Dolphin Brains

I entered a contest on worth1000 called "Animal Zombies." Considering the fact that it's my first time ever using photoshop, I don't think I did too bad. You can vote for it here! Anyway, here it is:

right now write now (William Burroughs' article)

Although Burroughs' article about cut-ups seems at first to only describe an artistic movement, you can begin to see after reading for awhile that the article itself is art. One of my favorite passages in the article is "Greek philosophers assumed logically that an object twice as heavy as another object would fall twice as fast. It did not occur to them to push the two objects off the table and see how they fall. Cut the words and see how they fall." I also appreciate Burroughs' assertion that "all writing is in fact cut-ups. A collage of words read hear overheard." This reminds me a lot of the remixing article we read earlier in the semester, as it relates to the "history of sound" used as a library for music; poetry and prose are nothing more than remixes, taking samples from the "history of words." I do have a question about this article, though. It seems to me that we have come up with words and language throughout the history of our existence in order to be able to convey emotion and thought to each other. Therefore, by randomly cutting and pasting words into new artforms, is there really any meaning to the piece besides the fact that it is a cut-up? If the words and sentences no longer mean anything, then how can the artwork as a whole mean anything?

Quick Mask

I'm going to present the quick mask tool during class. In order to demonstrate, I posted a picture of my dog Buffy wearing some rockin' shades.

S-E-X-Oh! (Cultural Event #1)

Last night, I went to see the performance S-E-X-Oh! by the Teatro Luna group. I was very impressed by it, and I liked it a lot. Teatro Luna is Chicago's only all-Latina performance group, and it was co-founded by an SMCM graduate (Coya Paz, '97). The play was about bringing women of all cultural backgrounds together by sharing stories about sex and gender that everybody can identify with. The strength behind these stories is that although they are a common thread among many women, they are hardly ever talked about. The play dealt with experiences such as abortion, lesbianism, molestation, phone sex, religion, and many more. The play reminded me a lot of The Vagina Monologues, but I actually liked S-E-X-Oh! a lot more. I'd highly recommend this play; it's showing in Bruce Davis again tonight at 8 pm, and this might be your last chance to see it!

DADA

I chose to analyze the artwork of Francis Picabia. The image to the right, L'Oeil cacodylate (The Cacodylic Eye), was produced in Paris in 1921. According to the audio description accompanying the piece, Picabia set up a canvas in his hospital room while undergoing treatment for an eye condition and had all of his visitors sign the canvas, as well as add puns, aphorisms, pictures, etc. It seems that this piece utilizes the DADAist techniques of collage and typography. One of the ideals of DADAism is to break down the barrier between art and everyday life. In my opinion, this collage is akin to taking a birthday card that has been passed around the office and putting it on display in an art museum. Picabia also utilized typography in a way, even though he didn't use conventional typographic design. The puns and aphorisms on the canvas convey a direct meaning that makes the artwork seem more alive, and makes the artist seem real. Additionally, the various handwritings and colors used give the impression that many people collaborated on this work of art (which they did), thereby upholding the "group art" aspect of DADAism.

The next piece I analyzed is entitled Réveil matin I (Alarm Clock I) and was created in 1919 for use as an illustration on the title page of the journal Dada, no. 4-5. The details this artwork describe it as a line block reproduction of an ink drawing. I think that this piece uses a form of the concept of the readymade. The mechanical clockwork depicted in Picabia's piece looks like it has been taken straight from a technical manual describing the inner workings of an alarm clock. Although this work is not a true readymade since he actually drew it, the notion that a monochrome sketch of a few gears is art is certainly resonant of DADAism.

Audio Project #2

Here is my newest audio project! The journey is through some snow-covered woods, and into a frozen lake...but in the end, it's all just a dream.

