PERFORMANCE WEEK: Aural Terrains

This week was the big lead up to our main performance. During the week we kept contemplating on what to perform. We knew we wanted to something that had more a performing aspect to it, as we felt confident in our abilities. As a group we were all really interested in making sound out of everyday objects and make some sort of structured beat with the equipment. The idea of an office, so we could use everyday office equipment, for instance computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, stapler, folders, table, Picture frame, coffe etc.
Also using toys was one of the themes we wanted to run along with.

The idea we liked as a group was using food and making sound from that. We practiced making a few drum line patterns and then used food and wrappers as our instruments. The idea seemed to us as fun and much a crowd pleaser compared to our initial ideas. There was a lot of trips to burger king and mc Donald's but we found ourselves enjoying the idea of our piece.

THIRD WEEK

Practice for main Performance. Went through different ideas to have for our main performance.
So far as an individual I have come up with;

Sequencer. A life sized mat that had at least 16 pads situated underneath it. The idea is similar to that of Midi sequencer but the difference we want to make a life sized model for people to interact with making sound. The pads will be connected by wires that run to a keyboard hack. The keyboard will act as a midi keyboard and through fruitloops9, we would be able to initiate different sounds to each pad. There was a problem of this project costing a little too much for our budget.

Motion Controller. Using a Wii remote and max/msp, hopefully make a wand-type controller that produces sound when you wave it around. The max/msp patch would collect the co-ordinates of its movement and each co-ordinate could have a different sound to it. I thought this would have been a very fun idea to perform but there was a the problem of our group not being experts at max/msp.

During the week we came up with the idea of performing a piece, where we were setting up. During our set up, we would make noises with the equipment. We as a group got our idea from the sound walk. We noticed walking through town we couldn't hear the finer tunes until we really tuned our ears in. We thought if we gave the audience a reason to think they were just setting up for our main performance, the audience would be oblivious to the finer sounds made by us setting up, portraying a similar idea.

SECOND WEEK: Aural Terrains

This week we were told to make our own device that produces sound and make it from scratch. I went to surplus electronics (located on top of queen street) to buy all the equipment that I needed to make my own electronic device. The device I made was a microphone called 'The Champion'.

Luckily enough, we were given a brief tutorial on how to fully assemble the device. I found the making of the device to be quite reasonable work, even though I had only little experience with electronics . Experimenting with the device I found myself playing around with the piezo microphone. It made a high pitched sound when I put the microphone in front of the speaker which made feedback noise.

Throughout the week we were given the chance to customize our electronic device. I found this to be quite hard. Creating some different devices involved buying new equipment and different placements with the circuit. I liked the device where sound was controlled by light. I thought it would be interesting to have some sort of strobe light operating.

Individual Sound

http://soundcloud.com/foolstop09/tyrone-individual-sound

My Individual Sound Piece

FIRST WEEK

This week we went on a sound walk. We navigated through town listening to the different sounds and it was crazy to actually tune in and listen to some sounds. There was the added difficulty of trying to be silent. I thought it was most interesting to hear little noises in areas, like once I heard water dripping from a pipe. This made me think about all the different sounds out there that are so small to hear but are noticeable was you really tune your ears in.

Also this week we went to exhibit the acoustic rooms. We were given a lecture on how sound travels through our ear and how we are able to receive . It was quite fascinating to see how internally and how it exactly it works. We were also taken to a anechoic room and room with a lot of reverberation and there was a big difference. There was also a test done in another room we were had to guess the difference in the reverberation time and decibals. I thought I did reasonable well.

The dead feeling felt in the anechoic room was remarkable. Ive never been in place where the area is so silent. Though the room was so silent, it feel as powerful on my ears like I was listening to sound at a very high volume. It was weird to see the absolute difference in the two rooms.

Also this week
Our first small project: record field sounds. For our first little project we had to record sounds from around the city and make our own compilation. A key aspect for this project I thought was to get different sounds with different levels. For Instance getting different pitched sounds like the jackhammer from construction site (reflecting that of a solid high hat) and a exhaust pipe (reflecting that of a low bass sound). The reason for getting these different types of sound, is that the track would have a lot of variation to it, not having sounds repeat.

Sounds that I manage to record were;
Construction sounds (Jackhammer, digger, bulldozers)
Traffic Ambience (Car movement noises, Traffic Alarm and People Moving)
Wind
Elevator sounds(Doors, Buttons, Voice Over)

For my compilation, I decided to go with the theme of levels. The reason is that I wanted it to emphasize my previous idea of finding sounds with different pitches hence different levels. That added aspect of elevators could symbolize the changing of levels therefore my track having a narrative. During each level ill try and play different pitches portraying the original idea and main theme.

We had to also devise a group compilation of sound to show the class. We decided to fuse all our sounds together. As a group we decided to assert the idea of random. The pure reason for this is that we all had different sounds and putting them together randomly seemed to sound right. When we listened back to the audio we found that because of the sounds, it made the listener feel as if he\she was in a random world, having elevator sounds playing while constructions going.

Presentation Summary

Looking back at our presentation, we found there were mixed feelings with our sound. I guess the main problem was that it sort of lacked depth and its probably self-explanatory that mainly everyone wanted to assert random in some type of way. I do feel it was unedited but certainly captured our idea.

Semester Review

After making robots generate their on creation, creating a garment for better purposes, finding purposes for interaction and producing a film for people to see it was certainly great to experience and to say its only been the first semester.

Most of the work that was done during this semester was certainly different to anything i have done before. Doing work both individually and in groups certainly had its rewards and i found majority of time working as a group better, as it made me open my eyes to different ideas as well.

Being my first ever exposure to a course at a tertiary level, i did have my times not achieving the standard of work. I could say a long list of excuses but i guess it was due to me getting use to uni life.

Looking back at the work i've done this semester i would have to say i could have certainly done better with my wearable garment. Although i managed to actually finish it and it did work, i thought I could applied more time to preparing myself for the worst of circumstances and not have left it to the last minute. I thought i achieved a reasonable standard of work but i know that i am capable of achieving more than i did.

So if was to rate myself, i wouldn't - instead i would let the pages of my work do the talking.

Review Week

We are now drawing to the end of the semester and we have to make a final presentation before its all over. For the presentation, We have to fully exhibit one of our projects with have done this year and i chose to present my serious fun project. The reason why i chose to present my serious fun project was for the pure reason that it made me really think. Although a lot of thinking went into the other projects, i thought i went into more depths with this project and i really got a great understanding in the purpose of the project.

For my Poster, my character of the box is heavily centered. I didn't want to feature a bundle of writing on the poster but just key points about the project. I kept my poster simple but had some sort of edge to it as well with the simple brown colour artwork in the background.

In terms of speaking for the project, i just put a structured layout of key point on a paper to help me during my speech. This will hopefully help me no go over past words and lead me through the journey i took and aspects of the project.

My presentation is on monday and i am certainly ready to finish the semester with a bang