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Craftwork

Performance Element

My idea to show the sound piece was to somehow have it played through my sewing machine but this seemed an impossible task for my limited technological skills so I settled on a very simple video with the laid tracker the top. I wasn’t able to sync the video so the sounds where playing at the same time as the video of the sound so the video is just a collage of the different images in no specific order.

My idea is to set up my sewing machine with the the quilt I have been working on in the machine and to finish the final steps live while the video and soundtrack are playing. At the end of the track I can stand up and show the audience what I have created.

If this was a longer piece set up in a gallery space, I could have made the performance interactive by asking audience members to take turns contributing to the sewing of the quilt. 

Picture of the layout

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Building My Experimental Sound

"Craftwork"

This is the video and sound piece I created for my final assignment. The sound piece was created by layering sounds I recorded on my Zoom Handy 5 during the process of creating a quilt. I recorded the following sounds:

1 my deep breathing 

2 washing machine - beep and start of cycle

3 shaking of fabric

4 ironing of fabric

5 Ripping fabric

6 cutting fabric with scissors

7 Dropping pins

8 operating sewing machine

9 manually turning sewing machine flywheel

10 vacuuming floor

I then dragged the sounds into audacity software and began to cut, clip join and layer the sounds. The first 1and a half minutes are the sounds as they were recorded and the next 1 and a half minutes, I attempted to manipulate the sounds by using various effects like reverb, delay, echo, distortion, modulation and vocoder to try and synthesize the raw sounds.

I wanted to ‘digitalize’ the sounds into something unrecognisable from their original sounds.

I struggled to use the audacity software and multiple finished pieces were ‘lost’ or not saved correctly resulting in much frustration. 

I then set about to make a simple short video of some of the steps I used to make the quilt and used Wondershare Filmore to edit them together. After I finished the video I realised that I needed to pay to remove the watermark and decided to just keep the watermark there. A thoroughly amateur attempt!

I called it Craftwork as a play on words and tilt of the head to the German electronic band Kraftwerk. Taking inspiration from their digital sound.

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Craftwork

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Inspiration - Artist

This short sound piece is called Song of sewing machine #1 and was made by DJ Question Mark using sounds sampled and performed by a sewing machine. This piece was used as a teaser of APUJAN's London Fashion Week in 2015.

I would be thrilled if my piece came anywhere close to sounding something like this.

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Inspiration/research

This beautiful sound installation is by artist Nelo Akamatsu. His piece “Chijikinkutsu”, is a contraction of the words “Chijiki” and “Suikinkutsu”meaning “geomagnetism” and the latter is the word for a sound installation ornament for traditional Japanese gardens, invented in the 16th century.

Akamatsu used sewing needles floating on water in glass tumblers which are magnetized, so they are affected by geomagnetism and turn like a compass. When electricity is applied to the coil on the outside of the glass tumbler, it creates a temporary magnetic field drawing the needle to the coil. The needle hits the glass creating a very delicate sound.

The sound that is produced is fine, light and twinkles.

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This is a drawing my middle daughter made for me when I asked her to make me sewing machine that shows sound. I have included the sound recording of the basis for my final experimental sound piece.

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Audio Editing - Examples Reverb

The first recording is the sound of a washing machine running with a plane flying overhead. I used the voice memo app on my iphone. The second recording is I the original recording after applying the reverb effect in audacity the result is a very grating and unpleasant noise. Turning something sound into noise.

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This is a 2011 field recording of my youngest daughter discovering sounds she can make. I have recorded all my children and their early coos and words. I think it is my favorite sound.

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Research for experimental sound

Pierre Schaffer – Concrete Musique

“Acousmatic experience” refers to sounds that one hears without seeing the causes behind it - the invisible sound producer. The acousmatic experience reduces sounds to the field of hearing alone. Shifts attention away from the physical object that causes the auditory perception back towards the content produced. I want to explore blending the acousmatic recording with the visual sound creation but manipulate it so it's original sounds become somewhat unrecognisable from what you are looking at – the sound producer. I hope to do this by using audacity software.  An homage to Pierre Scaffer, Musique Concrete.

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Field Recording - Driving home from Dully shops

I find the rhythmic sound of turn signals hypnotic. I have fond memories as a child falling to sleep in the back seat of a care driving home late at night from a dinner party with my parents. Trying to work out exactly where we were in the journey home by the sound signals. Thinking 'oh we must be close to the top of the hill' because of the engine sound rev and ;now we are about to turn onto Sydney Road' because we have been stopped at the traffic lights for minutes.

