Monday, 31 March 2014

Evaluation

I was really really happy with how our performance went seeing as it was the first time that we had run through the whole thing without making any mistakes, also seeing as some of the girls in my group were really really nervous, we were still able to pull through really concentrating on time and the dramatics of what we were doing.

I felt like our performance really turned into our Mihimihi as we came together and one after sharing and practicing.

After going through stages of not liking class to really enjoying the experience, I feel as though I have a lot to take away from a group of awesome friends to an open mind about my surroundings and what happening around me and the world really is never silent at any point in time.

Saturday, 29 March 2014

Planing Out Our Performace

We then decided that we were only going to keep the first section of our original / first drawing (seen on blog post 'Group Meeting') as it  had a variety of sounds which we had practiced quite a few times at this stage, and then add a beginning and an end to it. However this was easier said than done and we seemed to sit around and talk about it for a long time rather than just going ahead and writing something down.

Interpretive Dance?
So Maddy decided to waken us all up with come active / physical activities or exercises to get our juices flowing and...somehow we ended up doing some interpretive dance which was incredibly  funny and reminded me of Jim Green one of the artist I found who makes sound art through humour.



Jamming Session #1 
After feeling very awake and energised we then went on to just having a jam, which we recorded so if there was something that we thought sounded really cool, we could listen back to it and remake that sound. And thats exactly what we ended up doing, at 1:30 in this next video we decided that we really liked the beat that was created between Maddy, Jenny and I and so have added that to our performance.
I almost feel that the sound recording sounds better than this video, this my be because this device was right next to us so didn't pick up as much of the echoing but it may also be the fact that there is no visual distraction.

Jamming Session #2
Our last jamming performance we placing a sound recording device (ne of our phones) in the middle of the room and slowly moved toward it in the centre of the room. The idea behind doing this was to get us used to the idea that we would be on our feet for the final performance possible having to walk around the stage, also it was an alternative for not having the use of a microphone to practice with, so we were thinking about how the sounds created would sound far away and then getting louder as we moved closer in.
I almost feel that the sound recording sounds better than this video, this my be because this device was right next to us so didn't pick up as much of the echoing but it may also be the fact that there is no visual distraction.

When we got to the point of needing to stop and start drawing our performance down on paper we went back to the concept of Mihimihi and based what we were going to draw on the ideas that:
-When you meet someone for the first time the conversation is quite random but after some getting to know each other you start to familiar yourself with them and a beat / rhythm picks up.
The left shows our composition coming together with our initial composition joined in the centre
Stage Layout
We also talked about about the layout of our performance and how we would want our audience to be seated. We decided to use the movable wall so Anna would be able to effectually incorporate it in her part of the performance with myself to the right of her and Maddy and Jenny to the left near the microphones.


Distractions
As well as this we also decided on what we would wear as we thought this would help us come together as a group visually. Everyone will be wearing black as it was an easy colour that everyone had enough of in there wardrobes, the reasoning for this is because I thought it would make it less distracting, for us to be wearing solid colour rather than being all over the place with many. Therefore making the focus on our noise-makers and the sounds they will make.















Photos of our last practice performance together:
This is where the final few touches were made to our performance and we really became focused into what we were doing and needed to be doing for the big day. And I really feel as though we have come together as one in the hope that our Mihimihi is strong and how we want our story to be told.



Phil Dadson, Rob Thorne, Enrique Siques



I found Robs story and the story of his instruments really intriguing, I could have sat and listened to what he had to say a lot longer. I especially liked his rock collected with the white stone with hole through it as I was amazed by the fact that when he played it it sounded just like Koauau.



Enriques instrument I found was the most striking to look at and although I found that in the performance he seemed to step back and listen so you didn't get to hear him play as much, in his demonstration (a part of all three of there intros which I liked the best) we got to really hear each sound. His sounds were beautifly aery but also really strange and creepy sounding at times.


Phil showed an huge intrest in the use of stones as well and how if you find the right ones that work well together and a good beat or rhythm the sound can be magic










Group Meeting

Wednesday 19th March


(P1 / P2 / P3 - stand for performance one / two / three)














(This was just to start making us think about possible ideas for the planning of our own performances.)


In this group meeting we managed to come up with a good start to our composition, chopping and changing where we needed to as we recorded our sound as to critique what we were doing as it was hard listening to all the sound we were making as it seemed quite loud in the small room that we were in.

We colour coded each person so we could some what recognize each mark for each sound-maker, the mark in which was drawn was really helpful as it gave us a visual representation of what we thought the sound looked like.  My marks are represented bly the long black lines and box shapes in the centre.

This was one of the first recordings we did as a group, so we found it quite interesting listening back to what we had created together. It was also a handy way to see what was working and what was not working.


Drawing Sound through Mark Making

We started off class by brainstorming words relating to two categories:
-Sound
-Drawing
So when we started our visual representation of sound, we had various different techniques to use to achieve the mark making of what we were hearing.




















My Drawings
These drawings were all done blindly which I actually really enjoyed as when you opened your eyes you saw something completely different to what you were seeing in your head, which showed that you often over think things.

I really enjoyed listening to the sounds made by everyones noise-makers as visually this note taking really spoke to me. I was not trying to create something that looked nice, I just really liked the sounds I could hear and they just happened to appear nicely on the page. This was my favourite drawing.

This was another favourite drawing of more sounds made by everyones noise-makers, and from this image and the above image you can see the diversity of all the different sounds made from the noise-makers, which I think is really interesting that I was able to create so many different marks just by listening.


















