Week 12: Audio Exploration

Craft: This project was edited using Garage Band on the Mac. Various tools enabled me to play with different ways to alter the sound of the music track.

Composition:One tool that I used was reverb which made the sound sound as if it filled space. Another tool was tremolo which was an effect that made the instrumentation sound shaky. I also played with vocal alterations. The monster one that I used made the voices deeper, muddying what was being said. I believe that making the words harder to understand turned the focus to the tones and sounds produced by the voices. I also played with echoes which were different from reverb in that each note was repeated without a sense of atmosphere.

Special Edition Post: Edyta Stepien Installation

This exhibition consisted of large-scale video projections on the walls of SXU's Art Gallery. When I first stepped in, there was a striking impact as if I had been transported to an entirely different environment, Stepien opened her presentation  by allowing the viewers to ask her questions about her piece. The first topic of concern was how the piece was made. She stated that the video clips were taken by pointing a micro-lens camera at a fish tank filled with water, with natural substances such as plants and sand while also including man-made objects such as wire, glitter, and bits of paper. To create a tumultuous atmosphere in this small setting, she created ripples in the water with a blow dryer and moving the water physically to created a disturbance into the items in the tank. The sound was also a component in this multimedia exhibit. Stepien stated that the sounds came from field recordings of pitches from hurricanes and storms.

Another topic was what she wanted to communicate with this piece. Stepien's inspiration for this piece came from the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina. Stepien stated that she wanted to explore the relationship between the natural and mechanical by making this simulation of a violent storm that transported us as the viewers to the center of the chaos. She explored how even natural objects have man-made components.I believe that this was successful in the way the entire gallery space was transformed to envelop the viewer in constant motion and dimness. 

This exhibition is different from any other exhibition I have attended in that it made me pay attention to both space and sound. I enjoyed how more than one sense was required to interpret  what was happening in the composition. Even though I knew I was inside of a building, the walls no longer felt like walls because of the depth and scale of the projection. While my eyes were visually interested, my ears were audibly interested in the ominous sounds of wind whistling and high pitched, resonating bells that provoked a certain emptiness or muffled sound as if I really was underwater, immersed in chaos.

Week 6:Impossible Fiction, One Instrument

Craft: The drawing was made on an iPAD app called Procreate. I used a variety of tools to illustrate my fictional character, mainly a chalk pencil mark which provided the furry texture I desired. The music was made using Garage Band.
Concept: The concept of this project was to create a piece of art and music using a specific set of rules. For the drawing, the rules were to not draw people, make a total of 5 drawings or make a drawing within the theme "Impossible Fiction". I chose the later theme, making a creature that is built of a rabbit, ram, and leopard. The musical piece required that we use only one instrument or use recordings/narration. I chose to make my piece of music with one instrument: the piano.
Composition: For the drawing, I thought mainly about how much of each animal had to be represented in a way that the viewer could identify each animal. I wanted the rabbit to be the most visible so that's why it is the head of the creature. The ram is most noted for its horns so I decided to replace the rabbit's ears with the horn. Since I didn't want to make the body primarily a ram's body, I decided to give it a snow leopard's body based on the color scheme I had started to establish of grays, black, and white. I used a separate layer to make a background that I thought gave a sort of mystical presence in the vibrant colors and light effects. Concerning the music, I only  used one instrument within the app's piano category, Those instruments were the arcade synth and the grid bass which gave an 8-bit video game quality. I wanted to play around with different melodies that could act as a drum's baseline although I couldn't use drums and differing melodies with low pitches and high pitches. I focused a lot on contrasting sounds although they were made by the same instrument.

Week 8: Daily Ritual

Craft: The video was made using a Canon DSLR camera. I staged the video in the Visual Arts Center while I filmed the subject playing a video game on his laptop as he does every day. Using soft light created by adding an umbrella to the lamp, I took into consideration not only the light and shadows on his face but also how I could angle the lamp to on his hands and the computer screen so that the content displayed would be clearly visible as well. That was by far the most difficult task. The music was composed using Garage Band. Since I had previously made a piece with a video game feel to it, I thought it would be suitable enough for the exercise.
Concept: The concept of this project was to record a daily ritual using multiple shots. Meaning, the camera had to be moved at various different angles with each shot. I found that the angles I shot below the subject to be the most interesting because of the expressions of the subject's face that I was able to capture along with the action on the laptop screen. After collecting these shots, we were to edit them down into interesting compositions then compose them in one 30 second or 60-second video using Adobe Premiere. This part of the exercise challenged me to evaluate what was interesting about the shots and how to compose the shots in a way that made logical sense. We also experimented with the use of audio fades and video fades to establish a beginning and ending in Adobe Premiere.
Composition: While composing the shots with the DSLR, I knew that I wanted to create a balance between both the figure and the actions he was engaged with. A lot of the shots required intense preparation to make sure the figure fit within the composition along with the laptop, the mouse, and his hands to show the movements he made. The composition also played a role in putting the shots together. I wanted there to be an implied beginning and ending, showing the subject opening his laptop to begin his frustrating journey through the game only to reach a game over.