Sean Croucher BA3 Sound Arts Project Diary @botherington - Tumblr Blog

October 2013

OK so 3rd year has finally begun. Its time to bring all this chaos and intrigue together for the final push in my project portfolio. I thought it would be a good idea to document this all on here as i can publish all my recordings, illustrations, experiments, errors and hopefully sonic successes.

This year i want to continue my work of using sound for its social and political power in retrospect to my work with the homeless as well as looking at the benefit system system in the UK today.

#TheCull

Carl aged 47

#TheCull

THE CULL

Culling is the process of removing breeding animals from a group based on specific criteria. This is done either to reinforce certain desirable characteristics or to remove certain undesirable characteristics from the group.

This year i am looking the Cull affecting the UK. With continual cut backs from the government hitting the poor and the disabled i want to use sound to examine at this political and economic shift. Through interviews and stories i hope to uproot the thoughts and ideas of those being affected.

I am also interested in the idea of 'The Silent Cull'. With technology increasing at such an exponential rate, the homeless are living without the constant link of what is happening around them that they are merely standing in the background whilst the country changes. With no connection when these individuals are lost do they merely just disappear?

1st Project October 2013

Today i began working on my first project for 3rd year. It is a collaboration with an animation student to create a 3 minute animation grad film revolving around homeless poetry and the sounds that come with it. Unlike previous work with animators where i put sound to picture, we are doing it in reverse. We want the animation to be abstract so we are thinking it would be interesting to see what the animator envisions when he hears my soundscape. We are however working together on many aspects of the film trying to spend at least one day a week recording and shooting together.

Day 1 - Reference Images and Recordings. Early October 2013

Early October 2013

Abstract Animation Mid October 2013

Recently i've been looking at Early animated films from the 1920's and 1930's from around the globe notably that of the contributors to Absolute Film Animation.

Absolute Film animation was a movement of artists who tried to emulate abstraction in motion or visualisation of music through animated films. These were visually abstract films which conveyed non-narrative visual/sound experiences with no story and no acting. They relied on the unique qualities of motion, rhythm, light and composition inherent in the technical medium of cinema to create emotional experiences. Interestingly many of these films were made silent.

Symphonie diagonale, or Diagonal-Symphonie as its German title was, is a 1924 German film directed by Viking Eggeling.

'A tilted figure, consisting largely of right angles at the beginning, grows by accretion, with the addition of short straight lines and curves which sprout from the existing design. The figure vanishes and the process begins again with a new pattern, each cycle lasting one or two seconds. The complete figures are drawn in a vaguely Art Deco Style and could be said to resemble any number of things, an ear, a harp, panpipes, a grand piano with trombones, and so on, only highly stylised. The tone is playful and hypnotic.'

Mid October 2013

In contrast to the Absolute Film movement, Graphical sound (or drawn sound) is a technique of the sound-on-film technology and based on the creation of artificial optical polyphonic sound tracks on transparent film. With this new technique, the more complex sound textures, the more visual elaborate the visual will be.

The animations have a visually 'ornametal' pattern due to the shapes which create the sounds. Due to this artists like Mikhail Tsekhanovsky began to work with the concept of illustrating 'unknown archaic music' by putting Egyptian and Greek ornaments on film.

First Meeting 21st October 2013

Today i had my first meeting with my major project advisor Peter Mckerrow which was very helpful. We managed to get through a lot and it helped me put together the bigger picture of how work will go for the rest of the year. Up until now i've been using this blog for things i think would be interesting but the course isn't just about that. This blog is about illustrating my journey throughout my creative and professional practice throughout the year and that means including everything: my triumph's, my defeats, my resolutions and everything else in-between.

So watch this space!

Depford Recordings 22nd October 2013

Yesterday afternoon i went out to Depford to get some more recordings for the animation. It was a windy rainy day (which isn't always a bad thing) and i managed to get together some recordings. However on listening back to the recordings when i got back home, there seemed to be too much background interference. I don't think i used a strong enough shotgun mic as well as a poor choice time to record.

Today i managed to get out a selection of different shotgun mice e.g Seinheiser K6 kit, rode shotgun and yoga shotgun mic. I am gonna try and recording with all 3 to see which will provide me with a more direction acute recording. I am also after work tonight from 10 onwards gonna be riding around London trying to meet some new homeless people are well as gather some nice dark atmospheric sounds for the piece.

Anyways Here is some of my recordings from Depford, there aren't totally unusable so i'm gonna have a little play around with them to see what i can do.

This is a recording i did whilst trying to chase pigeons around Depford church cemetery. There is still a little to much background interference but with a little EQ and a low cut filter i should be able to sort it out.

Here are some reference videos taken from the day of recording and shooting with Youcef.

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Sean Croucher BA3 Sound Arts Project Diary