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Sound of Balloons Painting a Canvas
Deleon White Gallery
Toronto 2009

time & space

- body -

phase #3: sound/mediations/systems

critiques/comments

Personally coming from a music major’s position I really enjoyed this project. There was an array of variation presented in class but a few that caught my attention and made lasting impressions are the ones that follow.

Louis St-Amour

FACS 2930 - Phase 3

Guess which is which?

This one fooled me and impressed both while listening to it, and also after when they devices used where explained. The first one I thought was a construct due to the odd interaction of sounds and laughing/talking. The touch screen sequencer Louis used to create makes it sound perfectly normal if you know what is going on. The idea behind such a device has inspired me in my personal projects and is something I am continuing to explore.

The 2^nd piece, the slowed down theme of avatar, although in retrospect clearly sounds like a constructed sound source, I was too captivated by the first audio clip to evaluate it properly in class. It is a good manipulation of sound, as opposed to just edited found sounds together took a clearly composed piece and distorted it to a point of no recognition. The logic behind recording people’s interactions with a sequencer for the first video though is one of my favorites presented in class. The idea of creating an interactive piece or art and using this scenario, the audio of this relationship as another final product I think is very strong, and adds more layers to the idea of an audio soundscape.

Quincy Cheung 1 2

I appreciate pieces that take the time to create a relationship between as a diptych of the two audio sources. This one is a clear juxtaposition between stormy and clam. I unfortunately cannot remember which one is the capture and what is the construct, which although some may argue defeats the point of the exercise I can still appreciate the final product. It has mad a balance by contrasting two ideas of nature and made it indistinguishable which one was create and what was recorded. Part of this is due to the nature sounds used, the both sound like they have been taken from sample library and they both sound constructed. As far as I am concerned I do not believe this is the case but still presents a coherent two part audio soudscape.

Raveesh

The Importance Of Sound

First off all, this piece has a great presentation, tricky to maneuver in but appreciated. The change in the middle of the piece is distinguishable, although very subtle you can hear a difference, this is not a negative critique but a mere comment if the intention was to create a seamless transition. However, it is still hard to decipher which is the construct and which is the recording. Going with the approach of mimicking the talking computer and again having an overarching theme of the chaos of the world from a computers perspective. The way it is presented is ironic because a computer cannot comprehend chaos or the stresses of the drive to be famous and receive recognition. I think it is a really smart presentation, and final product and I enjoy the fact he did not create two tracks but blend them together. I think it works well with the theme and overall idea of the piece creating a very coherent presentation in the end.

Angus Chan 0 1

This one I appreciate on a few levels, one I am a drummer and enjoy the two different takes on the digital vs. analogue drumming techniques and how the two are almost indistinguishable, and also how in a way they both are digitized. If my memory serves me correctly the first one is a recording from the room of while playing on an electric kit, the sound of the sticks on the rubber skin and sensors. While the other is part digitized; the data from this performance and then enhanced with layered effects and what not. Essential it’s the same drumming just analogue on a digital kit, and then the pure digital data. I think it is really interesting how the creator managed the analogue capture audio recording to sound so electronic in a sense, there are at times still the sound of wood stick on stick, but other times an odd effect created on the pads that sounds enhanced in a way one would assume was a digital drum kit.

Electronic landscape phase #4 reflection

I will begin with stating that I may have missed out on a element of this project, for I didn’t fully work from a group. Although attempted to work in a group of two I found myself doing most of the tasks and the conceptual brainstorms were one sided. So for the most part I gathered a large portion of the original material and there was little collaboration in this respect. But I feel I still experienced this idea of telecommunication with this project despite the fact; for the exchange of the four videos and watching the evolution of our first film, and the evolution of everyone else’s shows the loss of control and at times distortion of meaning and conceptual intent.

It is hard handing work over to people you don’t know, or understand their artistic nature; It becomes a trust exercise in a way and in this case displayed both positive and I feel negative results. In the manipulation of each other’s work I think the understanding of the original video or the video one is working off of is essential otherwise you create your own agenda and can ruin the original meaning. I don’t think in all the videos the original concepts were understood which is due to both not watching the original video closely enough and not creating concrete enough ideas in the source videos.

