week6 some thoughts about my interview

I just found some academic sources that could apply in my interview.

• the spoken words
• the gender aspect (two females)
• open questions
• closed questions to confirm the information
• rhetorical question quests more information
• let the interviewee say about the real-life experience
• target audience
• the actuality
• tone-used. light hearted
• codes/ convention cue (encode/decode)
• fast pace (aim to age)
• the mixture of music and speech
• ethics
• links
• the music punctuate aural-full
• the structure of the sentence should not be complicated for the target audience.
• For the topic, chose the appropriate international students to ask them proper questions and let the audience determine their relevance to the subject and is able to interpret their contributions in terms of their positioning and perspectives on the subject. 
• In the procession of the interview, the interviewer can paraphrase above-mentioned questions, use less words to use the airtime efficiently
• It should confront to the style of the radio station
• the imagination is one of the radio's appeal
• Ideology& Representation
• Semiotic value in the beginning sound to identify the audience
• Human emotion qualified

week6 presentation about Janet Cardiff

This week, Ann and Fiona did an presentation for us and I am really interested in her so I asked them for their powerpoint and it really makes sense. 

Introduction

•       Janet Cardiff

•       Born in 1957, Brussels, Ontario, Canada

•       Education: Queen’s University, University of Alberta

•       Know for: Sound Art, Installation Art

•       First gained international recognition in the art world for her audio walks in 1995

Audio walks

TAKING PICTURES | 2001

Taking Pictures

Taking Pictures led visitors on a route from the museum into the surrounding Forest Park, to an existing but little known wooded path hidden within a forested section of the park.

•       Employs recollections

•       First time to use still photographs as a device to convey a sense of both history and memory.

The Forty Part Motet

•       40 speakers in 8 groups were placed in an oval

•       Each speaker plays a recording of one sound

•       Enabling the audience to walk through the space and "sample" individual voices of the polyphonic vocal music.

She said: "While listening to a concert you are normally seated in front of the choir, in traditional audience position. With this piece I want the audience to be able to experience a piece of music from the viewpoint of the singers. Every performer hears a unique mix of the piece of music. Enabling the audience to move throughout the space allows them to be intimately connected with the voices. It also reveals the piece of music as a changing construct. As well I am interested in how sound may physically construct a space in a sculptural way and how a viewer may choose a path through this physical yet virtual space.”

THE FORTY PART MOTET | 2001

Work with George Bures Miller

•       George Bures Miller 

•       Born: 1960, Vegreville, Alberta, Canada

•       Education: University of Alberta

•       Know for: Sculpture, installation, electronic art

•       Notable work: Paradise Institute, 2001 (with Janet Cardiff)

Forest(for a thousand years…)| 2012

•       Cardiff and Bures Miller's work incorporates the actual forest into an audio composition emitted from more than thirty speakers.

•       Sometimes there is a near synchronicity of natural and mediated sounds, and it's tough to discern what is live and what is recorded.

•       the rustling breeze-dramatically escalating wind-a storm is approaching- sounds of war: whistling screeches, big explosions, the rat-a-tat of machine gun fire-shocking scream, a crashing tree, sounds of a mother and child, clanging metal-come close, but then leave-the trees and the wind again, and the crickets and birds.

•       Include elements of: narrative sequencing, experiments with sound, and movement.

Her first artistic collaboration with Bures Miller, in 1983, was a Super-8 film called The Guardian Angel. After this filmmaking experience, Cardiff's work began to include elements of narrative sequencing, experiments with sound, and movement.

Paradise Institute (2001)

With this work, originally produced for the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Cardiff and Miller focus on the language and experience of cinema. Viewers approach a simple plywood pavilion, mount a set of stairs, and enter a lush, dimly lit interior complete with red carpet and two rows of velvet-covered seats. Once seated, they peer over the balcony onto a miniature replica of a grand old movie theatre created with hyper-perspective. This is the first in a series of illusions orchestrated by Cardiff and Miller. Viewers then put on the headphones provided and the projection begins.

•       The artists won La Biennale di Venezia Special Award at Venice, presented to Canadian artists for the first time and the Benesse Prize.

•       Recognizing artists who break new artistic ground with an experimental and pioneering spirit.

•       At least two stories run simultaneously.

•       There is the “visual film” and its accompanying soundtrack that unfolds before the viewers

•       The film is a mix of genres: it is part noir, part thriller, part sci-fi, and part experimental.

•       Personal binaural “surround sound” that every individual in the audience experiences through the headphones.

•       The sense of isolation each might feel is broken by intrusions seemingly coming from inside the theatre.

•       Fiction and reality become intermingled as absorption in the film is suspended and other realities flow in.

some inspirations in research

soundscape/ soundtrack/ audio art
A coherent sound piece that describes an event, has an overall theme or something to portray the visual image as realistically as possible to engage the listener.
A soundscape is not music, although it can have musical qualities, but more of a sound collage.


Recently, I am impressed by Eraserhead (1977) whose sound designer is Alan Splet. It is a great example of atmospheric sound design. It's worth spending time with some good recordings playing with stretching, pitch-shifting, pitch-bending, reverse, adding effects in reverse, eq, reverb and worldizing before reaching for more exotic effects. It doesn't take much to make a sound completely unidentifiable.

What should I think before making a sound design?

How would you build the soundtrack?

Background to foreground?

Foreground to background?

Low frequencies to High frequencies?

When would you consider surrounds?

Would you spend more time on a featured story element, like a specific sword the character uses, and leave the ambiences for last? What would you do on a tight schedule? What would you do if you had all the time you wanted?

Do you prefer to create a sub-library and create a series of effects for a character before spotting them to picture?

How I would approach it, & what I would prioritise, totally depends on the story, context, characters, point of view, mood, meaning, directors intent,  the picture cut, pacing, drama... and the story.. 

Things like foley, movement, ambiences etc are relatively straight forward. The most difficult sounds are the subjective ones

The intention of the sound design

I think the most important intention is to create subconscious emotional conditions at the listener. I am considering about some tricks to generate cheerfully, sadly, intimately, threateningly, tightly...emotions? 

1. Silence is one of the most under-utilized tools in the sound designer's repertoire to manipulate the audience. 

2. Panning stuff (often with the help of spatial FX) is very useful, more so in the 5.1 environment. 

A great example: (in this case ambient kids laughing/playing about) and swirled them around the room, swelling/morphing into noise at the climax - mentally unstable adult with a child-like brain was about to murder someone. Juxtaposition or contrasting sounds works sometimes. 

3. Two really simple things that I think do a huge difference is the sudden volume raising in a tense moment to increase the public reaction to the scene and slowing down noises and raise it's volume slowly to create expectations.

4. Counter-point/contrast

What about surprise? (sound conveying emotions)

Surprise, while a legitimate emotion, seems like a reaction to a major change in state, context, other emotions, or expectations.

Timelapse Audio Recording

www.felixblume.com

Felix

Reference:

http://sound.stackexchange.com/

week5 in class

phonia

women's hour

second peak 4-6 school drive time 

listen shape

Man's hour

week5 presentation about Delia Derbyshire

Electronic music pioneer
BA in Mathematics and Music
Standing Wave 2004


Her career
Known for BBC and Radiophonic Workshop
"inventions for Radio"

Colour

Known work
Doctor Who theme

'An Electric Strom'- White Noise