the choir bringing a sense of unity and spirituality. Its angelic aesthetic in which the camera captured brought the same effect as the sound; calm and a fulfilled surrounded protection. When both mediums are put as one do they affect one another by heightening the mood it is trying to portray? If the sound is taken from that piece was filled with contrasting images of dark and ominous visuals; would we hear something different? 

This idea was furthered in the next room I visited. A more visual piece- here was a long blank wall with a strand of projected light. Mirrors on either side helped magnify its everlasting effect. The colours would change from Purple, Green, Yellow, Red and Blue. When colder colours such as Blue or Purple would hit the screen it would play a high frequency pitched note that would ring as if it was “everlasting”. In contrast when the screen would project warmer colours (red and yellow) the frequency would drop to a lower pitch note. The sound affected how you viewed the colours. High pitched frequency would give a strong sense of high energy and chaos. My memory played a part in this and made me refer to the atmosphere as weather and temperature (I thought about cold wind whistling). With the colder colours to add to this, it gave a taste of icy uncertainty. Whereas the lower frequency sounds would give a more sluggish, heavy sensation like being in warm heat. I once again asked myself the question what if the visuals and sound would have swapped? What effect would it then give me? The cold colours which before gave me high energy against a low frequency could have given an ominous and oppressive impression. Whereas the high-frequency sounds against the warmer colours could have given a burning intensity perception which juxtaposes the sloth-like laziness it gave when against low frequency. 

As a whole, I realised that although sight does affect how you hear something, sound also affects how you see something. No medium is stronger than the other and in fact, they work together hand in hand. These questions made me realise how I would like to present my work. Image and sound as mediums really do affect one another and the atmosphere they can create as a whole. Due to our memory and relative thinking, we put images and sound together to create a specific sense of feeling. I would like to play upon this when presenting my work to ensure I create the right mood I intend to create. Finally, to expand on this I would also like to incorporate other sensory mediums such as temperature and touch.  

Categories
First Year Thinking & Doing Sound

Letting The Environment Be The Instrument

When listening to the field recordings I noticed a contrast between people playing the environment and people allowing the environment to play themselves. Both are equally positives however I am personally drawn to the environment playing itself. The first was a contact mic strapped to a metal tube while someone banged the material to create noise. However, the second was the recording taken from the exact same place and method however the material was left alone. As humans, we feel a constant need to dominate an environment. In regards to sound, we constantly have the urge to create sound and be the composer. This is toxic in my eyes as we block out the natural sounds and attributes of our surroundings. This is a reflection upon life and how as human beings we think that taking control and being the leader of the environment is what produces the best results. From these reflections, I will no longer constantly feel the need to be the instrument – especially when it comes to recording sound. We should accept and appreciate what is around us and not feel the need to tamper with this. Sometimes being the observer hands you a better outcome than it does to be the show. You can learn from watching and listening despite the fact humans block this out every single day. Being at one with our natural resources and environment cam and will teach you more. 

Categories
First Year Thinking & Doing Sound

Sound In Britain – Is Art Work? Should It Be Free?

Should Art be Free?

While reading Toop’s, and Parkinson’s (2020) ’Unfinished Business: A Conversation on Sound Art in the United Kingdom’ interview it posed to me whether or not art should be work or instead, an instinct. Living in the western world of capitalism surrounded by a drive to work, our society is taught to make money. It becomes our “instinct” to create funds but for an artist should their “instinct” not be to create? I want to address the issues of being an artist within western cultures and the problems faced along the way.

To live freely within the United Kingdom we are bound down to the fact you need money to live. Toop refers to the culture of sound art as “Problematic”. His reference gives strong reflection to the economy of the art world. With Art buying being the biggest tax evasion within our western economy, many could argue this only forces the problem even further. Art’s high prices and status brings only one section of society to auction – the rich! With the rich buying art and making profit avoiding by tax, this creates an issue for many artist’s. Should their art be used for making a profit? Many could argue that this economical viewpoint takes away the focus on art and beauty its self. It’s aesthetic of the piece is shadowed by the looming force of money. This brings me back to whether or not art should even be sold at all? By selling the piece it feeds the economical morality towards the business. Only a few people gain from this and the artist themselves are not always one of them. 

However, without the auction, the artist would not make a living. With the westernised expectations to succeed we are continuously forced to make money.  Art not only costs to buy but also costs to sell. Materials and workspaces are not free; building up a budget for what we can and can’t create. This juxtaposes the idea that art shouldn’t be sold as it doesn’t count for the fact the artist may not even be able to create in the first place. With no income many artists would be left penniless meaning they’re unable to fund their creativity. Within the interview, Toop explains how sound art used to be referred to as “Sound Work”. This supports the idea that Art should be sold as it is a career rather than a vocation. Although on the other hand, the way he refers to the world as “problematic” creates many contrasting ideas to the rest of his points. By referring to his practice as “work” this westernises his artistic process giving it a new meaning but to create money. Art should be natural and a process that is free. Using the word “work” makes it seem like toil or hardship that is forced upon us to survive. Similarly to where art creates profit, his reference supports the idea that the economical world of art is hiding its beauty and purpose.

In reflection on this, I support the argument that making art can be “hard work” however in many cases it can not always be referred to as work. It is a lifelong practice. I hope to take this with me through my creative process and use this drive to focus my purpose of the art on its meaning and beauty and never on its price. 

Categories
First Year Thinking & Doing Sound

Walking Blind

The other day we went on an experimental lecture through the woods; blind folded! We were visionally disconnected to the world which made us focus on our audible sensory. While writing down the sounds we experienced I learnt something fascinating about the way the mind and the ears connect…

While on the walk we were led through dangerous and unnerving routes. This heightened my nerves and made me feel extremely tense. What amazed me was that although geographically I was in the same place- my brain chose to hear another! When scared I heard different sounds and my audible visioning was panning into other sounds. My focus was survival rather than pleasure. While I was relaxed I would hear easier things such as wind and trees in juxtaposition to approaching footsteps or dog’s barking when I scared.

I decided to focus in on this and use this for my work. When blindfolded the sounds of my surroundings were automatically heightened. This began to create a whole entire emotion and feeling just through sound. I plan to blindfold my viewers when presenting my sound in order for them to experience my piece at its best. My experiences taught me that harder sounds create more feeling. This encourages me to create uneasy listening for my work; in order to get maximum emotive responses.