WAVE-TABLE AND CHAIRS || EXPERIMENT I

Today me and Harry made a short film to document the work we’ve done in our first experimentational work. We were experimenting with loops, compression techniques and layering to create soundscapes in the space we were working in. Pitch and speed changes altered the entire feel of the piece, as we found out, and I think this could be utilised further along on in our project. 

Next to work out is how to display the work as an actual piece. We may try and create a live performance or construct something that viewers can interact with. 

Yesterday’s Benign Thoughts

My visual score for the piece of music I made. The visualisation slowly and subtly  changes throughout the song, a little like Grouper’s did. There are bits of visual ‘noise’ to try and represent the background noise (including rain etc.), and the whole image slowly turns and evolves to create a sense of space. 

Visual scores are quite an interesting concept: the creation of something directly inspired by something else is an idea I’ve always liked. I went to see a performance of Grouper’s ‘Violet Replacement’ a few months ago. The piece was performed in darkness with a single projection behind her of an image slowly changing while Liz created her music using tape players. 

I love how the visualisation projected linked in with the music being played, and even added something to the piece.

Above, you can listen to a thirty minute piece I’ve made and entitled ‘Yesterday’s Benign Thoughts’. I included a sample from Ólafur Arnalds’ ‘Hægt, kemur ljósið’, and tried to play about with the idea of memories from the past being remembered. There’s a French term called ‘l’esprit de l’escalier’ which came to mind while I was creating this piece; it refers to the predicament of thinking of the perfect comeback too late, and I think that this piece of music might capture that phrase quite well.

Here’s the quote from the start, where a woman announces over a loudspeaker that there are strikes on the Paris underground causing delays:

“Mesdames, Messieurs, en raison d’un mouvement social le trafic est trés fortement pertubé sur la ligne 5 “Bobigny - Place d’Italie”. Je répéte: en raison d’un mouvement social, le trafic est trés fortement pertúbe sur la ligne 5 “Borbigny - Place d’Italie”. Veuillez nous excuser pour la gêné occasionnée.”