AUDIO ASSIGNMENT – CLASS PLAYLIST
- Adult film stars examines female autonomy – Breanna Clips from adult films are strung together to portray a feminist message.
- spotifywrap – EJ A mixture of my liked Spotify songs which I listen to.
- Tinnitus – Payton Tinnitus is a condition in which one hears ringing in the ears. There are varying degrees of tinnitus. It is estimated that 37% of Canadians have tinnitus.
- Trip To Lake Huron – Jacob The audio of my road trip to Lake Huron during Autumn.
- Lost in the Dryer – Abby This piece showcases what various objects sounds like in the dryer.
- Audio Art – Kayla Price
A sequence of voices, one after the other, reciting and repeating various terms historically and contemporarily used to label Black people in North America - Explosiveness – Matei A play on Hollywood’s idea of what explosions feel and sound like. All clips are from movies and mixed together to create a layered piece which works together from beginning to end.
My 1 Kilometre
For my kilometre, I first thought of breaking down the word kilometre and creating a video about it. After playing with that idea, I had nothing to prove or create a kilometre with and just that meaning of kilometre, I didn’t believe it was enough. So after remembering about a video I saw where a guy was taking one step and then taking a picture and making a really cool video afterwards with all the pictures combing to show this amazing trip he took, I decided to do something similar for this project. I took a picture for every metre, equaling 1000 pictures for 1km. As per the assignment criteria, I measured exactly one metre each time with a tape measure on the ground to have exactly 1km. I had my camera on a tripod and then would move it one metre forward based on the 1 metre measurement from the tape measure on the ground. It took me nearly 4 hours to do this because I had to setup the tripod/camera, take a clear photo, measure 1 metre forward exactly, move the tripod to that exact 1 metre distance forward and repeat. I repeated this process 1000 times to achieve 1000 pictures to ultimately get the goal of 1km. Halfway through doing this, I started getting tired and it was getting dark but I pushed through the doubts of leaving it for the next day to complete the exact kilometre and also pushed through my foot which was getting sore and got the job done. It was definitely exhausting, boring at times, worrying to get the measurement correct and the perfect shot, and much more but in the end as you watch this video you have gone a kilometre yourself and I have accomplished a kilometre in photos.
Pictures below display how I measured and took the photos.
Pipilotti Rist Blog Post
- Pipilotti is shown performing various facial expressions behind a pane of glass with a camera in front recording herself doing these various motions. The piece is distributed as a video shown on advertisement boards in Times Square, NY. Of course this is very different than the typical advertisement that would take the screens place usually. It is very large. As the video progresses, which is shown on over 64 screens in Times Square, Pipilotti gets closer to the glass. This art piece hints on constraint and limit during a month when Trump became President. The limit that the government opposes on citizens, furthermore the limits and constraints women are put against. The work piece itself disgusts me because of all the smudging against the glass but I do understand the background idea behind it which makes sense and I believe this way promoting an idea is very clever.
- I believe Rist’s work is very similar to the videos you see on various platforms like YouTube and Tik Tok. From a first glance, they all look like memes. They’re very weird and unique. The meaning of her videos have strong intent behind them which makes them different than the videos you see online. Videos on social media are mostly without a point and are just there to attract you. It’s a marketing gig. While, Rist’s work is more than trying to get your attention, it’s getting your attention and bringing importance to issues in relation women which are hidden or not talked about. She’s advocating for women in this sense through visual media. Rist’s work expresses heavy emotion and complements the ideas behind the video. The videos don’t push out the narratives behind it but keep them hidden, letting the video part go viral in a sense before the explanation is expressed. It allows for a lot more people to witness and hear her story and what she’s advocating more because with the strong rules and the shadowbanning that occurs on social media if she were to create a video that directly emphasizes the issues women face, it would typically not create such an impact and the companies that control what can be posted online or spread would regulate it like it is a protest video rather than a work of art.
