Category: Year Two

Throughout this unit, I have been exploring my future career possibilities, as well as intertwining this exploration with a few external scoring and personal projects, which I hope to aid my search for a suitable career choice, upon completing my course.

Firstly, a series of short, experimental videos (more to be released as the summer months go on) produced with my longtime collaborator Tobias Futers (UAL, Chelsea, Fine Art). As well as this, I helped to sonically design, score and film his experimental short film ‘VALA’.

My stand alone, sonic work which I have been working on and releasing intermittently throughout the year is available to stream here:

I have also been recently commissioned to produce an accompanying sound work for a third year’s final piece, which will be exhibited in Chelsea on the 17th of June.

I am finding much enjoyment in scoring work, and can see a partly sustainable future in this, so long as I continue to expand my network of collaborators, as well as taking time to further strengthen my craft.

a selection of photos taken on various sound-walks between January and June.

Gallery 46 proposal:

USE FOR GALLERY 1

Tech Specs:

-4x GENELEC Speakers

-2x Cone Speakers (4 inch)

-12x Contact Microphones

-1x Strobe Light

-1x Projector

-2x thick, black curtain

-1x 12-Channel Mixer

Concept/Form:

The installation will be a multi-dimensional, interactive experience designed to provoke, dazzle and disorientate.

The receptor will pass through the black curtain, which will be separating the cave from the rest of the gallery. As they do this, the processed, spatial sounds of rain and water (constant loop via raspberry pi4), emitting from two miniature cone speakers suspended above the doorway, will quite literally wash over them, introducing and marking themselves to/with the space. An intermittent, colour-changing strobe (placed strategically in the left alcove), along with projected (placed strategically in the right alcove) black and white, disorientating and at times abstract (muted) videography (220m wall), will be the only sources of light for the audience member, with the natural light from the window blocked out with another thick, black curtain. In each of the four corners of the room, suspended GENELEC speakers will be emitting a plethora of sounds, with two sets (Right Front, Left Back) producing a number of carefully collected, appropriate field recordings (playing on a one-hour loop via the raspberry pi4), whilst the other two sets (Left Front, Right Back) will be exuding the spontaneous, processed, live sounds being received from the contact microphones, which will be jutting from each of the four walls in the space. These particular sounds will be a direct, processed playback of the receptor’s interactions with the room. The twelve contact microphones will be fed through a small 12-channel mixer, placed directly in front of the blacked out window, acting as a substitute in its own right.

I have been exploring, over the past few months, the prospect of making my own sound-based climate, manipulating a space to make my own, tailored environment. For the chosen space to exist on its own, separate from the rest of the world. I have a large obsession with mythology and symbolism and the notion of caves, labyrinths, disorientating, puzzling naturalistic settings have been woven into almost every ancient culture imaginable. I love paying homage to my interests and influences so to create my own interpretation of such a prolific mythological device is almost an honour to me.

-Frequency of a space

-Site Specific work (made for location)

-Maria Chavez

-Rain of appliance (Café Oto), 4.1, live diffusion, BLM

-Abemolpas (10m16s), 2004

-Jonty Harrison- ‘Afterthoughts’ (15m59s, 2007): “…the everyday sounds of a summer garden evoke more memories and imaginations as the listener drifts into a semi-slumber“

-Embracing a site-specific response (Hayes, 2013)

-John Cage: “I would like the happening to be arranged in such a way that I could at least see through the happening to something that wasn’t it”

-Associating Places: Strategies for live, site specific, Sound Art performance (the actual, the activated & the associative)

Timeline of recording sound

-the phonograph

-the tinfoil phonograph (1887), speaking machine (Thomas Edison)

-Hill & Dale vertical grooves

-Wax Cylinder (1889)

-The Gramophone/Shellac discs (1887)

-Instantaneous Disc (1929), (Lacquer, 1934)

-Microgroove disc (LP, 1948, USA), (EP, 1949, USA)

-Magnetic Recording (tape)

-Wire Recorder (Woody Guthrie)

Configuration:

-full track mono

-twin track

-4, quarter length track stereo (1+3 one way, 2+4 the other)

-compact cassette (1963)

-Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), Alec Reeves (1937)

-NHK R+D (1967) 12-bit, 30 KHz mono, then 13-bit, 32 KHz stereo

-Denon (1972)-DN-023R (8-track)

-Sony PCM-1 (1977), F1 1981-PAL/NTSC signals

-Betamax, U-matic, VHS

-E1AG (14-bit)

-Sony Phillips Compact Disc (1982): Optical Laser, 74 min duration, 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, Pits and Land.

-Sony Phillips CD-R/CD-RW (1998): Photosensitive dye (burning), Audio+Data, 80 min, 10 years duration, digital (Sony DASH, Mitsubishi prodigi)

-Sony DAT (1987): Smaller than a cassette, 16-bit, 44.1, 48 or 32 kHz, Helical scan, expensive + RIAA concern, DDS (Digital Data Storage)

-Sony MiniDisc (MD, 1992): Magneto-optical tech (formative layer), Lossy ATRAC (Later Hi-MD), 80 min. Low uptake.

-Phillips Matsushita DCC (1992)

-HDD & Solid state

-MPMan (1998)

-iPod (2001), Spotify (2006)

today I bought myself some new equipment, as well as a book, in order to further my sonic knowledge, and improve/change my attitude and relationship with synthesis

‘The Bright Labyrinth’ (Ken Hollings, 2016), recommended by Dr Milo Taylor

A focus on the particular moment of listening now, inside a pandemic. Constantly considering the ‘moment’ of listening’.

-Noé Cuéllar (future vessel)

-filling the 360 degree space/sound field- the ‘planes of movement’

-distance + space (what do each hold to their own?)

-ambient, dynamic drone (performative?)

LFO/ADSR

-wave form dictates parameters

-SOUND/SILENCE (design)

-the approach (‘…as if…”)

-playing a role/persona/identity

music/sound & emotions: is sound therapy?

why do certain keys/tones cause a psychological/bodily reaction and what is the science behind this?

signals in the brain. what tones spark certain responses?

-Foley (film)

-Call & Response

-sensory overloads (sound related)?

-sound & trauma-healing?

-sound baths & tubular bells

 -certain notes will blend well together because of the way the sonic frequencies merge together. The brain will automatically pulsate towards complimentary frequencies, that will compliment each other well, in order to form enjoyable & pleasurable sounds.