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Sound & Immersion - BRIEF

PROJECT BRIEF | Sound + Immersion
Acoustics, Decibels, Frequencies, Vibration, Variation, Voltage, Pitch, Tuning, Effect, Emotion, Emotional Memory, Movement, Unconventional Communication, Mind, Matter, Mood, Math, Impact, Soundscapes, Sensitivity, Subtlety and Saturation, Rhythm.

MOTIVE


Sound effects us every day on a grand scale, both knowingly and unknowingly, every day we have an emotional experienced with sound. Whether it be not noticing the fridge cycling on and off to hearing a car horn at 100 decibels in your right hear, sound impacts our lives more than we notice. As John Cage said, `There is no such thing as silence`. Even the most subliminal of sound can stir and evoke. The human ear is incredibly sensitive. Your ears can hear everything from your fingertip brushing lightly over your skin to a loud jet engine. Even in the most tranquil of settings we are surrounded by or unconsciously affected by some kind of white noise.

Sound and Music have the power to control and direct our sensory perceptions in the most subtle or the most extravagant manner and unlike most artistic mediums music doesn't have to mean anything. It has the power to just `be`, but in `being` it taps the most primitive sensory regions of the brain, triggering feelings and memories and immersing us in multiple dimensions simultaneously.

The use of sound for behavioural control and management of man and animal is still in its infancy. Loud signals from experimental sonars underwater can alter the behavioural patterns of marine animals and muzak is not only being used to stimulate sales in supermarkets now but strategically chosen audio is being used to pacifying bogans in malls to reduce vandalism.

According to Dr. Horowitz, a Harvard-trained award-winning musicologist/researcher, there is a special sound and colour of love. And this “C”, part of an ancient scale called the Solfeggio Scale with a frequency of 528 Hz is also used for DNA repair. Broadcasting the right frequency can help open your heart, promote peace, and hasten healing. “We now know the love signal, 528 Hertz, is among the six core creative frequencies of the universe because math doesn’t lie, the geometry of physical reality universally reflects this music; these findings have been independently derived, peer reviewed, and empirically validated,” Dr. Horowitz says.

The use of different scales, tones and textures can shape and complete visual works. Rhythm, constructed of beats and notes, like vertebras of the spinal column, can become the backbone of any cinematic narrative. The decibel scale, named after Alexander Graham Bell who worked in the area of sound and loudness, is used to measure and compare the loudness of sound. The intensity (how much sound energy per unit area per second hitting the eardrum) of a single note combined with a visual or animated action can increase the impact 10 fold. `VOLUME` remains one of the most misunderstood, abused and over used components of sound technology today.

An action combined with a sound can make us jump, wince, cringe, giggle. The relationship between sound and image is a very powerful and often under-utilised one. Whether it is harmony or in discord, sound can change our way of seeing.

MEANS

Explore the use of sound to impact an image. It can be a stationary or a moving image; you may use a recorded conversation, a sound effect, a drum beat or a song, but combine it with imagery to experience how the sound can change or enhance the viewers relationship with the image.

Time & Perspective - unconscious coherence

I toyed with two pieces. The second piece is a kind of offence against narrative order - perhaps more David Lynch or Doctor Who than David Mamet. : )

Low brow...and making it move

I was very fortunate to be living in LA while the underground
- or better known perhaps as LOW BROW - art movement developed over the course of a decade. I watched people like Mark Ryden & Camilla Rosa Garcia emerge from the scene (I only wish i had bought some of their art while it was cheap).

Well i just found another - through an ink print i saw online - on someone`s blog.

There was no credit so i had to locate the blogger who finally got back to me to find out who did it. Since i have developed a friendship with this artist. Mel Kadel. i love her stuff. I would like to make it move. She told me her boyfriend (Travis Millard) and her were recently in Sydney and spoke at Semi-Permanent art conference. There you go.

Blood Tea & Red String

I thank my girlfriend in New York for pointing this animation to me. There is something really beautiful when you can capture sensuality & depth with something so ....unreal.

