21/02/20
Coming up with an idea has been the hardest thing. Just can’t seem to settle on any idea I like. After visiting my family in the countryside I started looking into the nature there; the sounds, colours, shapes. I think I could make something interesting from this. Possibly something about bird migration? But also the human element is also quite interesting, how we interact with nature e.g fishermen or Fawley power station. But overall I feel like it’s all a bit wishy washy with no aim/ purpose.
23/02/20
Finally managed to come up with an idea I actually like. The bird sounds was a starting point, I began thinking of making music out of the sounds of nature and what that would look like. Whilst looking back on previous work I came across an activity we did in diagnostic mode. We were tasked with listening to music and drawing what we felt. After some research I came across studio Dumbars poster designs for the Amsterdam Sinfonietta which do exactly that. The posters are a visual response to the music being advertised. They use lots of bold colours and shapes, reviving the orchestra and making it more youthful.
From here I thought I would start from the basics of sound- looking at the frequencies which led me to looking at spectrograms; which translate sound into a visual graph often using neon colours.
This whole concept of making sound visual really interests me and I think there is a lot of room to explore colour, shape and pattern.
To give it more purpose, I’d like to compare the sounds of busing London VS the tranquil countryside to maybe highlight how hectic and loud our lives are in the city. Perhaps it will also highlight the fact that we often don’t notice the sounds of our environment as it usually blurs into our backgrounds.
25/02/20
Had my crit today. The main thing I came out with is that my project has no purpose/ aim and is more of an art project that graphics, which I completely get. I think this is partially because I during my crit I mainly focused on the exploration of colour and shapes. I did slightly touch on the sounds blurring into our backgrounds which Wendy liked, but she said it needed more weight.
The group helped come up with a few possible directions to take this vision and sound project. One was looking at how sound affects your mood/ emotions. Exploring the idea that no one is aware of their sound surroundings- they kind of just blur into the background. So the project would be about getting people to listen up, not be so self indulged.
3/03/20
Now that I’ve finished the book project I can place all my attention on the FMP; which is much needed as the past week I’ve kind of neglected it. This morning I listened to 2 podcasts (Sound matters by Tim Hinman) which we’re really useful in realising my aim. The podcast focuses on encouraging people to be more acute to their surrounding sounds. It also it points out how selective our hearing is, how we tend to filter things out. To do that they explain the network of neural connections, and how that makes it possible to hear sounds, filter out only the most important parts, and understand what they mean?
In the podcast it also explores the benefits of nature sounds- how they calm us versus music which can make us feel more anxious, despite its intention to relax us (sometimes).
Was interesting as I was walking my dog on the Heath during this, so I was surrounded by tweeting birds and fresh air. This was then contrasted when I had to get on the noisy tube to get to college. I recorded both events and hope to play around with these later this week.
02/03/2020
Wednesday 4/03/2020
Went to the wildlife photographers exhibition today at the natural history museum. The exhibition was impressive, each photo capturing the wonders of nature in such high detail. While it’s not completely related to my FMP, i think it could influence the way I display environments in my soundscapes in terms of colour palettes . Decided to go to have a look at the colours in nature which could influence the colour palette in my visual soundscapes.
Monday 9/03/2020
Today’s activity was called ‘what if’. Had to ask ourselves what would my project (visualising sounds to engage people in their surroundings) would look like if it was made out of (a material e.g metal), the size of (a scale e.g football pitch), and displayed in (a location e.g nightclub). Was helpful in just generating ideas and not worrying about my final outcome. In the afternoon we started making some of these strange combinations. The workshop helped me realise how important it is to just start making and not get too worked up on the logistics- through making you’ll realise if the idea works/ needs amending.
Sunday 15/03/2020
The past week I’ve been busy going to open days so haven’t been able to do much work, so I really need to get my act together.
I’ve come up with a possible outcome but I feel like I need to talk to the tutors and refine my ideas. I feel like I’m not putting my all into this project at the moment- which is crazy because it’s the one that I get marked on!!
Monday 23/03/2020
The foundation ended early because of Coronavirus. This means we have to upload everything digitally and run our projects individually.
In a way uni closing on Tuesday was good for me as it made me speed up my decisions and get making. On Tuesday I got into the 3D workshop- very scary, but I managed to make my soundboard. Now it’s the difficult part, how am I going to display sound on it?
I had my online tutorial with Wendy today, it was helpful in setting out what research I need to do. She pointed out that using too many materials for displaying sound might look a bit messy and that if I did want to use materials I should look at collaging using only one colour to keep it in uniform.
She also suggested researching into ways of interpreting the qualities of each sound which made me reflect back on my initial research of wanting to use colour and pattern to display the sound.
For now I’m going to look at:
- How to display the qualities of sound e.g display the rough sounds of a car engine.
- The possibilities of collaging.
- Play around with making my own sound recordings, looping them, dissecting them.
Tuesday 24/03/2020
Quite a big issue is that none of my sound recordings of Camden are that good. And due to Coronavirus, I'm not allowed out... so I think i'm going to have to improvise and just use the recordings i've got + my memory. However, the whole corona situation got me thinking and I could do a comparison of what the environment sounds like with and without humans in it.
31/03/2020
I just had my online tutorial with Wendy. She brought up a valuable question: how am I going to make this piece more interactive so people can actually hear the sound? Because of my research into Oskar Fischinger she suggested making my own animation which will incorporate everything I have been looking into: sound, colour, shape, pattern.
2/04/2020
I've hit a bit of a rock. I think my whole soundboard idea looks a bit childish and not very sophisticated. I'm also having trouble with deciding what colours to use as I think it looks a bit too busy with all the colours of the rainbow! I think it looks better with variations of one tone e.g pink/purple but that doesn't quite work if I want people to be able to fill in their own sound maps.
My sister suggested also playing around with the shapes of the spikes- they don't have to be rectangles.