My one-on-one session with Gareth gave me two interesting angles on this project. In explaining my idea, I was shown two pieces of work. One was a video of a woman dancing with contact microphones that produced some very tactile body movement sounds. Potential avenues for exploring this idea in my work could include using contact microphones to record the sounds of skin, breath, and clothing and playing with the placement and movement of these elements within the octophonic space to create the sensation of a presence dancing within it. The second piece of work was a sculpture of a shed exploding. I felt that this interplay between stasis and entropy and destruction and cohesion were very interesting ideas to bring to an audio piece about dance and movement, especially when it is multichannel. If there are ways to potentially express both the inner and outer sensations of my dance style and movement and almost split the atoms of the physical sonic presence dancing in the octophonic space, it could reflect internal emotional and abstract physical states that occur with dance. My general takeaway is that my piece will focus largely on physical presence, the body, and deconstruction. I want to be able to align the development of my practice with the technical skills I have acquired through its evolution to explore these ideas.
Month: October 2024
Research Part. 1
The first part of my research explores Noise: The Political Economy of Music by Jacques Attali. It is a discourse on music as a reflection on Marxist production theories, where four stages of music represent societies’ modes of production at different points throughout history. The section I find most striking is its ideas around sacrifice. It explores the idea of ritual sacrifice as a means to avoid and channel potential general violence in society and music as an act of murder and violence to redirect power. This is a strong framework to examine current deconstructed club music whose mutilated and distorted aesthetic can reflect individuals’ struggles with modern society and anxieties around human atrocity and manipulation by technology. It specifically talks about creating and soothing anxiety as a rhythm and exercise of power within music. I found this phenomenon in my experiences with underground club scenes in Tokyo and London. By providing examples of modern club music that express these same intentions, I can bring the idea of sacrifice and reclamation of power as a perspective to explore the genre and its conventions (or lack thereof).
Inspiration and Ideation
While I have taken many of my pre-established skills and techniques into my work at school, I have tried to make much of it something that feels distinctly separate from my primary practice to expand creatively and get the most out of each assessment. However, the pressure brought on by my primary practice has begun to take a toll on me, and it is becoming more challenging to balance my schoolwork and satisfyingly work as an artist. I would like to use this spatialization assessment to bridge the gap between the two and create a model for expanding my art within the context of school in a manner that serves both environments. My initial idea is to somehow reflect my presence as a performer within the space of the octophonic ring without using my actual body. When hearing a lot of the multi-channel work, I felt that it included a lot of immersive sound with fluid spatial panning that was very subtle and delicate in nature. With my already somewhat brutal and chaotic sound design techniques and aggressive performance style, I would like to explore using spatial audio in a similarly violent and dynamic way. While I don’t have a full concept, imagining the sonic phenomena produced by using the system this way is very exciting, and if it can open up a possibility to merge my practice with this assessment, I feel I will be able to create something meaningful and compelling.
Topics and Themes
My topic will relate most heavily to Low-End Theory: Bass Cultures/ Subcultures/ Youth Cultures. I feel that this topic can dissect how a specific culture around sound, music, and specific sonic phenomena relates to creating genres and communities. Deconstructed club and contemporary club music is somewhat of an abstract space, which doesn’t have as strict of founding in a specific place or city. Instead, it results from clashing influences and inspirations supported by the availability of information in the digital space. It is incredibly hard to pin down, and I feel that this part of the curriculum could potentially bring insight into the community that I am participating in as an artist and writing about as an academic by examining one that has formed and seems to have already reached its peak. Sessions on science fiction seem like they would support my research as well due to it tackling themes of dystopia and anxiety around the future being expressed in music. Potentially examining how sound has functioned within speculation of the future and represented fears surrounding that will provide a new perspective on the music I am discussing in this paper.