In the final class upon watching all the videos I know I am personally guilty of drastically altering the originally video from lack of understanding. The first alteration we did was on the video entitled “conversations”. It was a series of conversations from apples and oranges, to huge grant to people using sign language. I swept away almost all the video and kept the audio. I felt it was the strongest element of the piece and began editing the audio having fun with layers and repetition. I didn’t fully notice till we reviewed it in class that our edit had removed the overarching dialogue. We had created a parody of conversations and the interaction/ back forth nature of the original had been lost. The final piece was so far removed as a result of working off what we had done, the idea of a conversation had been erased.

This is part of the process though, not everyone is going to get what your intentions are as everybody naturally, whether they intend to or not, will create their own perspective on the theme or change the theme all together. That’s the beauty and the issue with the process, and what makes the trust factor with those who you work with the more relevant. I played with the audio of their conversations and by deleting the video two more edits after us had removed the original concept all together.

This applies for the video of the three little pigs (which had a clear coherent initial theme) that in the final fourth video turned into an add/ mockery for touch screen products. This happened because people have their own personal aesthetics; they take what they are familiar with and what they like, sometimes despite the prevailing theme. The second and third videos created a non-linear take on the first video, kept roughly the overall themes but played with how it was presented showing it on multiple screens and re-arranging the order. The final video took the concept of a touch screen and made a commercial out of it. from what i can, the creators latched onto the technology shown in the third video, dropped all the other content presented and made a commercial.

The concepts were lost, not just manipulated in this case and I think it is an example of poor evaluation of the material we are too work with. It is too much a representation of the person creating the video and not a representation of the video they are working with.

I had an issue with our final fourth video, the material we were to work with in my opinion was very poorly put together (I have a rant in a previous blog entry “phase 4 timing horses and rant on university caliber work" that you can look into for my full opinion). This piece left us with no clear material or theme I wished to work with. The theme was more of a joke, a fail blog joke that needed no elaboration on. I couldn’t add to this humour for it appeared in the 2^nd edit of the video and the 3rd had no positive contribution. The 2^nd half of the video felt like the creators ran out of time and stuck in a single shot of a video game. I used barely any original material in this fourth edit, but found the only two themes present and worked with them. I feel I added more onto the first video without watching it then I did to the 2^nd or third by taking this approach. The concepts were dissolved and I couldn’t discern any direction from what was presented so I took a new approach off what I could salvage. i feel it was a positive result, others may disagree but the final video had a more coherent theme, that complemented the original video. it was different then the initial but drew on a larger source, and i feel adds more to the original idea.

i think this final project was a great introduction into the idea of telecommunications. we began experience what it is like to loose control of ones work, to see the effects of collaboration on a piece of work and understand what works and what can be destructive; not necessarily in a negative way but in an way of exploration. i thoroughly enjoy it,

stage #4 TIMING HORSES
with rant of the caliber of University work

Now I'm not one to comment on others work in our class, but the video we had to work with for this last edit is insulting in a university setting. the original video which transformed into a epic fail joke, the time machine that needs to be charged; although not the most engaging 2 minute video i have no issues with. To shorten this video to 1 minuet and add another minute of a unicorn video game does not belong in the Fine arts department in University. i would like to hear the reasoning behind the creators choice, i cannot see it having any conceptual, thematic element or aesthetic value in my opinion. it is not an interpretation or an elaboration on the original video for i can make no correlation between a fail blog joke and unicorns, not to mention the horrible quality of the footage.

i apologize for the rant, but in a university environment we should be allowed to voice such opinions and let them be constructive. after saying this i used none of the original footage nor audio from this video. i re-imported a better file of the time machine footage to work with, and disregarded the unicorn.

Time & Horses. that's what i take from the video and that is what i worked with.

I re-imported the video of the time machine to have some correlation with the original video, and used the idea of clocks and time in conjunction with the horse. A collection of classic American poems about horses was the audio for the piece, overlapped with footage of their poets animated to speak the poems with a few clips of horses all in comparison to the time traveler starting up his machine. again i played with overlapping audio to see how much the ear can comprehend and conpaired it with overlapped images of the poets faces speaking, blending their poems and images together. Can a viewer look at both faces at the same time? or does the mind jump back and forth, the same applies for the audio... what poem does one listen too? the louder poem or the one that correlates with the face they are seeing? does the face change when the listener changes what audio they are listening too?