Tyler’s Work

Week #7-8

Week #7

Select a total of THREE works from the Audio lecture, each by different artists, to describe and discuss in your notes. What were the conceptual prompts for each piece? How are these audio pieces different from conventional music, or the scoring of films? How did the artists perform and resolve these ideas in the works? What are some of the strategies they used to maintain interest in listening to the works – how did the works use repetition and change over time? What is the effect of listening to the piece on you?

John Cage

is an artist that takes interest in sound itself. He believes that sound is active regardless if it’s put together in simultaneous order thus given it rhythm or just a sound and object creates for performing (a vacuum, vacuuming the carpet). In the lecture I watch the heavy metal band perform. It starts off as if they about to play then, the performance is in silence. By the performer bobbing their heads, it almost as you could somewhat still hear what they are playing. Strategies to help keep the viewer inform were the other sounds like the phone static coming thru the speaker and the bobbing of the performer as if they are still engaged in the song. This makes me have some type of anxiety at first and they somewhat anticipation of waiting to hear what other new sounds I will hear.

Janet Cardiff

Her work consists of a choir singing. To listen to the choir, she sets up a 360 circle of speakers from different pitches. When people come to listen to the choir, they have to walk in the middle thus making them feel a sensation that they are living in the song.

One of the ways she keeps the listener interested was that she places  seats inside the circle and open space where they can come in a relax and really listen to the various sounds coming out from each section of the speaker and various times. Also, she records the intermission, in this segment, you can hear people talking and couch, etc. the is gives the listener and more real experience as if they are right there watching the song being performed live.

Matthew Sawyer

Matthew’s sound clip of him urinating differs from your conventional way of music because there is little structure to the sound clip. It’s not something you would listen to with rhythm but more so gives the listener an uncomfortable feeling. He decided to urinate first and then sounded like he tried to add various other sounds to compliment it.

Matthew sawyer keeps the listener engaged by adding other sounds to the peeing in the background, then by added new sounds throughout the clip thus changing it over time. Then at the end of the clip, the additional sound comes to cease, and he simplifies the piece back to just urinating. This gives the listener a feeling of wonkiness and interest at the same time.

Exercise:

For my first sound clip, I combined the beeping sound of a pedestrian crossing, the cycling of a stationary bike, and the slamming of my front door. As I slammed the front door, my roommate would pick up the pace of his cycling. I decided to explore and try the John Cage approach to sound. Cage believes that sound is sound and nothing more. So, when we listen to music it isn’t the rhythm that makes it pleasant for us to hear, but rather the actions that are given in which the sound is created. In other words, he contends that sounds are merely acts that perform for listeners. The sound that I put together in this clip, gives me the feeling of a cyclist racing against (time) the beeping of the traffic walk signal sound.

For my second sound clip, I used the song Dreams from Fleetwood Mac and combined it with a clip I recorded. My inspiration is taken from Matthew Sawyers clip (his morning pissing). I find the clip intriguing as it gives me the feeling of disruption further evoked through his narration at the beginning of his video stating, “a bit on and off”. This voice-over makes it feel like he is giving listeners an idea of what to expect, thus controlling the chaos in the clip. Returning to Fleetwood Mac, I took the song Dreams and cut the clip to where the artist says, “listen to the sound”. This cue is used to signal an instruction before adding the next clip where I threw a variety of objects (i.e., a basketball, a case of water bottles, papers, etc.) down the stairs, providing the listener with a form of disruptive chaos.