Category: research presentations

This is an idea that I had for a performance space. The top half of the drawing is a top down view of the seating arrangement: beanbags closest to the performer and sofas around the outside of the space. The lighting across the walls could be from my cymatics experiments or some other form of reflection. The bottom half is what it might look like when entering the space. Fabric hangs from the walls to the ceiling. Large projections are cast over the sheets creating a glow in the hazy room. The speakers should be out of sight, either behind the fabric or hidden away in the corners, the origin of the sound should not be obvious.

During my reading for this project, I have found a similar point echoed from a range of writers. For centuries, man has looked to turned to nature for solace or inspiration. I believe we are to live harmoniously with the ebbs and flows of nature. The ancient Chinese concept, Wu Wei, similar to the concept of flow, teaches us to align with these movements. Through this, we can find ways as artists to rekindle our relationship with nature, our environment and ourselves. The present, then, allows us to access the well of inspiration that is already inside us. We find that ideas will flow freely from us when we are in the current moment, focused on the task at hand and our bodily responses.

It is through communing with nature that we move closer to our own nature p. 52 The Creative Act/ Rick Rubin

Discipline and freedom seem like opposites. In reality they are partners. Discipline is not a lack of freedom, it is a harmonious relationship with time p.135 The Creative Act/ Rick Rubin

In this creative dance, where nothings is pursued, nothing is lost, and everything gracefully falls into its rightful place – nothing remains p.54 The Way Of Effortless Books/ Joshua David Hester

When practice becomes fixated on goals and end points, it distorts itself p.21 Structures And Synthesis/ Mark Fell

It is possible that playful participation can result in peak creative product, but the critical factor is that music is not held at a distance and objectified but instead lives as a process into which all members of the group enter, experience and enjoy p.11 Free To Be Musical/ Lee Higgins, Patricia S Cambell

Whether scientist or artist, coming to know our individual sense of the world is not a one-sided inquisition, but a constant collaboration between oneself and this nature and cosmos. Asking Questions Of Nature/ Patrick Lyon

Through our discussions in class, we have decided to make the focus of our piece transmission. We have come up with a plan to broadcast our work from our laptops using transmitters that were brought off the internet.

One radio will receive two signals that will tuned to throughout the piece, allowing for other broadcasts to interfere. I love this idea as it will tie radio directly into the piece. The photo below is from the second rehearsal.

In the previous post featuring cymatics, I mentioned building a Chladni plate. Although I haven’t got around to doing this yet, I have spent some time experimenting with other ways of visualising sound. I am yet to find a name for this process, but the set up is easy and the results are great in the dark. You will need: a laser, a small reflective surface (e.g a broken mirror), a speaker and a ballon to stretch over speaker. The clips below from the experiment are using some songs I have been working on for my album being projected onto a wall. The physicality of turning audio into visual in real time is a fun experience, I am currently composing a piece which is based around this visual feedback.

I also did some experiments reflecting the created shapes off a second mirror to see what kind of effect I could create. This got me thinking about creating a piece that spins different mirrors or lenses in front of the created shape to fill a space with colourful shapes, this would be a great way to elevate the experience at a live show which Is why I am trying to implement cymatics into the set design at a future Nasterisk event. I will post updates as the cymatics project continues.

During a lecture, Milo brought up cymatics. This is a topic I had heard of before but hadn’t fully looked in to. After my research so far, I’ve found cymatics to be of great interest and have am now looking in to creating visuals from audio in a more broad sense.

TouchDesigner is a software that was brought to my attention during a create computing talk at LCC, since then I have been getting hands on trying to learn my way of around its many systems, using YouTube as a guide where necessary. I intend to use TouchDesigner to add a visual element to my artist practice in the future.

Chladni plates have been of most interest in the topic of cymatics. Some of the collaborators at nasterisk and I have decided to figure out a way to connect cymatics and fashion through the use of such plates. We plan to have a synthesiser that customers will use to alter powder dye on a plate. The resonant frequencies will create a unique design for each person ultimately adding to the user experience.

interesting youtube links:

interesting A/V artists instagram links:

Yoshi Sodeoka:

https://www.instagram.com/yoshisodeoka/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==

Jason Ting:

https://www.instagram.com/jzlabs/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==

Leo Van:

https://www.instagram.com/leovannmusic/utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==

Rhizomes were briefly covered in week 5 of Intro to Sound Arts and it sparked some interest within me.

To truly create something new is a hard task for anybody, I think questioning the old is a far more reasonable way to go about creating innovative ideas. Through being inquisitive of arborescent structures we can uncover hierarchies within them that can limit growth. Rhizomatic structures give us the opportunity to use every new experiment as a starting point for further exploration. We are then able to double back and retrace our steps, which can increase experimentation tenfold, this has to be my favourite part about Deleuzian thinking.

Related YouTube link: