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Working on visuals to go with the audio

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Audience reaction to the sound installation:

I was pleasantly surprised by the different reactions the audience members exhibited as they experienced the space. As the night progressed, I chatted to several members of the public, and overheard some conversations which gave us an insight as to how the installation affected people.

My aim from the beginning was to make people uncomfortable. To frighten people. This was definitely achieved, as I found that the most common reaction to the installation was fear or discomfort. Many audience members emphasised that they were “scared now” or “creeped out” - however, this was never a negative reaction. In fact, they seemed more in awe of the power of this space. The fear factor didn’t turn people away from the space, rather, it drew them to it. Several participants even remained in the space for a whole half hour before departing.

In the setting up of the room, I considered each prop quite carefully; its placement in the room being paramount to the audience’s response. I was pleased to see that many people interacted with these objects so well, with a couple of the audience members even snapchatting some of the displays to their friends. Others picked up objects and played around with them, read (or attempted to read) their fortunes with the tarot cards, or typed on the typewriter.

Several people also responded to the fake CCTV footage. One girl asked intently where the camera was in the room, as she couldn’t see it (It didn’t exist, obviously). Another didn’t even realise that it was footage of the room itself until several minutes later, expressing to a friend, “Oh! It’s the room filmed from the other side - see, there’s the bookshelf and everything.” A friend’s mum expressed that even though she realised that the footage on the screen was looped footage or a picture, the music seemed to make it move, or make her expect that something would happen. This made me think that it could have been interesting, somewhere half way through the 35 minutes or so of footage, to include a jump scare with someone entering the room. The unpredictability of this (because of course, only those in the room at the time, and only those concentrating intently would have noticed it) could also have produced some interesting results.

Overall, the reaction was extremely positive, and beyond anything I could have imagined. I was surprised that so many people responded in ways I couldn’t have expected, and that a great number of visitors asked questions. Fear is a funny thing; I would have thought that some audience members would be turned off by the harsh sounds and disturbing imagery, and yet, the corridor was often completely crowded. I guess it also helped that we presented it close to Halloween!

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Beyond The Veil: Composition Process

Location: Dressing room in Studio One, UNSW.

For 5.1 Surround Sound. Featuring looped CCTV footage, played on a CRT TV.

The dressing room space was the biggest influence on the subject matter of our piece. Being a small, enclosed space, as well as being particularly run down and unkempt, we immediately were drawn to the idea of creating a composition that served to heighten this energy, or lack thereof. The space was strangely reminiscent of a creepy corridor in an abandoned building, with blue & red lighting, worn lino floorboards and old equipment lying around. With this idea in mind, we endeavoured to create pieces that would enhance the space. This matched our manifesto, which heavily implied using the imagination to bring new aural life to a space.

For my individual composition, which can be viewed here, I was interested in utilising recordings taken within the space itself, and stretching them out and distorting them until they became unrecognisable. The interesting thing about these sounds is that once they were distorted, they seemed to fit into the space more naturally than when they were ‘clean’ sounds. I also included the virtual instrument - a sampler created with a combination of unconventional piano and guitar sounds. I played the lowest octave of this sampler (13 notes all at once) until it faded naturally, and then stretched this out and reversed it. This sound is the first thing heard by the listener, and became the building block of my composition.

I had several aims that I set out to achieve (and succeeded in) when writing my composition:

1. To only use sounds recorded with a field recorder (aside from the virtual instrument), with those sounds primarily being recorded within the dressing room itself.

2. To stretch out every sound at least a little bit. 

3. To make every sound nearly unrecognisable from its source.

4. To utilise any ��mistakes’ (i.e. clicking, clipping, other sounds) as part of the composition. 

5. To induce a sense of discomfort/ unease in those experiencing the sound installation, and to ultimately freak out some of the audience members. 

My fourth point could be seen as lazy composition writing by some, and yet, I feel that the unnatural (and yet entirely natural in a way - a topic for some other time) nature of sounds generally seen as mistakes only enhanced the ‘creep-factor’ of my piece further.

In order to induce a great sense of discomfort in those listening, I have heavily manipulated the majority of my sounds, using distortion, EQ, heavy reverb, and other effects. I also attempted to create my own jump scare moment towards the end of the piece (around 6′05″).

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Return Home

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Links:

Listen to the piece

Read the manifesto

Full list of all recorded/ distorted sounds

Comparison of original and distorted sounds

Virtual instrument samples

Audience reaction to the installation

Fake CCTV Footage as used in the installation

All photos/ videos documenting the installation

Spotify playlist

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Set up and projection

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‘Shadowing Light’ - Nhu Nguyen

Video (in 5.1 Surround Sound) Link for final composition for MUSC3806 (Synergies in Sound Technology).

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Photos of the setup for the ‘As Light as Sound’ installation.

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Photos from the installation

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Top: The podium that the audience engages with. Featuring bulb, podium, fairy lights and the projection in the background. Bottom: Harry Potter inspired parchment, burnt on the edges for effect. Placed as instructions for triggering the presentation - “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light”

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LUX PRAECANTATIO (2016)

This work is inspired by the concept of electricity as magic. In line with the manifesto (found at the bottom of this blog), this work aims to present electricity as a simultaneously wild and beautiful force. This link is expressed in the contrast between the grand harmonic progression (held by the two synth parts and choral sampler) and the seemingly random harsh melodic synth. The work can be understood as having three distinct sections.

The contrast is represented in the melodic and harmonic interaction of the three sections. In the beginning the two are separate and do not link or imitate. In the second section, the introduction of the thunder storm with the melodic synth solo is symbolic of the melody rapidly changing and developing. In the third section, this development slowly becomes more apparent as the melody begins to compliment the harmony directly. This continues until the end, where the two reach a point of unison and cause a collision of two positively charged entities. They cancel each other out in an explosion of electrical sound.

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A bit about my composition

So my composition is a bit convoluted, but rest assured everything I have done is for a specific reason and purpose. Most of my ideas stemmed from either how our sound installation was set up, or our manifesto. This has led to probably one of the strangest but also most interesting pieces I have ever written.

Below you’ll see a picture of the first mind map I drew for this. I worked out that:

 - I wanted a composition in 4 parts (1 minute each) - 2 x rotations around the tree

- I have marked out my composition in 6 second intervals (the intervals of the speakers) and the placing of beats and phrases is determined on where these changes occur. Theoretically this should encourage listeners to follow the speakers around the tree.

- Each part had to be distinctive as to match the ‘continuum’ and ever changing nature of our manifestos

- I picked a few key rules to follow: time signature change, genre change, key change, use of many languages and species (English, French, Maruwari), (human, robot, bird).

- there is a constant drone in my piece (there is never silence), each member of our group has the same drone and it acts as a connector and continuum between our four pieces.

PART 1 - 

First 30 sec

I wanted this to be sparse to allow me to build my composition toward something. The composition opens with an open beat feel, it’s meant to have no time. I have used a robotic voice (one species) to say a few sentences of our manifesto. 

“We believe that there are no limits to musical potential”. This is spread throughout the 6 speaker

Second 30 sec

The beat develops, slightly, but not to give a sense of time. I have included the field recordings of birds to give a sense of place. A second robot speaks, this time in french. It says “each composer should strive for the nouvelle in the their compositions, ie, the creation of new instruments”. 

PART 2 -

Part 2 is entirely different. I have set up a synthetic beat that underlies everything that occurs. It begins to create a rhythm for the listener as they walk around the tree. This is also genre #2, an almost pystrance sort of feel (I thought this appropriate with the connection to nature that our installation had)

I have again used vocal sound recordings to illustrate a point about innovation. In part 2 these are taken from David Bryne’s TED TALK “How Architecture Helped Music Evolve”

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_byrne_how_architecture_helped_music_evolve/transcript?language=en

I chose some key ideas that he talks about, evolution and change and innovation within music. This is entirely key to our ideas present in the manifesto. Below are some excerpts of what I chose:

- “Make music to fit contexts, is that how it works. It’s evolutionary and adaptive but the pleasure and the joy is still there. But somehow it still get shaped into something. Assume that if they hear something that sounds like its sincere that its coming from the gut, that its passionate that its more authentic. Someone can fake sincerity, they can fake passion. This seems a little dangerous. But maybe what the world needs now is for us to realise that we are like the birds, that we adapt and sing. The joy is still there even though we have changed what we do to change the context.”

I think this brings up some interesting points on authenticity in music and passion. Even though i have manipulated the meaning of what he is saying slightly, it is still a powerful tool for the listener. I crunched and distorted his voice a little, added some compression and a little reverb to give it an all knowing quality, a sense of overpowering knowledge.

Over the top of the dialogue I have recorded a one take improvisation of myself on the saxophone. What I tried to do was to listen to the tone, and the words of Bryne and respond in some sort of musical way. I also tried to keep it atonal and not sticking to any particular key (although this was hard!). The saxophone was recorded with an SM57, some reverb, compression and EQ’ing was done. In this I have also added a couple bits from our virtual instrument. This plays after Bryne says “They can fake passion”. It is a guitar pick on the inside strings of the piano. I think it adds a certain air of despair to this section. I have also added in another part of our virtual instrument, the rain and hiss sound. I think it really makes a creepy addition. 

PART 3 -

Part 3 leaves a small amount of drone silence (should be roughly a speaker length) to give a clear indication of the next section. It’s punctuated by a guitar pattern that I played. The first 30 seconds is more foundational and then the line develops slightly.

I have also recorded myself talking over the top of this. A free flowing form of thought influenced by the ideas of our manifesto and what I hoped the listener was doing at this point. I say:

“have you been following me on my musical journey? I hope you’re here and present, soak it up. The pace you’re walking is a movement and its creation in itself. We are creating it together. Can’t you see? Everything works in tandem, everything works together. thats how music should be. Composer and listener working together each being influenced by the other this is musical progression, this is innovation. This is change.”

Over the top of the dialogue are some ‘ooh’s’ in which I purposefully aimed to drop in and out of tune as to align with the manifesto’s idea of never keeping a single key. This oohs follow into part 4, along with some mimicking of this on the guitar.

Part 4 -

Part 4 is still in the works as of yet, but I am very excited! So far I have Joe Morello’s solo from TAKE 5! I have been talking to close friend and rapper, Rhyan Clapham and he is going to do a small rap for me about innovation in his Aboriginal clan language. Or attempt to… We’ll see how this goes! A Koori rap in 5/4 over a drum solo. I cannot wait to see how this goes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tTyTc6FjjU

UPDATE:

Part 4 - Rhyan’s Rap

INTRO

Waalari, watha, Ngari Pitara Yaan Muruwariki, Thirra pitara Ngarlu, Thampa, Kawi Thirrul pira Ngarlu, ngarlu, ngarlu

TRANSLATION:

A long period of time (waalari), at the moment (watha), now in the place in time (Ngari) We are talking language(pitara yuan Muruwariki), a song (Thirra Pitara) Doing this action again and more often (Ngarlu Thampi) To sing out as birds are singing (Kawi) To do something very hard and strongly returning the action (thirrul pira) Again and again and again (ngarlu, ngarlu, Ngarlu)

ENGLISH FAST RAP

Teach me I’m hungry the freedom send Innovate something I need it man the beat of the country you see the land ear on the ground, whom we depend

speaking the words of an era never letting the fire choke in the weather unity you and me for the better waves in the carpet keep us together

. fit to music and see it happen . seekin sadness or happiness I don’t lack a passion we do adapt I’m after progression I rap the sentence

after that it travel to your head and after that you analyse my sentence Learn with me I have a lot to mention had depression as an adolescent

Listen, // walk with me I’m in the branches, surrounded by a bunch of dancers, lavish or not Im making sense in my existence never do ever

for a second question the message i want connection in session I’m sending the picture you’ll get in a second just get in reception I’m letting you know if you live or you don’t,

live in the moment listen, emotion …. keeping it open

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4DXRbf5JXmPRllNQXUwNG1lU1E

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Old school CRT with creepy porcelain baby heads. Lauren recorded the footage on show day, then put it on a loop. it is a vision of the room from the opposite angle that you would watch the tv from, but instead of seeing a mirror image of yourself, you see nothing. Are you really there? Do you exist? 

Photography: Clyde Vaughan

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Creepy lino +  cleaning materials at the end of the dressing room… This is how it looked before we gave it a make over! We wanted to keep the dirtiness, but we decided to have shovels and rakes instead of brooms, because shovels do not bode well for anyone

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we gave the Studio One dressing room a serious make-over! equal parts vintage glam and horror movie. photography: Clyde Vaughan