Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale, using audience participation, at the event “Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus”, from the 2009 World Science Festival, June 12, 2009.
For related content, please view the full “Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus” program at our website.
Thoughts On Final Exhibition
So it once again has come to that time of the year where we need to present our work for the tutors. I have hence teamed up with Nick to present our Cinematic Flaneur project.
We thought it necessary to have our camera rig on display, especially since Nick put the time in to polishing it up for presentation. Unlike many of our contaminates, we have set up a projector as opposed to using a TV. In retrospect I actually prefer this format as it only seems natural to show a film from a projector.
The pressure around to putting together the installation was quite a ride, from printing and designing our conceptual statement to finishing off the SolidWorks drawing to installing the projector in the roof!
Make sure you check it out this Thursday! Nick and I are very proud of the installation.
Binding Lights
‘Binding Lights’ is a short experimental film about the personification of the Auckland CBD during the late hours of the night.
The film itself is an encapsulation what the city is on a personified level, but not through it’s population, but through the static presence of architecture and advertising. Filmed during the late hours of the night, once the majority of the population were removed from the situation and the absence of natural sunlight, it becomes abundantly the impact artificial lighting has on the city.
Through artificial lighting, the city literally begins to make light of how it wants to be portrayed, whether this be through the bombardment of neon advertisements, the lighting of architecture it deems beautiful or simply lighting up areas to create a sense of safety.
But much like humans portray themselves on various social networking sites, the city places higher emphasis on illuminating areas that are deemed worthy, and lesser to no illumination on the areas that the city wishes to draw your attention away from.
Filmed using a similar setup to Stereostopic 3D, this allows to present the film in a unique way that allows the use of experimental framing, by doing this the viewer can see very different levels of detail from two different streams of video. This helps place emphasis on the well illuminated and lesser illuminated areas simultaneously by allowing the viewer to see the same area, from two different levels of zoom.
The background sounds from the footage are left by most part in tact, as the noises created by the population that reside within the city an essential part of the piece. Because despite the film being about the prominence of selective lighting, the city is also personified by the noises that are made within it, but not to the same selective effect of artificial lighting.
Music: ‘VCR’ by The XX
7pm Thursday, 4th November
Ground floor, AUT Tower (WT), Rutland St, CBD, Auckland
Come join Year One, Bachelor Of Creative Technology students as we celebrate and exhibit our work from the semester.
There will be a variety of experimental films, live performances and audio installations to view and interact with and this is an excellent chance to ask the students about their body of work.
We hope to see you all there, it’s an open invite so feel free to bring anyone that’s interested!
I am pleased to preview ‘Dead Drops’ a new project which I started off as part of my ongoing EYEBEAM residency in NYC the last couple weeks. ‘Dead Drops’ is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. I am ‘injecting’ USB flash drives into walls, buildings and curbs accessable to anybody in public space. You are invited to go to these places (so far 5 in NYC) to drop or find files on a dead drop. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your files and date. Each dead drop contains a readme.txt file explaining the project. ‘Dead Drops’ is still in progress, to be continued here and in more cities. Full documentation, movie, map and ‘How to make your own dead drop’ manual coming soon! Stay tuned.
Dead drop (Wikipedia)
In the meanwhile drop some files here!
87 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY (Makerbot)Empire Fulton Ferry Park, Brooklyn, NY (Dumbo)235 Bowery, NY (New Museum)Union Square, NY (Subway Station 14th St)West 21st Street, NY (Eyebeam)
An extremely interesting piece of work which in turn is also a social experiment. Would be awesome to implement something similar like this in New Zealand.
Post Aural Terrain Thoughts
I found the ‘Aural Terrains’ a difficult project to truly comprehend. Understanding sound proved to be more difficult than I originally imagined, as I never really thought of sound as something outside of traditional music. However over the four weeks I soon discovered that the world of sound is far more expansive than I originally expected.
I found the world of sound almost captivating on how it can be perceived in completely different ways, such as improvisation. I originally thought improvisation was simply building upon music while you were actively playing it. But after a while I soon discovered that improvisation is so much more, anything from timing to singing notes and bouncing noises off each other.
I have also become far more appreciative of noises that often go unheard from day to day life, and how even though we block them out on a day-to-day basis, some of these noises are completely beautiful and captivating. Editing these noises together to supplement each other proved to be an interesting exercise and really opened my mind up to the concept of sound at.
As for circuit bending I probably found that the most difficult from a technical aspect, soldering the components together was simply frustrating. However the palette discovered through experimentation using different materials in conjunction with the circuit bending was quite vast, it proved to be a great foundation for working on my final performance.
Whilst experimenting at home, I discovered that placing the microphone in my mouth could create more unique sounds. This resulted in a wide range of unique and often unheard noises. In conjunction with materials that I placed inside my mouth in conjunction with the microphone an interesting palette of sound art was created. One of these was via the use of Berocca tablets, which created an interesting fizzing noise, which was the basis for my final performance.
Although my performance didn’t proceed the way I had hoped, it did prove the point that audio performances can be technically challenging and that Risk management is extremely important. In future I will try be more thorough in my preparation of presentations to create a more diverse, well realized and fully functioning performance for the audience.
Aural Examination
This was my final piece for the Aural Terrains project, although it didn’t turn out exactly like I hoped it did create some compelling and interesting noises. It’s just a shame the volume needs to be turned right up to be able to hear it.
Music By Numbers
This is my final piece for my ‘Maths And Art’ project. The reason I coined this piece ‘Music By Numbers’ was down to the fact that the music itself had absolutely no traditional foundation. The glass harp was tuned by the golden ratio, so none of the wine glasses even identified to a traditional note.
The composition of the piece is quite compelling, it starts of quite slowly using a very simple pattern and carries on with these very basic patterns right through until the 40 second mark. From this point on we move into the second section of the piece, which has been divided by the golden ratio. For the second section the notes were arranged using the Fibonacci Number pattern. This was also used for the timing for part of the arrangement.
I am unsure why, but during in the middle of the piece where the tempo is picked up it almost sounds like a techno beat or a high speed guitar riff.
Although recorded outside, I rerecorded the wine glasses inside for a crisper sound. I am annoyed I didn’t anticipate needing a Zoom audio device, as it would of been good to get the best quality sound.
Overall I am mostly happy with this final piece, it elaborated on a point I made in my essay about the relationship between Maths and Music and how the two are dependent on each other. Although after the creation of this piece I am not entirely sure, as the piece had not traditional musical construct but yet at times sounded melodic.
One unexpected result was that of the clicking between the note changes, although ultimately unintentional, it created a quite nice sense of beat and structure for the song. As for the golden ratio to divide the two sections, I’m not sure if it was all that successful from a creative stand point, but it still worked seamlessly into the piece.
Resonating Wine Glass, From Physics To Art
Here is a combined image of all the the different wave images created in sound booth combined in Photoshop to create an interesting piece of work.
Resonance Of Wine Glasses, Visualized
Here is a visual representation of the wineglasses that have been rendered in Adobe Soundbooth. It is extremely interesting the different patterns that emerge through each glass.
Glass #1 is the lowest note (with the most water) and Glass #6 is the highest note (with the least water).
Click here for higher resolution photos.