This recording was not as interesting as I hoped it would be when I listened back to it. I was hoping for more variation in sound.

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I love Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro's 1972 Womanhouse feminist exhibition that celebrated 50 years since it's creation. I want to create a sound craft piece that is inspired by Sandra Orgel's Ironing performance - a demonstration of domestic 'woman's work'. This piece highlighted the repetition and banality of the task of ironing. My idea is for a woman to demonstrate 'sewing a quilt' in front of an audience with the sounds that make up the creation of the quilt as the soundtrack of the piece, but change over the time of piece and morph into something electronic unrecognisable. SHifting from labour to love with the completion of the quilt. A tribute to all the woman who have sewed, made, and gifted their creativity to others over time.

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CONTACT MICROPHONE EXPERIMENTS - Fan

This sound was made using a zoom Handy 5 and a simple contact microphone. I dragged the microphone along various parts of the fan and recorded the results. The metallic 'tinny' sound of the contact microphone 'plucking' the fan cage created some good sounds.

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CONTACT MICROPHONE EXPERIMENTS - Hair Comb

This sound was made using a zoom Handy 5 and a simple contact microphone. I dragged the microphone along various parts of the comb and recorded the results. The most melodic and satisfying sound was from the teeth of the comb.

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I love the work of Martin Messier, a Canadian experimental sound artist who 'revives old Singer sewing machines using a computer and microcontrollers as if to release a luminous and sonic presence from the past'. The sounds he creates are hypnotic and I wish I could make my machine sound like his sewing machine orchestra performance.

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Assignment 1 - Soundscape

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Euphonious - pleasant in sound; agreeable to the ear;

 My soundscape is self reflective piece that aimed to capture common, everyday sounds that are specifically calming and soothing to me. I used sounds that evoke a sense of connection to people, place or time from my childhood.

Through the process of editing the sounds and listening to them repeatedly, I noticed that I started  to feel annoyed and frustrated by the sounds  so I then  attempted to represent those feelings by layering them together to create a crescendo of cacophony – the opposite of what I was setting out to achieve.

PROCESS

•I used a Zoom Handy Recorder H5 to record 16 individual sounds over the course of 2 weeks

•I used a combination of natural and controlled sounds recorded inside and outside

•I edited the recorded sounds by layering them on top of each other using Abelton software with the assistance of a friend

•I began the soundscape by using calm and soothing sounds gradually building tension by overlapping sounds creating a confusing chaotic crescendo then ending the piece with softer, calmer sounds to finish the piece. 

SOUND EXAMPLES

•Keynote sounds - wind, dishwasher hum, creaking of stairs were brought to the foreground by amplifying these sounds in the soundscape

•Sound marks – ferry breaking through the water, sound of passengers chatting and laughing and the faint plane taking off situate the listener somewhere in the inner west under the flight path

•Sound signals – kettle boiling and a dog sniffing a lead conveying information that require the listener to the sound to do something. Eg pour the kettle or take the dog for a walk

REFLECTION

•I enjoyed the process of recording the sounds being more mindful of my environment, but I struggled with the technology. I couldn’t use many of my recordings because they were either too loud or too faint to be recognizable

•I was disappointed that I wasn't able to use the editing software easily and inadvertently deleted multiple projects before producing a piece I could use

•I would have liked to use more definition and distinction between sounds creating more variation but my competency using the editing software limited what I could do

•I think that if I spent more time learning to use the software, I could have created a more nuanced piece

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Schizophonia - examples

The term Schizophonia (schizo-split and phone-sound) was first coined by the artist R.M Schafer in 1969. It refers to the split between an original sound and the electroacoustic reproduction in a soundscape. For example listening to someone calling a race at a kids swimming carnival over a megaphone, listening to hold music on a phones speaker or when the volume on the car radio is turned up to the maximum level it distorts the sound coming out to an unrecognisable and painful noise assault. I tried to play around by creating my own schizophonic sound and channelled Schafer by recording my dog barking at the front door on my phone then played that recording and recorded it on my H5 zoom cam alternating between the two I did this 13 times and below is the first recording versus the final unrecognisable sound.