- Wearing my shirt inside out doesn’t really affect me. The feeling is no different than if it were to be worn normally. It would feel weird to wear it incorrectly from a sense that I wouldn’t typically do this or allow this and my brain wouldn’t justify why. Additionally, from the perspective of view of others seeing me wearing my shirt ‘incorrectly’, they’d wonder why. They may ask be a million questions which would be annoying. They may not take me seriously at all as there’s a dress code standard in society and anyone who doesn’t dress ‘properly’ is seen as different. So from my personal perspective, it wouldn’t really affect me at all other than the fact that it would feel weird doing something I am not used to and from the perspective of others, they’d probably end up just laughing. You could classify me, wearing my shirt backwards, as a performance but from my view it was just a social experiment at most. Your classification or idea to call this a performance is coming from you, from my perspective, I’m just trying something new. In the idea of art, this could definitely be considered a performance but if one asks why are you doing this, I wouldn’t have an answer. Having no answer would take out most of the meaning, the meaning that should’ve been the reason for the performance. Concluding, everyone has a different approach to considering what one is doing, what are they representing if they wear their shirt backwards. One could call it a performance, one would say he probably didn’t see how he put on the shirt, one would laugh and one wouldn’t care.
Field Trip Blog
- Scent of Thunderbolts
The Scent of Thunderbolts by Karen Tam is a recreation of a Chinese location. Like many of Tam’s works where she recreates Chinese locations such as restaurants or curio shops. This setting, however, reflects on the Cantonese opera piece which you hear playing throughout the exhibit. The exhibit hits back to home as it involves all sorts of iconic emblems and items which associate with China. When you first enter you see a room where there are 2 chairs and a table in front of you. The furniture is decorated. You are also given a place to sit in front of these 2 chairs, although your seating is not as nice. This may be a hint to the queen/king… the emperor that would sit in front of you and you as the peasant receive whatever you can get. Like what you may see in a temple or at a government place within China. As you walk further in, the music takes away your senses of a world outside of this setting, you start walking through a bamboo forest, you witness a tiger upon your travels, you are in the middle of wilderness. Additionally, at the back of the exhibit, you see frames which hold historic photos of Chinese traditions and culture. You then circle back and arrive where you came from. The piece is set up to be a full circle which you must follow and each time you will discover further hidden details within the artwork.
The piece is remarkably interesting, it is creative. It is different from the other artworks we were able to see as you can involve yourself with the piece, you can touch, feel, see, and hear it all. You can go into this world and not only imagine but be present and perform your part within the piece. It gives different feelings (makes you scared because of the tiger, happy because of the colour and sound, lonely because of the heavy forested area, questionable because what does it mean-where are you supposed to go, etc.). It changes your perspective. To follow back on Roee’s point, it is like Kung Fu Panda, the movie. I enjoyed this piece as I could be a part of it and hands-on creativity is something I like, and I was able to touch and be involved with the artwork rather than stare and look at the same old typical “Do Not Touch”.
2. Acariciar el corazon del hueso (Caressing the heart of the bone)
Caressing the heart of the bone by Cristina Flores Pescoran incorporates wood, fabrics, and needles to create this large-long floating object. Pescoran created this artwork from a dream she had where she was having a tactile conversation with her bone marrow. The idea goes deeper as she had to do a bone marrow biopsy during a cancer diagnosis examination. The artwork reflects on Pescoran’s experiences with the process of being ill to recovering. The woven fabric with wood creates the shape of different body parts of the artist. From legs to the head. The work is considered a self-portrait. Alongside the main piece, there are subjects on the wall behind it like the woven fabric you see in the picture(s) above and additionally, a video playing from a TV highlighting this large woven piece and the artists playfulness with it to create what we saw in person that day.
This artwork was large at first glance but interesting when you got up close with it. You couldn’t certainly capture all of it in one shot but that is good because you are forced to take part at the same time. Each body part at a time. When looking closely and taking pictures from under, I really witnessed the different patterns and ideas throughout the piece. I saw on the TV, the artist separated some of the strands of fabric to create an opening for her mouth, which answered my question as to why there was a hole in the middle of a fabric so detailed in consistent woven patterns. I thought the subject looked like the digital graphic of how a DNA strand looks but presented in real life. I could also consider the designs to look consistent in the way the texture of a leaf leaves on paper. If you ever tried putting leaves in a book and the leaf reveals a texture on the sheet(s), I am comparing it to that. I couldn’t guess that the piece was connected to such an emotional story without reading about its background but whichever way you interpreted it, I would say the artwork brings various strong ideas as to what it represents and it definitely stops you in its track to look over all its curves, waves, patterns, and more.
