Rotation: Sound

This rotation began with the discussion the definition of sound and observing artists how play with sound in their creative process. Most notably Kanazawa Kenichi, Susan Phillipsz, and Simon McBurney.

We discussed the four sonic components which contribute to the “Storyworld”. These are: voices, sound effects, ambience, and music. Playing with these four compenents will change how we understand the storyworld.

Jan Svankmajer sets the rules of his world in “Breakfast“, Raven Kwok does the same in a vastly different way through “1194D“. Establishing the rules of sound in your world is integral to establishing your storyworld and it’s aeshetic.

Brief: Go outside, choose anywhere you like, and make a drawing​.

I made this piece while observing the area directly in front of the underground station. I was considering the works of Christine Sun Kim and Wassily Kandinsky.

I began by laying down a line for high tones and a line for low tones. Then I added larger sweeping strokes to capture the ambiance, using brushes that suited the texture of the noise. Sudden grating noises, such as an ambulance siren were drawn using hard-edged brushes and small jagged lines. Distant noises were drawn faintly, while I used regimented gritty brush strokes in black and grey to evoke the ideas of cars and movement through the space. I also included images and washes of colour as shorthand for noise. I am pleased with the overall concept of the piece, however, the execution could be improved. I will attempt to bring some of these concepts into the media I make at the end of the week.

Final Films

This is a link to my final films.

For this rotation I examined three pieces from the onomatopoeia club, and developed three moving image experiments in response. I faced a tidal wave of technical difficulties which limited the software I had available. Each piece was created using a combination of Procreate and IMovie in my iPad and phone.

For my first video I developed a concept for an animatic. I was inspired by the work in we conducted in class, specifically the foley and vocal distortion elements. I chose clean dialogue cut from a video game which I intended to manipulate to change the feelings each line evoked. However due to technical limitations I had to mostly abandon the idea. I instead focussed on animating the scene first using sound, and then drawing some visuals to accompany. If I had had more time I would have developed the visual further, to push the idea that there is rain in the scene, and also to add some visual cues to help distinguish the two characters.

In my second work I tried to find a new way to work on vocal distortion. I was inspired by 1149D, a piece we saw in class which contained abstract visuals and distorted sound. I started by finding obscure sounds around my house. Then I used AI to generate a series of imaged based on emotions and images the foley evoked for me. I blended these together in Procreate and IMovie.

The last piece is a combination of ideas. I felt that my first video did not have the hallmarks of an Onomatopoeia Club work, so I set out to specifically design something in response to my favourite pieces. I used the foley work we completed in class on Tuesday and attempted to animate a mix of abstract and figurative visuals to the sound.