George Monro BCT

[gmonro]

GPS and NDA

So after a meeting with Ecotricity on the 7th, we were able to get to a point of being able to show a prototype to them and they seemed happy with what we had so far. However, they did propose the use of an NDA. So there wont be a lot of talk about the app and what is going into it in future blogs. 

Another point to be made is that we have been working on this project since half way through last semester. That was when we started our relationship with Ecotricity and when we first pitched the idea to work with them. I think that due to this, we have been able to skip the majority of time that other groups would be going through research as we will be able to test out some play testing without giving anything away. 

The last thing that I will be able to talk about is that I am struggling to fully understand GPS navigation and integration into the app. My plan to try and deal with this include trying to talk to other people who have made apps in the past or who have already worked on similar projects. That is my main aim for the next week. Although I know it will be a busy week with other assignments and commitments as well. 

[gmonro]

Myers Briggs and User experiences

First off, these should have been posted last week. I have done the myers briggs test a few times and each time have been an ENFP. In terms of the rest of these things, I am unsure how they will relate in further classes and what it actually says about me as a person. I thought that the last note, where I said I was more focused on people and domination that it was hard for me to judge considering I also love exploration games, but at the end of the day, it would be more about friends and enjoying the game with friends. 

Finally the user experience. Overall this is a part I have been struggling with as I am trying to imagine how other people would react to the app. I would like to try and get as many reactions as I can to create a very realistic and broad idea of possible reactions to the app itself. 

[gmonro]

Final Take

This is my final piece with the sound recorded. Only issue being that the sound needed to have a large amount of gain and so you can notice that while listening to it. However, I would still say that it is still quite interesting to view the contradiction in the image, to the consistency of the quality. And in a way it actually also works in relation to the sound. Giving a more distorted sound to a song which is commonly very clean and beautiful. 

[gmonro]

SIS Statement

So for my project, I would describe is as a more experimental piece than anything else. I was going completely out of my comfort zone in order to try and do something that I had never done before. The original idea was to have a video which was effected by the sound of my guitar, which was influenced just by images I found while doing research. I got really stuck while trying to think up ideas, so the idea coming from an image was really helpful.

So, the idea behind the first thought, was that it would be an interesting way of creating an interactive video which was affected by sound. This video was going to be something perfectly normal, which, from the use of the guitar playing through the screen was going to be altered. The video which I was going to make was going to have some way of adding to the guitar or the sound in some way. However, due to some major setbacks from the video mixer, I was put back into trying to finding a working solution as opposed to focusing on a video that would work well with the installation. The issue being that the sound-video converter wasn’t compatible with the video mixer. After talking to Kim, I found out that there wasn’t a way to make it work at all, so I decided to stick with the idea to see if I could still get some form of outcome. If nothing else, I found out a hell of a lot.

 Firstly, don’t leave the video to the last minute. By the time I had fully decided what I was wanting to do for the video, I didn’t have any time to film. Mostly due to the fact I thought previous parts wouldn’t take so long. Because of this I am not 100% happy with the way the video turned out. I ended up reusing a video from a previous project and editing it to look as glitched as the video mixer. However again, by the time I was finished I didn’t have time to test and re-edit. Second thing I learned a bit too late, was that I should have picked a different song. The issue with the song I chose was, since there is always a note being played, you were unable to see the way that the lines oscillate. This meant the video didn’t have the same effect.

Adding those two things together, meant I had one part of the video which looked glitchy with its input but consistent with the image, and the other doing the opposite. Honestly, despite the issues I had with the paper, it is kind of interesting to see the end product. I am very glad that I got the chance to, because although I am not happy with the way it all happened, I am some what happy with the end result despite it being a surprise.

[gmonro]

Final cuts

Below you will find the final cuts of both my edited footage for the CRT screen, and my last cut of me playing with the screen behind me. 

Now, as for the sound, the way I recorded it, was that my amp was feeding straight into my mic jack. So in doing so, I created a clean audio straight from the guitar without having to worry about any background noise. The perks being, I didn’t have to find a quiet area or a nice spot to do any of this, however the negative is that, since it was going from the mixing desk, I needed a certain amount of gain to get a response through the CRT. This means that the gain in the audio is turned up a bit, so it doesn’t sound as clean as I wish it was. 