Collaborative 

I would say this is a collaborative piece of work as it started as my own however once we started to steal each others work it therefore became quite collaborative even though I was the only one piecing it together.
This work was also the first piece of work we drew after writing the lists of works on the board shown in the picture at the top. So I found it quite interesting finding other peoples sound interpretations as everyones was different to each others.









In this drawing we had to continuously keep our drawing media on the paper, but follow the sounds to where they were taking us which meant weaving in and out of the other people. My contribution is the black (charcoal). The thinner lines are mostly the higher sounds, the faded areas are eg. humming sound and then the dark wide areas are parts of strength / loudness.


Other Peoples Work:
The reason why I have decided to add some examples of other groups drawing is because I just found it really interesting seeing ever ones different approches to how they heard the sounds we were hearing, even the colours they chose to use were all unique as there was a huge range between groups. I was also interesting to see how they, as a group drew on a page together, whether they overlapped the sounds or separately drew them side by side.


Starting to put a composition together with Group:


Here we firstly tried to write down what we thought our sounds looked like, trying to be as simple as possible to make it easier to quickly write down a sequence of sounds. And then in the photo to the right we started to piece together a mixture of repetitive sounds and constant sounds as well as one 'one off' / highlight.

This really helped us put together our next composition, which we are going to further develop for our performance:
Flat Mates input:

Once I got home I decided to get a few of my flatmates to draw the sounds they heard when listening to my noise-making. I found this interesting as they were coming up with marks that I had not yet seen from other peoples drawings.











On the way home from class I recorded a ambient sound as it seemed to keep repeating as well as being and odd alarm:
alarms

Street Performance

On the 8th of March, walking back from the underground markets by the water front I was drawn towards some music and what I thought to be some sort of dancing on Cuba Street. However this turned out to be something called Capoeira. I was intrigued from the movement and sound of the music / charnting and the instruments they were playing that can be seen in the background of the video below - the long tall one interested me the most.

Sounds:
-voices
-hands
-instruments

Wikipedia tells me:
"Capoeira has a variety of different techniques that make use of the hands, feet, legs, arms, elbows, knees, and head. Kicks, punches, headbutts and takedowns are among the offensive movements included, but the emphasis is normally placed on kicks and evasion. Because a large number of capoeira techniques are delivered in unorthodox ways, it is often mistaken for breakdancing or acrobatics. However, many techniques in capoeira are identical to those found in other more mainstream martial arts. For historical reasons, different groups may use different names for the same techniques, and even the same name for different techniques."



What is Onomatopoeia?

Onomatopoeia is a word that phonetically imitates, resembles or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. Onomatopoeia (as an uncountable noun) refers to the property of such words. Common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noises such as "oink", "meow", "roar" or "chirp".

Futurist and Dada poetry 
Futurism is a modernist avant-garde movement in literature and part of the Futurism art movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. Futurist poetry is characterised by unexpected combinations of images and by its hyper-concision (in both economy of speech and actual length)

There were four forms of onomatopoeia that the Futurists advocated: direct, indirect, integral, and abstract. The first of these four is the usually onomatopoeia seen in typical poetry, e.g. boom, splash, tweet. They convey the most realistic translation of sound into language. Indirect onomatopoeia "expressed the subjective responses to external conditions".[9]
Integral onomatopoeia was "the introduction of any and every sound irrespective of its similarity to significant words".[7] This meant that any collection of letters could represent a sound. The final form of onomatopoeia did not reference external sounds or movements like the aforementioned versions of onomatopoeia. Rather, they tried to capture the internal motions of the soul.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCs_tgQpM7AyuZF644Fy_xv06ivd5NoxmgBDhQIxaPs5FMEHLsBnQON5iIHBD6TBaR_5yypgdOGiq0jDuFP7upuZXMiATR70nchQIb89JoNjyPzvdjDZ4fTRFUl1AyAUJ1cYboX6oFfLY/s1600/marinetti-vive-la-france_thumbnail.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSuyfgYQWVti5OhHcvMVF5KjCEgwRFmpHjfedL6udtIAODEHSIpiKTlT_xjZPeS00nbXUhZ-WKH-10hugfl8wY_-ZF0V8He5_0s3iZme2CG35wPY6C2QW5Zmk-4rYl4bUB9EbPviHI2JE/s400/marinetti.jpg
Dada /ˈdɑːdɑː/ or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. Dada was born out of negative reaction to the horrors of World War IThe movement primarily involved visual artsliteraturepoetryart manifestoesart theorytheatre, and graphic design, and concentrated itsanti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/Francis_Picabia%2C_Dame%21_Illustration_for_the_cover_
of_the_periodical_Dadaphone_n._7%2C_Paris%2C_March_1920.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/An_Anna_Blume.jpg
My Poster


Paul Forrest Exhibition

On the 8th March I went to an Art Exhibition by Paul Forrest near the water front, it wasn't planned it just looked interesting so I popped in to have a look. And I found it really interesting that his work reminded me of the futurist and dad poetry from the simple shapes that were placed over the main subjects of his work.

paulforrest - website









http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:
Luigi_Russolo_ca._1916.gif
Luigi Russolo was an italian Futurist painter and composer and is said to be one of the first noise music experimenters. Holding concerts between the yeas of 1913-14 and then again after the war.
Six groups in which he classified "noise-sound':

  1. Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms
  2. Whistling, Hissing, Puffing
  3. Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling
  4. Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc.
  5. Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death rattles, Sobs
  6. Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Buzzing, Crackling, Scraping 

I think that it is really interesting to know how far back 'Sound Art' goes as I would have thought it would be a more recent concept but its actually really rather old! about 100 years in fact.