Field Trip Video
The field trip definitely impacted me and it was a great social time alongside all my peers. I discovered new parts of Toronto I did not know existed, I met new people and had great conversations, I had many opportunities to use my camera for all sorts of things.
One Feat, Three Ways: Ice Cream
For our ‘One Feat, Three Ways’ project, our focus was the melting of ice cream.
Ice Cream
The cold, tasty treat we all have likely had.
Our gesture focus was that of the average individual which holds their ice cream cone in their hand. We all have held our hand out like this while holding a cone, although it may look different for each person, we all have held a cone in a similar way. Especially during hot summer days when we try to eat it as fast as possible so it doesn’t make a mess all over us but also so it doesn’t cause a brain freeze. When you go to an ice cream truck/place, you are handed the ice cream in this way, and you yourself hold it this way as well. This gesture is relatable and a part of our life.
Manny and I, got the inspiration from Andy Warhol’s video where he eats a Whopper alone in silence. The awkwardness that brought out and the emotions we got out of it although it was simply just one eating, something we’ve done ourselves. We wanted to accomplish a similar idea.
Eating the ice cream wasn’t the most impactful gesture concept we could’ve done with it, it may have even looked like we just copy and pasted Andy Warhol’s concept. So we thought about not eating and letting time go by as the ice cream drips. A truly intense timeline as we waited for the ice cream to melt, as it was cold, as our arms got tired, as we couldn’t hold our face straight, and as unpredictable things occurred a long the way.
EXPERIMENTAL 1
Pauline’s article is not so much of an article. I see it as a guide or a list of auditory exercises that readers can practice getting into the art of audio. Away from audio that is made with a direct purpose like music or speech. These exercises/works/scores allow you to think and expand your knowledge. It asks you to do things you would not have done. To take a word and repeat over and over until the meaning of that word is gone and its rhythmic sound is created, and that word is now a beat, that word is now a noise, it creates a pattern, it is looked at differently and it sounds different from the original. It is created into something new. It is like taking an object and recreating it’s purpose like readymade art. Like Duchamp’s fountain. Pauline also offers other ideas like creating sound that is so real that a listener cannot distinguish between the real and the copy. All of these exercises help create a larger knowledge of audio art, it has helped me differentiate and understand what audio art is. We all hear sound and we have gotten accustomed to it and it is hard to take a part of what we’ve heard in our life and make it into art and these exercises have helped define what we can experiment with and how, to create artistic audio with meaning.
Moving forward, the idea of differentiating the sound we hear and the sound which is considered artistic audio by recreating the sound to a certain tonality has helped me break down my explosions. From a war field to explosions. Taking that initial war field sound of a variety of explosions and activity and breaking down to just explosions. Taking explosions and the sounds prior, the sounds after, and the sounds during like reactions or sustain to make a repetitive yet smooth outline of an explosive scene over time. Taking explosions and explosive audio to the next level. Using the explosions to form an idea, to create meaning through the various explosions heard. Breaking down the parts of an explosion and playing with it to make something that catches attention, that plays with dynamic audio, that creates a piece in itself just out of explosions that were separately taken from different scenes to make one unique artistic audio that you couldn’t guess wasn’t together initially and which worked together to bring out the artistic merit of explosive sound.
Audio Assignment – Answer
Above was practice. A truck bustling down a path midway through a war field. Take a trip through time, quite literally time passing by as 1 minute is reached and to remind yourself of how long a minute is within war, so much can happen and with each shot or explosion, one can no longer be alive, one is fighting for their life, one is going through it with their truck to reach their destination and one may be 1000km away relaxing and not even hearing about the situation on the news.
Audio Assignment – Final – Hollywood’s Removal From Explosion
My final audio project was a play on Hollywood’s idea of what explosions feel and sound like. All clips are from movies. That relates it to Hollywood’s idea because all explosions are the same. You cannot really change how an explosion sounds in movies because you want the viewer to understand what is going on and having familiarity within films helps those films become successful as the audience got the queue.