Overall, I found a lot of issues with this project. Or more so my execution of the project. First, I think the video itself should have been filmed using a camera in more of a music video kind of way. Instead, after experimenting with some youtube clips, I realized how bad it would look so reverted back to an older video which I used last year, and edited that a bit. In terms of the CRT itself, I really wish I could have found a way to get the CRT screen to work perfectly with the adapter, however, I am extremely happy with how it looked on my last take. It was probably the most clean I ever saw it (through the video mixer). Also, finding some way of creating a more smooth or slower way of mixing the video as opposed to just using the BPM component would have been amazing. I would have really enjoyed somehow figuring out how to edit it with the video and me playing to make it look as smooth as possible. 

Overall, my end piece is unable to stay in a space, due to its overall inconsistency of the image. The sound part, might still sound a bit too noisy and the image part, I think I can still do more to. I think I am going to play around with the final edit and figure out if I can make any other tweaks to add to the effect. I think that the project didn’t go as expected, but I think it definitely didn’t go as terrible as I thought it could have gone.

[gmonro]

Video Glitching

So over the weekend, I have been trying my hardest to find a way to glitch my video to make it as similar to the way that the video mixer makes the image from my guitar look. Below you can find all of the videos I have used to try and understand different ways of editing glitches together.

This first video was a way to get just small targeted glitches in a basic way using another layer with another video glitch to help create a glitched effect. I am thinking I will use this one throughout the video in really small bursts in order to try to create very small glitches which will hopefully look accidental and unplanned.

This next video is something I will try to use a bit more throughout the video in large spaces but with only a few seconds actually affected. So I will be spending a lot of time using this, but I’ll try to have it only effect for a couple seconds at a time. 

This last video is one I haven’t been able to fully understand and grasp yet, but I am planning to try and use it the most, since it is something which is a very natural looking glitch to a video. I am in heavy editing mode and need to start trying to mix up these glitches to try and make them look nice without creating too much of a destroyed file. 

I think the hardest part about this project would be using all these glitches together to try and create a video which would hopefully add to the video in some way, shape or form. I think my biggest issue at the moment would be to create a video that actually relates to the song itself. Which I am realizing that I should have thought about earlier, because I should have tried to film it myself as opposed to trying to make a video from youtube videos or something like that. I think that it would be a lot more effective if I had filmed something myself (Yes Clint, you were right).

[gmonro]

Studio Research and Planning

So overall, quick updates. 1st, I will be putting up my logging from the first half of studio so that there is a record of that pretty soon. However, first I am going to elaborate on what we are doing now and what has happened since the last update. 

So I am now working with Louis again, and after having a meeting with the company Ecotricity, we have decided that we would like to work on something with/for them. After the first meeting, we were given a bunch of research topics such as Generation Zero (http://www.generationzero.org/), 350.org (one of their videos shown below) and the website, facebook, youtube and twitter of Ecotricity themselves. https://ecotricity.co.nz/

After looking into these area’s we came up with multiple ideas that we wanted to pitch to them. The main point we were wanting to get across being that if we were targeting a younger audience, then it would need to be engaging. This bought in the ideas of approaching schools, promoting electric vehicles, creating a sort of video to show what each of the political parties would do in terms of climate change and even an informative but comedy styled video based on these same principles. Although this was heavily inspired from the top trending video on YouTube at the time.

After bringing up these ideas to Ecotricity, we sat down and talked about what we could possibly show to them. We ran through our ideas and ended up coming to a completely different idea which both us, and Ecotricity seemed interested in. They wanted an app. One that would measure your daily/weekly/monthly emissions and tell you what they were based on your: Electricity provider, transportation mode, distance traveled, etc...  This app would tell you how much money/emissions/time could be saved by using a different mode of transport and could eventually bring up the possibility of having a game element to it, where it would compare you to others. Or (based on emissions) you would be planting or cutting down trees. This would open up future business partners who could be willing to actually help with this idea in terms of actually planting trees based on how well people do on this app. We don’t have any images yet since we are both in full on working mode for the other papers, but we are very excited for this so far, as it also opens up the opportunity to make this app next semester Ecotricity do like it. 

[gmonro]

Space, Image, Sound - Technical Difficulties (Week 9)

So what I have found from this week is that I am going to struggle to get a constant video feed coming from my guitar. Due to the feed coming from a sound-video converter, it doesn’t look like it will be compatible with the video mixer. The video below shows the best I could do with what I had. I got it working in a very non-clean way.

So the issue with this, is that it is not reliable at all. Unfortunately I have run out of space on my phone so I couldn’t get photos or videos to show what usually happens. But occasionally the image from the computer get permanently put into the background of the sound image. Which causes problems in of itself. Add on that the background color can be either blue, black, white or just not come up with an image at all, it feels like its more of a guessing game to see if it will work or not. Still need to try work out the kinks, but I think I will have to either find a new idea on how to do it, or find some sort of work around. 

