Month: December 2022

One of my ideas for the exhibition would be to create sound for a clip. I have experience doing this already this year with the Sound For Screen unit by rescoring David Lynch’s The Alphabet. I would like to go into film composing as a career choice after university, so this could be another way to experiment with sound for screen and push my skills. When thinking about composing for screen I am drawn to experimental cinema. Experimental cinema is great for composing opportunities as avant-garde films range in tone and genre which gives you lots of choices to compose for. For example, you have films like Enter The Void (Dir. Gaspar Noe) which is a heavily stylised, colourful, and intense film filled with techno and dark ambient music. You also have films like Satantango (Dir. Bella Tarr) which is a 7-hour film filled with bleak cinematography, Tarkovsky Esque cinematography, and a very minimal score. There are lots of opportunities when it comes to composing a film, it is important to figure out

Over the Christmas break, I decided to revisit the work of the Vienesse Actionist movement that took place throughout the 1960s-1970s. I will make a whole blog dedicated to the movement and what the movement was about. But throughout their time numerous experimental short films were created by these Vienesse Actionists that I found very inspiriting. The Actionists use the human body as the main centrepiece of their work, the way this is explored in these experimental shorts feels like a predecessor to the body horror subgenre that would start to come into place in the 1970s with directors like David Cronenberg.

For our element 2 of specialising and exhibiting, we have been proposed to create something for an sound installation gallery at Gallery 46 in Whitechapel. Last year me and Rysia Kaczmar performed at the gallery as Grawlix, an experimental duo creating sound from dj sets, noise, ambient, techno, and performance art. We performed at the private showcase last minute and with this I got to explore the Gallery and see what my peers have created. I was blown away by what I saw, it was a vast mixture of art with different concepts and medias. I saw installations made with a nagra tape machine, an octophonic ring, music for oscilloscopes, and some weird feedback loops created by using the washroom. Being exposed to all of this gave me an early start of thinking what I could be doing in a years time.

I never thought of myself as someone who would have work in an art installation, I was never the best at art during my time at school, but always wanted to do something with visual art, wether it was video, paintings, or sculpture. But with my mediocre grades and feedback, I put that to the wayside as I thought it would be something not worth pursuing because I was told I was not very good. I was trained as a drummer for brass bands, concert bands, and in my free time I would punk bands. So throughout my late secondary school/college years I was thinking of becoming a session musician, being hired as a drummer for anything. I went to college to study drums and you are trained to become someone in the ‘industry’ (a word I personally dislike). Being around industry type people made me realise I did not want to be in that world, it is very corrupt and anti creativity. I was creating ambient music with tape loops during my time there and it was always seen more as a spectacle because it was odd. After college I came to ual to study sound arts. While studying on this course I realised you an create exhibitions out of sound, which reignited my passion for art other than sound. I also realised you could use playback devices like tape machines and record players as a part of the installation. It felt like I was finally able to create visual art with something I am passionate about.

As of now (5/12/22) I am finding it hard to solidify one idea, luckily the Christmas break is around the corner, and I will have time to experiment with all these ideas and see which one I gravitate towards.

Something important when creating something to go to an art installation is size, considering their is 20 odd people in my class who are most likely all wanting to submit something, it is best to try and work together to utilise the space to its ability. Even is my piece does not get chosen it will be a valuable exercise for me regardless. These are my ideas

1. Microcassette and Cassette Loops