Today I decided that I would record ‘uneasy’ sounds so I took in an old guitar so I could get the sound of sliding strings. I have been thinking about how sound is used in film and what types of sound are used to convey emotion. To a certain extent we all view sounds in the same way. A high-pitched sound is alarming, eg a scream/cry, fire alarms, things falling through the air. Very low sounds have an ominous feel to them, maybe we equate this type of sound with earthquakes or similar calamities? Another commonly used ‘film’ sound is a sliding, string sound (Jaws, The Shining) which is popular especially in horror or suspense genres.
I couldn’t book the MA sound room until Wednesday so I used the BA sound room today, just to get an idea of what it might sound like when recorded. I have a cold so much of my sound recording was marred by coughing. I did get the chance to play with the sound and consider how I should approach this part of the project.
In between playing with the sound I also did some research on the Internet, looking closely at Jungian archetypes. I have observed that 4 or 5 archetypes stand out above the rest and are most commonly used.
The Persona
The Shadow
The Anima/animus
The Ego
The Self
Although I discussed using ‘emotion’ as a guide or structure for this project I think that for the Masters project I will use Jung’s archetypes as a basis for the triptych, possibly focussing on the Persona, The Shadow and the Animus. The Self would be an amalgamation of the other archetypes (ie the installation as a whole). In some articles the Ego is portrayed as the opposite of the Shadow so this might be a way to include it in the triptych without altering the planned installation.
Tuesday
I booked the animation room for a few hours to do a little bit of animating. I decided to see if I could find sediment that looked like the gritty stuff that you find in henna. Sand isn’t quite fine enough and has a different quality so I decided to look for something that was derived from a plant, like henna is. I used the powder that I find at the bottom of my rabbits food that is made from vegetable matter.
I wanted to use water to erode and move the sediment around on the glass so I tilted the pane of glass slightly. I ran water over/through the sediment and at first it changed colour and texture as it soaked up the water, which is a nice effect. Dragon is not quite quick enough to catch all the movement of the water at times. It misses frames if you try and take a picture too soon so it skipped quite a few without me noticing. Next time I will have it on ones so that it doesn’t take quite as long. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet as the dropped frames mean that I will need to put it together in Quicktime Pro so will have to take my hard drive in when I am using the MA sound room.
I have to think about how to approach this kind of animation next time as catching the water in bits of tissue wasn’t the most effective or easiest method to use. I had to keep running to the toilets to get tissue when the tissue that I was using got waterlogged. This meant that there were some large gaps of time in between shots.
Wednesday
Today I had the MA sound room booked and brought Duncan along with me to see what kind of sounds he could make. I was mostly interested in the ‘sliding string’ sound from my old broken guitar. Duncan used a stone pestle to scrape the strings which, in my opinion, was the best sound. We recorded about 15 sounds produced using various objects. I tried to get a range of short and long sounds and sounds that were percussive/rhythmic alongside longer tones.
I think that next time Duncan helps with the sound recording I might get him to record the sounds and show him the kind of range we are looking for so that he has a better understanding of what is needed when performing the sound as he often has a very loud/sharp section in his sound that ‘clips’. If he had a better understanding of the recording process his sound performances might be less problematic.
Again, I experienced some anxiety about not having total control over the sound recording process. I would like to be able to perform the sounds myself; otherwise I feel that they aren’t ‘my’ sounds. Duncan hasn’t recorded sound before so I’m not sure what the quality would be like if he was controlling the levels. I will try it next time he comes in to help me out; he might be better at that bit than I am!
Thursday
I had a tutorial with Suzie today and showed her the animated clip from Tuesday, which she liked. We also discussed Jung and various artists that I should look at. I forgot my card so I wasn’t able to get anything out of the library today but I need to look at some animation that can’t be found on the Internet.
I think that I may need to assemble something specifically for animations involving water. If I could find something like an old sink or tank to use that might be a little better.
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