Also, in terms of videos which I have been looking into, its not fulling relating to it, but I have realized that by wanting a video which adds to the song, I am heavily inspired by Kendrick Lamar and the way he makes his music videos. As the video’s often tell a story themselves. An example (shown below) is a short film he made based off two of his songs which also tell a story of what is happening inside his mind. Showing both the tormented mind and his more dazed and ‘influenced’ mind. 

[gmonro]

Space, Image, Sound - Video mixer (week 8)

(These are my thoughts from the week, although I am playing catch up with blogging)

So my next step is to look into how I can get my project to its next step. My way of achieving that would be to try to get my video to interact with another video, which I have been given the option of using a video mixer. My plan at the moment is to go in and try to get the feed from my Sound to play with another video/feed coming from a laptop. My goal is to play a song that will either create a contrast with the video, or a song that would make the video seem more prominent and make the video look like it gave the song more meaning in some form. Not sure how I am planning to do that yet, but that is my current thoughts. 

[gmonro]

Creative Workflow

So overall I would say our presentation didn’t go entirely as planned. Having the issue of not being able to show the film to everyone along with the large delay at the beginning. I would say overall, I learnt a lot from the experience and personally I would write it off as a failure. No one person to blame, just a complete team issue. However, this project is over, so onto the next one. Not going to lie, I wasn’t entirely ready for how fast the turnaround was going to be, so I think I am already behind since I haven’t quite done enough to work through the delay and the overlapping time which I missed at the beginning. Anyway, back to the previous project. Overall, given the time, I think we completed a good first edit and first cut. I think that if we were really going to take this entirely seriously and really released it to the public, then it shouldn’t be rushed. And I think that is what our final piece was. I think that due to time constrictions, we were a bit too stressed to get all of the filming done early and get everything we wanted done. Instead of ensuring that the shots were done to look the best they possibly could, along with making sure the quality of the sound was up to scratch. And again, this is not one persons fault, so much as a consequence of using this idea as a 6 week project instead of a term. The fact that this issue is such a large and powerful issue, means there is no room for mistakes. Because addressing this issue is so sensitive, that saying the wrong thing or if the message is received incorrect, (worst case scenario) a persons life could be on the line. Given the chance to go over it all again, I would make sure we had a very sound storyboard of the exact shots and the exact story we wanted to play. Along with checking the script with others to get feedback before shooting. I would then make sure we had multiple takes, multiple angles, and a way to get some sound from the piece as well as any voice overs as early as possible.

Overall I think that we did alright based on the time limits. But in terms of releasing it to public, I would not be comfortable doing it at all. I don’t think it is up to a reasonable standard to do that. Given more time, I think we could have made it look far more professional.

Now, unfortunately, I now have the next 6 weeks to worry about, and my new project. The most unfortunate part being its been a week and I am currently torn between 2 still. 1) stay with the same topic of suicide and change the goal, so as to find what works best for suicide prevention, or 2) Renewable energy, my reasoning behind this is I know family friends in this industry so I would have a way of gaining first hand knowledge, currently waiting on a reply from them. My plan at the moment is to talk to my lecturers and figure out what their opinion is. After that, just work from there I guess.

So that is what has been going on in Studio and Creative workflows. I will put another update up tomorrow about the planning and such, I am still trying to figure out how to explain it all. Until next time

[gmonro]

Space, Image and Sound

Overall, this is going to be a very small update. But right now, I am at a point where I just want the piece to be more personalized. I want there to be something that comes from it and not just have it as lights on a screen that move, although I am very interested in that as well. I would like for this piece to represent something, and what I want it to represent along with how I want it to represent that. Those are both things I am needing to find out. Although I am not entirely sure of how I can do this, I am going to have another large week of research in order to figure this out. 

[gmonro]

Part 2 and Formative.

So from where I left off, I added in a small device that I completely forgot the name of (thanks Clint, sorry for the lack of terminology). But the photo of it is seen below. 

So what this does, is you can connect sound into it, and it converts it into a video output based on the tones and the change in the tempo. All of this based on different pre-made settings. You can see this all used below, although you can’t yet hear the guitar too much because I haven’t connected the amp yet. Soon though.

So as I play different songs, the images on the screen change. Again, thanks to Clint who is also planning on bringing in a color version of this which I assume will also generate different colors with it. My plan at the moment is to work with the colored version to have a look into how I could possibly use that along with my MIDI keyboard to create an interesting performance or something similar. At the moment I am actually looking into possibly trying to find another screen and have a couple of screens doing different things. Like one using the MIDI keyboard which would have drum beats or something similar and then the other with guitar connected. Try to create a performance or some form of installation which could be used in performances. I am very much inspired by the music video by ‘Arctic Monkeys’ seen below. 

