Sound Strand notes

Ideas for final:
Visual representation of audio
Focus on ambient noise
Manufactured sound versus natural sound

The idea of a 'manufactured' sound: A sound that could not have come to pass without unnatural interference, for example: The rumble of traffic, the humming of a fluorescent light or an air conditioner. Many of these sounds, particularly in cities, drown out more natural sounds; birdsong or conversation.

Everywhere has it's own background noise, perhaps a piece regarding bringing background noise into prominence?

Visual representations of sound:

Coming up with original ways to represent sound; aside from traditional notational score. Graphs or time lines, showing the progression of sound over a period of time.

The above diagram is a musical score of sorts, it shows an experiment involving five different speakers and microphones (represented by the numbers in circles) that would record and then play back. Showing a dynamic piece in action. One person would read from a novel [reader], another would jingle keys [keys] while a third played a rhythm on a snare drum [snare drum]. Meanwhile another group of people would march from one end of the speakers to the other, creating the impression of a military parade ground. The audience was to hear this piece from one end, so that it might seem that the marching was coming towards them.

Final piece for this strand: a sound piece combining various ambient sounds recorded with a Marantz
 (including rainfall and the hum of a refrigerator) combined with instrumentation, a guitar utilising a feedback loop. This piece can be heard here:
http://soundcloud.com/post_electric
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Aiden Evens: Sound Ideas
As people from record collectors to file swappers know, the experience of music - making it, marketing it, listening to it - relies heavily on technology. From the viola that amplifies the vibrations of a string to the CD player that turns digital bits into varying voltage, music and technology are deeply intertwined. What was gained - or lost - when compact discs replaced vinyl as the mass-market medium? What unique creative input does the musician bring to the music, and what contribution is made by the instrument? Do digital synthesizers offer unlimited range of sonic potential, or do their push-button interfaces and acoustical models lead to cookie-cutter productions? Through this interrogation of sound and technology, Aden Evens provides an acute consideration of how music becomes sensible, advancing original variations on the themes of creativity and habit, analog and digital technologies, and improvisation and repetition. Evens elegantly and forcefully dissects the paradoxes of digital culture and reveals how technology has profound implications for the phenomenology of art. Sound Ideas reinvents the philosophy of music in a way that encompasses traditional aspects of musicology, avant-garde explorations of music's relation to noise and silence, and the consequences of digitisation.
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Sound_ideas.html?id=m5iNeVkvR1EC

Experiment Introduction

Module descriptor: To introduce theoretical and practical models of media arts practice over a number of projects focusing on experimentation with forms and ideas.

Module Aims:

• To provide experience of working with different technologies on a practical level 

• To enable students to experiment and develop and identify a number of self initiated projects 

• To enable students to investigate media arts practitioners relevant to their own practice 

• To situate practice in relation to broader critical and theoretical contexts

At the end of the module the learner will be expected to be able to: 

• Follow an independent line of research; 

• Reflect critically on a range of work and media practices; 

• Place these practices in an appropriate historical and critical context; 

• Have confidence working with technology; 

• Direct and control the outcome of experiment; 

• Be able to research, formulate and articulate an argument; 

• Have an understanding of the relationship between practical and theoretical work.