Clearly the director, Christiane Cegavske, like many of us enjoys the works of people like
Jan Švankmajer and Brothers Quay. I think Laura gets this too. Moving stuff.

This link nails movement & op art

I have always felt a deep regard for Mr. Duchamp - linked with my love of Dada and Surrealism.

Light = Pitch (fine tuning the lighting)

Laying in the bath today - a really well earned day off i must say - i noticed a moment when the light (sun) hit the window and it was a perfect, though illustrious, moment of natural lighting.

I think that light is like sound - and perhaps that is why i am so ultra sensitive to it - that you can tune it like sound. Tuning a guitar or piano you know when you hit the note, when it is in tune. For me that is light. Of course there isnt any one scale to tune to but you know when its pitch perfect when you hear it is finally in tune (so to speak) you know it is ON. Fine tuning lighting.

I didnt capture the moment in time with my camera. But i felt it.

Optical art & Josh Batty sound cinema

Josh an `X` musician and now programmer joined our Hunter Gatherer luncheon today. What a geek!
He sits around programming visuals to make beats. Like - he is the real thing. Mercurial mind. A multi instrumentalist of the digital arena. Snatching pixels and matching them with rhythm sewing it all up with code, apps and plug ins. Yes...i do understand it but i cant quiet get inspired by its purpose (yet). I mean....i need to see something work and the degree of its usefulness on a grander scale. I just kept thinking `wait til this software falls into the wrong hands...just imagine its potential. Terrorists corrupting CCTV Systems and their faces appearing as cartoon cut outs.

I am kind of flawed that Josh is dating a Yoga instructor. I mean - that`s so damn analogue.

I liked that he mentioned Bridget Riley. Her work was everywhere when i was a kid. Hallucinogens.
She is a great example of a painter who has used optical illusions in her work. Quite the pioneer and is one of the foremost proponents of op art, art that exploits the fallibility of the human eye.

I am my own experiment. Bushpygmalion - a kind of performance art piece...on screen

I really threw it at the wall when i spontaneously decided to do a show as part of Melbourne Comedy Festival...i had 5 hours to get an application in before the deadline. What was i thinking?
And not only that - it cost me 500 dollars (FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!) SO...a little silly when you consider that i havent promoted it (other than one small advert i designed and placed in INPRESS LIFT OUT)...I have been really obsessed with doing the animated part of the narrative - which is really an integral component to the entire performance - and so other elements have been ignored. The animation SHOULDNT be an integral part it but the fact is i have been performing most of my life and it is rather unexciting for me to NOT ADD a wild card into the mix. Which means - often i am leaving myself doing things i have never done at the last minute. Do i love the stress? Is it adrenalin? Is this fair on the audience? I was literally juggling 15 things the day of the first show, and only because i am an anal obsessive compulsive control freak organizer did i manage to pull it all together at 5.15 pm. Sound check / tech check was 5.15 pm. Lucky school is a 3 minute walk from the venue. Which i hadnt even seen. And someone loaned me a projector - just like that! Luck was on my side. Somehow in the mayhem I managed to forget to collect my beautiful $5000 Martin guitar from my bush dwelling - so unarmed (without instrument) i duck into a second hand music shop and find myself the perfect little nylon string guitar WITH hard case AND stand for $125.00. I secretly had been wanting a cheap little half sized nylon string guitar...and there she was...just waiting for me...like an orphan child...the cutest little thing just crying out for me to take her to my show. So we debuted together. What a bonding experience.

There were people in the audience...but i didnt see them. I was too unearthed from the chaos of the day. I will be present this week, I promise. I see there are ticket sales and that excites me. I do love a good audience. Fact is the bigger the better. This venue isnt something i would have picked had i been in serious about what i was doing. And I will be hardly likely to break even on this one. It is really an indulgence on my part...an experiment i say...

If there is any message i would like to leave with the audience on this one it is
INSIST ON THE LIFE YOU WANT. LIVE IT. AND MAKE NO APOLOGIES.

x