At the moment I think that I am very much where I would like to be, and my next steps would be find some drum beats or other forms of sounds that would create different effects on the screen in order to create a more interesting way of performing. Not sure if it will be a nice experience of not yet. Still not sure how to present it, but that is where I am at the moment. So far I have been in the mech lab testing different songs and riffs in order to see what settings work with different songs. 

[gmonro]

Space Image and Sound (Update part 1)

I am choosing to do these updates in 2 parts since I didn’t blog last week and still want to go through everything that has changed. So since the last time I blogged, where I was looking into using a MIDI Keyboard, my plan has changed to use my guitar instead. Now the reason for this was when I found out that the sound would require a large amount of gain in order to come out with some form of image on the screen, my first thought was to go through my amp and see if I could get anything going through that. However due to the difference between input and output gain it wasn’t going to work that way, which was unfortunate but it gave me the idea of using my guitar instead. So, then I moved on to the screen. With a lot of help from Clint and Kim, I was able to get a CRT screen working with my guitar going through a mixing desk, in order to get the output of what you can see below.

What you can see me doing for the majority of this video is trying to tune the strings so they will create a solid like or something similar each time I play them. However due to the pitch and tone changing as the sound plays out, it is very difficult to get a solid line for a string. This is where I was left after last week. Which got me thinking if I could also create a way of playing with a MIDI keyboard as well, then the overall sound and possibilities could be amazing. But still looking into that so no promises. That was where I was after last week, part 2 of the update will be coming shortly once I have finished finalizing a few of my idea’s.

[gmonro]

Studio 5: Speak Up

Been a while so we have a lot to up date with. So far we have got the script and we finally start our filming tomorrow. We have a final message and I would say that the majority of the story along with the message are all working out really well. I think we are at a good place for how much time we have an how much time we have left. My only issues come with the final couple of scenes as I can’t fully picture how well it would convey the message, however without thinking of a solution then we don’t have the time to leave out the final scene. So, unless I can figure out what I would like to do instead, not a massive point in bringing it up. 

Our research stage has passed already and we are into filming, however I am still finding videos which are extremely interesting and convey very important messages. One such video is shown below. However again, it is a lot longer than the amount of time we would like our video to be. 

Also, realizing I forgot to talk about the previous research videos we looked into, I should probably mention those too. These included hashtags along the lines of #boysdocry and videos explaining depression and what it leads to. I am struggling to find the videos right now, however will either find them or put a link to Anastasia’s or Jenny’s Blog so you can see the videos. 

We would like our message to be focused around letting us see that every day life continues around us and people suffering from depression and suicidal thoughts can struggle with this fact. We want to bring up the topic and get people to talk up about their thoughts. We want to create an environment where you don’t feel like the thoughts mean you are an odd one out, we want to make it clear that everyone has the thoughts, and it’s the ability to talk about these things which help us from the thoughts of acting on them. 

[gmonro]

Space Image and Sound. Pitch and other plans

Proposal

Space, Image and Sound.

So far I am still struggling with a solid concept or an exact idea which I would like to follow through with. I have however seen a few things which have interested me very much. Those include the following links.

https://vimeo.com/190293037

The reason I enjoy this is due to the way the sound and the colour seem to be directly based on how they interchange and fade into the next colour/sound. I would be very interested into looking into something similar to this and exploring how I could use those colours with very distinct sounds which could seem to have little to no relation together, to possibly creating some form of soundscape and possibly a photo or picture when it is put together. https://vimeo.com/190645337

I really am really interested in the way this is is shot so that there always seems to be two separate stories going on next to each other, and with the narration over the top which seems to be able to relate to either of the films, I find that very interesting. I wouldn’t think I would like to base my project on this but I would be very interested in using aspects of this in my final product. However I would like to point out that I enjoy the idea of challenging an audience by using objects or sounds in a way they aren’t used for. I would prefer to create something which uses these elements however at the end completely makes the audience feel like challenging what they see and/or hear. Something similar to the wall of speakers and lights that blast you when you walk past them.

As a final thought and something which has interested me over the holidays, I got into a T.V. show which used a very unique way of narrating. It used the narration as part of the story due to the main protagonist being crazy, so you, as the audience are the protagonists imaginary friend. Everything they say to you is being heard by other voices in his head. Link can be found below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytQFYBRIecY

So, with that being my pitch, I have been shown a bunch of different people who have done work similar or just had ideas which I can draw inspiration from. I would say that I am most excited looking into the image and how I could change how that would work together with the sound to create a more distorted overall piece, along with possibly changing what the audience could see based on how they interact with it. So far, I have thought about looking into the lighthouse on the waterfront when I get a chance, as well as looking at the light festival going on in the domain at the moment. So more on those hopefully a bit later. 