Sound credits:

Background ambient forest noise
from the freesound project
Harzmountain stream.WAV
WAV, 48000Hz, 1536kbps, 16 bit, Stereo
author - inchadney

Forest panflute music
recorded by Alice Volpitta

Walking through snow
from the freesound project
Duo snowshoe walking.wav
wav, 48000Hz, 2304kbps, 24 bit, Stereo
author - laurent

Wind
from the freesound project
Wind_Howling_NIghttime.aif
aif, 44100Hz, 2116kbps, 24 bit, Stereo
author - Dynamicell

Geese
from the freesound project
Canada geese.wav
wav, 44100Hz, 1411kbps, 16 bit, Stereo
author - genghis attenborough


Footsteps on cracking ice
recorded by Alice Volpitta

Cracking ice
http://www.therecordist.com/assets/sound/game_sfx_2005/ice_cracking_large_01.wav
746k, mono, 16-bit, 44100 Hz

Splash
http://www.planit3d.com/source/sound_files/icesplash2.wav
water splash
126k, mono, 16-bit, 22050 Hz

Underwater ambient noise
from the freesound project
ELEMENTS_WATER_01_Underwater.wav
wav, 44100Hz, 2116kbps, 24 bit, Stereo
author - suonho

Bubbles
from the freesound project
ELEMENTS_WATER_02_Phasin-bubbles.wav
wav, 44100Hz, 2116kbps, 24 bit, Stereo
author - suonho

Gong
from the freesound project
lunch_gong.wav
mp3, 44100Hz, 128kbps, Mono
author - gezortenplotz

Thunderstorm
from the freesound project
rbh thunder storm.wav
wav, 44100Hz, 1411kbps, 16 bit, Stereo
author - RHumphries

Windchimes
from the freesound project
Our Chimes.wav
wav, 48000Hz, 3072kbps, 32 bit, Stereo
author - memigh1

Birds chirping
from the freesound project
Pied Bushchat male on hill.wav
wav, 44100Hz, 1411kbps, 16 bit, Stereo
author - genghis attenborough

Janet Cardiff response

I thought that the radio interview piece did a good job at conveying the essence of Janet Cardiff's work. Cardiff's "walks" not only take you on a journey through sound and space, but make you notice and appreciate the multitude of sounds in our everyday lives. In order to create parallels between her soundscapes and the listener's own life, Cardiff is intentionally vague about some situations, sounds, or thoughts that are presented in her works. By leaving some portions of the artwork to the listener's imagination, Cardiff makes people take an active role in her pieces by relating them to their own lives. In my opinion, artwork is only great when it makes you reflect on your own life, or the world you live in, and this is exactly what Janet Cardiff's work aims to do. Instead of just projecting her stories onto her listeners, Cardiff has created pieces that require participants to take an active listening role; although the different elements of a story or soundscape are in place, it is the listener's interpretation of those sounds that give them any meaning.

The three-level spatial structure can be clearly heard throughout Cardiff's White Chapel piece. The foreground sound is usually Cardiff's voice. Although it is often the loudest sound in any given portion of the work, you can also tell that it is in the foreground because it seems to be more out of place than any other sound. Although the voice is smooth and calming, it is also somewhat jarring because it seems like somebody else's thoughts are inside of your head as you take this "journey" with her. The ambient noises of birds chirping could be considered to be the background, as they are the most natural-sounding elements of the piece. Since the birds are a constant, lower-volume sound, they seem to be unimportant and as such are just background noise. The footsteps are not quite as loud as the voice, but are more prominent than the background noises, so they contribute to the middleground noises in the piece. Another thing that makes me think that the footsteps are meant to be part of the middleground is that they are consistently moving at the same pace, and the sound of them becomes quite monotonous after just a few minutes.

To be honest, I didn't really like the White Chapel piece very much. It's not that I didn't appreciate the artistic aspects of the work, it just made me feel generally uncomfortable. Being forced to listen to the sounds that she was making, and being trapped in the world that she had created made me feel very uneasy and even somewhat claustrophobic. I'm not sure exactly how to explain it, but there was something about not being able to go where I wanted to in her world that made me want to be able to leave it that much more. There was also something off-putting about the actual sounds that Cardiff chose to use in her piece. They all sounded too clean, too perfect. Every element of the narrative sounded like it came from a pre-recorded library, and the combination of these elements created a too-perfect world that I found extremely disconcerting.

First mp3

For our first audio project, I mixed three different sounds from the online sound database The Freesound Project. The three clips I overlaid were windchimes, a thunderstorm, and some birds chirping.

Credits:
January 25, 2007
By genghis attenborough (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=205108)
Pied Bushchat male on hill.wav (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=28327)
By memigh1 (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=26346)
Our Chimes.wav (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=14274)
By RHumphries (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/usersViewSingle.php?id=1112)
rbh thunder storm.wav (http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesViewSingle.php?id=2523)