Bsc Digital Arts and Technology

Now that the application is all done and finished, here a couple of references that I’ve used

Kahn, Douglas (2001) NOISE WATER MEAT: A HISTORY OF SOUND IN THE ARTS. Cambridge Massachusetts, London England: MIT Press

LaBella, Brandon (2006) BACKGROUND NOISE: PERSPECTIVES ON SOUND ART. New York; London: Continuum.

Licht, Alan (2007) SOUND ART: BEYOND MUSIC, BETWEEN CATEGORIES. New York: Rizzoli.

I’ve been working with Flash mainly to produce this DJ Sound Art application, where the user can play or stop a number of sound clips to make their own sound art which incorporates loads of different sound art styles to fit in with a number of artists work.

 And I’m glad to say that it runs smoothly and all the sounds play when the user clicks on the dial to start/stop it. I also have the volume and pan to change…however I was still unable to figure out how to do it for each individual sound clip which is a bit annoying but I do not have the know how or the time to fix it.

 I did attempt a key listener so that you only has to press a key to start/stop the sound however I did not have the time to look into it too much and my coding abilities still stopped me. However you can find the finished product here
http://vhill.co.uk/idat203/IDAT203.swf

I recorded the sounds I’ll be using for the application today. 

I’ve decided to go with the sound of traffic in the style of Pierre Schaffer, silence in the style of John Cage, Electronic Music as art not music agreeing with Annea Lockwood’s description of Sound Art in Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories, A dada poem to tie in with earlier forms of Sound art, and attempted to record ice (in my freezer I couldn’t get up to the Arctic and it wasn’t snowing) however all you heard was noises in the kitchen so instead I’ve settled for the boiling of a kettle and running water.

You can find the samples of the sound I’ve used at http://vhill.co.uk/idat203/sound/

Below is a screen shot of what the application looks like, I’ve added a number of movie clips each with it’s own individual sound (well will be once I’ve added it still in the testing stages at the moment). 

 The little white dial on the side plays the sound and the arm moves onto the record, and the little black dial turns the sound off and the arm goes back to it’s original position, as you can in the bottom right hand corner are the sliders to change the volume and the balance of the sounds. 
 These are done in a style of an equaliser similar to the ones found in radio stations and any recording studio as I felt this fits in with the DJ theme – which I picked as the user can be their own DJ! 

I was working on the code this morning to get the application to attach a movie clip and to play/stop it when a certain button is pressed – that was fairly easy to do and luckily didn’t take me too much time to do. 

 The worst part came when I was doing the volume and pan, I could get it change all of the sounds (at this point I was just testing the application with some sound clips I already had on the computer) but no matter what I did I couldn’t get it to change for each sound. 

 Which does add a flaw to my plan as it means every sound used would have to be played at the same volume or at a volume I’ve already pre-set when recording/editing the audio which in my opinion does take away the whole point of the application. 
 I will continue to work on it though!  

I had a course preview day today and typically Chris Speed showed the same work he does every time but this time one of them inspired me!

 I can’t believe that I didn’t think of this before, it’s from a previous student who did this as their final year project (I think) it’s when he records a sound and then has it play in a cube although it’s all done on a computer it just looks like it’s playing from the cube.

 It’s a bit hard to explain bit it’s similar to what I want to do, but with movie clips in flash where a movie clip will play a sound and you can switch on or off sounds to create your own movie piece. 

 I can’t find the link and have to remember to get it off Chris Speed when I see him next

After having a conversation with Ollie about what I wish to do, I was describing to him how I would design it. 

Originally as seen on the first design it was just going to be a serious of buttons which when clicked would play a particular sound which the user can then turn on or off and mix it with other sounds to produce a sound piece that they think is sound art (within in the guidelines set out by established sound artists)

But during that conversation I came up with a new design, have DJ turn tables as the buttons, and they press a on or off button to play the sound to give more of a sound art feel.  
 Going along the lines of the DJ area, I also thought about adding a function so that they could change the volume of the sounds and also the balance/pan of the sound (i.e. whether it’s mainly on the right speaker, left speaker or equally distributed between the two.)

I am now really excited about doing this!

Below is a rough sketch of what the new design is

From my previous entry I have decided to do this project in Flash with sound clips. 

I’ll have a number of sound clips from different artists and traditional practises such as Dadaism and Conceptualism/ the Fluxes movement and the user can decide which ones to play according to their view on sound art.

I have an original design layout in my workbook, which will be scanned/photographed and uploaded later of what I’d like it to look it.

 I think the sounds I’m going to use will be silence (from John Cage) background noise (from Pierre Schaffer), the recording of ice (DJ Spooky is recording the sounds of the ice in the Arctic, and also from Yoko Ono and her piece TAPE PIECE III/ Snow Piece (1963) 

‘Take a tape of the sound of the snow

            Falling.

            Do not listen to the tape.

            Cut it and use it as strings to tie

            Gifts with.

            Make a gift wrapper, if you wish, using

            The same process with a phonosheet.’

(Kahn 2001: 238). )

Electronic music (Annea Lockwood) and a recording of Dada poem, as well as general background noises and random noises. 

I think I’ve got how I could do this project!

No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the question ‘what is sound art?’ out of my head, and I know that I answered it in my essay to what I feel is sound art but it still didn’t really explain what it was.

As mentioned in my earlier post so many accomplished/established artists have separate views on Sound Art, and unlike traditional art forms such as Cubism, Renaissance art etc there is nothing that defines one piece of sound art as sound art i.e. someone can’t hear a piece and be like yes that’s definitely sound art like they can in an art gallery. 

 I want to incorporate these artists opinions on the subject into this project and let others decide for themselves what they think is sound art and adjust settings accordingly. 

Just got to do some research, below is a rough sketch of how I could display my idea.

Oh my goodness, it’s the end of March already and I return to Uni next week! Where did all the time go! 

 I suppose it didn’t help that I’ve been stuck on my back for the last couple of days because of hurting it at work oh well it just means I need to get my act together.

As an update though, I’m still carrying on with the Sound Art idea, I still haven’t pin-pointed how I’m going to present it or get my ideas/views across.  

 The more I think about it, the less I like my idea of doing different sound pieces, I also think in order for it to be effective I should have started it at least 2 months ago which was even before I got my idea. 

 So once again it’s back to the drawing board for me, but I definitely want to keep the sound art idea. 

Reading again up on both my essay and the books I used for my essay, try get some inspiration nothing has yet struck. 
 I am a bit tempted towards showing the different views on Sound Art…but no matter what I think about doing I just think it’s only my idea on what Sound Art is and not really critical enough.

 For instance John Cage’s view on Sound Art differs from Max Neuhaus opinion on sound art as the latter artist says this ‘“Now even in the aftermath of the timid “forever Mozart decades” in music, out response surely cannot be to put our heads in the sand and call what is essentially new music something else – “Sound Art”…”’. (Licht 2007: 10).

 With ‘new media’ being a termed used for the type of art that John Cage creates using silence and noise which is also similar to the artist Pierre Schaffer who dealt mainly with background/environmental noises.

On top of which you also have the ‘electronic music’ area as sound art – which in my opinion isn’t sound art either as it’s produced to be music and to listened to as music rather than perceived as sound art.  Considering that music is an established art form itself. 

Again though – how could I show this and would this answer the brief?