So from what Clint has given me so far, I am mostly interested in the “Zen for TV” and maybe putting sound into the video input of a CRT screen. Those both seem like very fun things. The former of the two being seen below (with added interest of magnets). 

I am also quiet interested in what I found while looking for this, which was a musical instrument which had video cameras looking at it and playing the recordings above it. Looking into how I could maybe use this with a mix of an instrument, the “zen for TV” and possibly some form of distorting sound. Might look more into this at some point.

Finally, I find Yasunao Tone’s glitch music extremely fun. Not because I would like to listen to it but because it is so distorting and harsh with no structure at all. I would like to look into this further as well, and investigate how I could use this, maybe with the image seen above, or maybe in another way, to create a distorting but immersive experience for people. I am unsure where this will lead at the moment, but the more I think about it, the more excited I get. So hopefully more updates soon. I leave you with the sweet melodies of Yasunao Tone.

[gmonro]

Deep conversations

So after our first week of uni we had far too many deep conversations about far too many things. Global issues and local solutions, however most of the global issues included depression or suicide and the issues with society. With these sort of things people tend to get anxious and think these sort of conversations are taboo. So we thought that it would be a nice start to start talking about it, these sorts of conversations include the generation that we live in and how we act around each other as well. That is where this video comes in. 

This being a more serious version of a topic that people don’t like talking about. However a more humorous side of this is the way that comedian, Bo Burnham talks about the more serious side of how our generation has grown up. 

These videos are both conversations that people are often worried about talking which is the reason that our group (Louis, Anastasia and Jenny) think that it is a large contributor to the large amount of suicidal thoughts and depression around the people our age, which we would like to expand on and investigate more into. 

And then finally, the last video I leave you with is an incredible video on how someone wishes they could have reacted about their friend who they were too late to help. 

[gmonro]

So this is my final sound piece, made entirely from original sounds made from my prepared instrument, with the help of the “Chime and Bells” from Ableton at the beginning and end. So I am going to start with why I used those. Originally I decided to use them because I thought that they would bring a sense of beat or musical element to it. However after my performance I decided that the chime and bells weren’t as important as I thought they would be and in fact, they limited the sounds I could make. They would make everything have an aspect of music which I was actually trying to avoid to begin with. This is what lead me to only use it as a beginning and end. The reason I used it at all in my final piece was because I liked the erie feeling it gave with the sounds that it did work with. Now since I was using this as a purely improvised piece, I had only a few idea’s about what sounds worked well together, without thinking too much about the musical aspect of it. Throughout the start of the project, I was mostly focused on creating some harsh sounds which were hard to listen to with quite a bit of scratchy and sharp sounds as my starting point. As I got into the middle part of the sound piece, I was trying to transition it between the more sharp sounds into the softer sounds, however I am quite convinced that I wasn’t entirely able to avoid all musical aspects, I am also starting to wonder what actual music is. Clint defined it as organised sound, so in a way of recording the sound and putting it up onto Soundcloud, is it not already musical? So avoiding musical is more the sense of avoiding a beat in general. Anyway, in the final part of the piece, I wanted to use more of the soft sounds, along with doing more sudden and larger changes to the pieces all at once. I enjoyed making the second half of it a little bit more due to the nicer/softer sounds put together along with getting used to the improvised sounds and understanding what sounds worked together quite well while also looking into the sounds which aren’t put together as well. 

So this is what Ableton looked like after recording it. I decided for my final piece, I wouldn’t look at Ableton at all while creating the sound piece so I would not have a reference of what the sounds were as well as no reference to what sounds I was using the most. I decided to do this because I liked the idea of it being the noises I enjoyed along with the sounds I could use in order to create a more creative and experimental piece as opposed to a planned one. I really wanted to use this project as an experimental project, because I had never used prepared instruments before and I had never used Ableton or the MDI keyboard either. So I was starting from scratch on everything, so I just wanted to see what I could create, without setting any set goals of what I wanted to create, I more wanted to learn all of these parts and put them together for a sound piece which wouldn’t be specifically musical, but would still be something which would show everything that I have done so far. I think that if I were to do it again, I would possibly look into more sounds that I could make with more items attached to the prepared instrument along with maybe trying to create something that was more enjoyable to listen to, although I would also like to experiment with something which was really difficult to listen to as well. Since that was really interesting to see the reaction of people.