In art, we do not care about the commercial idea of creation, we want to explore and expand the idea and the thought on what something can be. By combining all these explosions, you move through layers of sound. It is like painting but in the sense of audio, you hear layers of variety, different scenes interacting with one another to create impactful audio. With a buildup and good finish, you are brought into the piece, and you exit it, the explosions die out and the scene is over, the audio is over. You can press repeat at any time to go through and explore more sounds which are hidden, which you may have not heard in the previous listen. Allow yourself to gain the full meaning that all these layers can bring to you. Create your own ideas, meanings, and thoughts on what may be going on and what you are hearing.
How does this piece resonate with you?
Conceptual Portrait
My conceptual portrait considers the relationship between individuals’ faces. The connection, the spiritual/emotional/physical connection, we make with each other that is so strong in meaning as we acknowledge someone’s presence but also so simple because we do it all the time, it is just normal. The portrait may be a physical portrait at first because my portrait is present. A photo taken of my face, a portrait. The meaning behind this conceptual portrait is not from a generic photographic portrait although many have enjoyed how I can keep a straight face for so long. The meaning comes from everyone’s portrait. Consider your face a footprint. You leave behind a feeling, a sign, a sense. If I’m upset, you can likely tell by my face, if I’m happy, you can tell that I am by my face. The same is for everyone. That connection we can make with a face.
If you have ever seen those videos or concepts that if someone is yawning or smiling, you end up doing the same. That connection. That is what I am after.
In Video #1, listed as Faces, it is all about the process in creating this idea, within Zavitz, and getting firsthand impressions from my peers and professors. It also stands alone as a performance of me and my face. This is similar to the artwork of the chair, the definition of a chair, and the picture of a chair. You get different forms of the same thing.
In Video #2, listed as Reactions, it shows the reactions I got as I setup cameras to film peoples reaction of my face. I had a wall camera to film reactions of people looking towards the main piece on the wall in the lobby of Zavitz. I had a tripod with my face on it at a different location, recording peoples reaction. You could see one person looking at the tripod, making the connection to the wall, which also had my face, they were kind of in a deja vu moment where they relived seeing this same thing. Camera #3 was setup on my backpack.
Camera #3 (backpack), was the most clever and got the best reactions. I had my face on the front of my jacket and as I was walking around people noticed me and my face doing the same impression. They only saw a glimpse of this performance so of course they would look back and question did I really see that?, let me take a second look, do I know him?, what is happening?
And so…
I had the idea to setup the camera in the back with my face again as well in the back, to capture people’s true reaction that they wouldn’t show to my face or that they didn’t show initially. You could say I caught them in 4k.
This conceptual portrait heavily relies on the relationship between viewer and face. Viewer and viewer. Face and face. Each person’s face is a portrait on its own, capturing their face creates a conceptual portrait of many people a part of our Guelph community when brought together. We rarely look at each other on the street and I think this brought people together although they may have first thought I was crazy having my face plastered on me. I made contact and looked at a bunch of people indirectly. I got asked a lot of questions, I got a lot of confused looks, I made people happy as they laughed, I made connections and talked with people I probably wouldn’t have if this didn’t happen.
Artist Multiple; Buttons
For the artist multiple we used buttons to create artistic matter that could be worn, shared, or posted around. For my buttons, I decided to use my face, not only because it continues this trend of using my face to create a message or meaning but that when I thought about buttons; thinking about buttons being round and buttons with smiley faces on them, it thought about putting my face within these buttons would make sense.
To provide variation from past projects using my face, I created a coloured version of it separate from the known black and white. However, I could not let you have a free real life version of my face. I decided to draw over my face by adding a full beard, an angry expression, or such with pen. Giving different emotions, blends, characteristics and themes with each image, separate from the rest. I relate this drawing over with a pen from moments in my childhood where I drew over faces in newspapers or magazines, making realtors have funny faces for example.
Having this duality between the classic face and this animated, coloured version has helped develop this project express itself.
Getting to share these buttons with those around, with those that have been involved in this journey of “the face”, was interesting as we got to share and keep other peoples ideas, other peoples art, other peoples multiples. Seeing connections between them, seeing the difference between them and seeing them all together mixed around into one big artist(s) multiple!