#audio-vision

[an--enigma]

Michel Chion, AUDIO-VISION Sound On Screen

[creativesoundtechnologies-blog]

Animator responses: Davis Fang

The animator, Davis Fang, responds to a selection of the new soundtracks.

Philip Charley: I adore this interpretation of the animation. With a far darker tone than the original piece, I hear hints of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor which is perfect for Halloween!

https://creativesoundtechnologies.tumblr.com/post/154318487502/new-soundtrack-by-philip-charley-2016-animation

Quianjun Wan: This piece has a beautiful duality to it. Beginning with influences of a modern techno pop, it soon transitions into a soothing piece that would be appropriate for a music-box. The transition from the music of young adulthood to the innocence of the celeste (I think) piece I feel is like a reverse bildungsroman, a look back at one’s coming of age story. Framed by the heartbeats at the beginning and end, it is an interpretation of the piece that represents the stages of one’s life.

https://creativesoundtechnologies.tumblr.com/post/154324209405/new-soundtrack-by-quianjun-wan-2016-animation-by

Laura Bunting: What’s most striking about this piece is how it has managed to create a story out of the seemingly random sequence of imagery. Recounting the birth and first few months of a child’s life, I adore how it breathes new life into the animation. It is beautifully mixed and recorded as well.

https://creativesoundtechnologies.tumblr.com/post/154370760101/new-soundtrack-by-laura-bunting-2016-animation

[soundstudiesresource]

Somewhere, our limbs lost in the distance.

Direction and Animation: Nicolas Ménard (nicolasmenard.com)

Music and Sound Design: Rich Vreeland (disasterpeace.com)

Additional Animation: Anne-Louise Erambert, Louise Druelle, Oliver Hamilton,

James Hatley © Royal College of Art, 2013

(via Somewhere (2013) on Vimeo)

[thoughtsonsound-blog]

Chion: Voice in Cinema and the Muted Character

(Originally written January, 2012)

Chion: Voice in Cinema and the Muted Character

Considering Michel Chion’s penchant for grandeur, most chapters of his book Voice in Cinema, specifically those within the section “Tamiki: Tales of the Voice,” focus on the magnitude of the voice as it pertains to the human plight and how its use in films can usually be retraced to the correlating fears and desires within ourselves. Interestingly enough, however, the author makes one of his most convincing cases when he examines the characters who are unable to speak, which he does in Chapter 7, “The Mute Character’s Final Words.”

Prior to this chapter, Chion had already established the “voice” as something mankind is always striving to control. Specifically referring to the Christian myth, the Word (Voice) of God is the device that sparks the creation of all life. There is no light without an order from the all-powerful voice. Another, equally defining example is the unborn child, who is developing in the mother’s womb. Before the infant can even open its eyes, it is exposed to the sound of the mother’s all-encompassing voice. Again, before light (birth), there is only the voice. Once the child is born, the umbilical cord, previously its main source of communication, is cut, and thus the infant lets out its first scream; its first in a lifetime of attempts, futile as Chion likes to point out, at obtaining some sort of connection with that original, all-powerful voice.

So this is what makes the idea of the “mute” character a fascinating one. Here is a character who seems to lack the drive that is one of the defining characteristics of mankind. It’s no wonder why, as Chion points out, we tend to find this character unsettling and often untrustworthy. One can also make the case that, since the human voice is such a defining characteristic, we have no idea how to perceive this person. And as part of human nature, mystery is often met with fear, and all sorts of questions arise. What does this character know? What has he seen? What has he heard? Because of the character’s silence, we are naturally inclined to think that he has somehow managed to obtain a special nugget of wisdom, which Chion calls “The Great Secret.”

As the author points out, this character is not one specific to film but can also be found in novels and plays. In film, however, there are methods of accentuating the character’s mystery, particularly sonically. For instance, in some films, to quote Chion, “[it is] as if his mutism or muteness extends even to his footsteps and other sounds he makes when he moves.”

Throughout Voice in Cinema, Chion makes reference to the acousmêtre, the off-screen, omnipotent voice, aka “the voice without a body.” In the chapter on the muted character, he tackles the idea of the “body without a voice,” and in doing so, creates interesting parallels between the mute and his prior theories of the acousmêtre. The author describes their relationship as “symmetrical” and as one being the other’s “counterpart.” Both, however, are associated with having complete knowledge, or at least knowledge outside of the average person’s grasp.

Chion wraps up the chapter with a lengthy description of the French film Les Enfants du Paradis, in which the main character, a famous mime named Debureau, is put on trial for murder and is therefore forced to reveal his voice to the world. Not only is this a fairly literal interpretation of the “mute” revealing the “great secret,” but it also displays the character’s fall from grace. As the author states, “It is because he killed a man that Debureau had to expose his voice.” This suggests that, aside from mystery and suspicion, there is also a level of innocence attached to the character who cannot speak, an innocence that Debureau had clearly lost.

Perhaps this leads us toward a more developed idea of the relationship between the acousmêtre and the muted character. It’s hard to think of anything more innocent than the unborn child. This new being, who, like the mute, cannot speak, is comforted by an actual psychical attachment to the acousmêtre via the umbilical cord. Once removed from the womb, the connection is severed, and the newborn frantically resorts to the voice. So, it’s easy to say that there is a deep-seated jealousy instilled in us when we are presented with a muted character, one who has seemingly managed to maintain this connection with what is, for us, the unattainable, all-comforting Voice.

Either way, in simple terms of sound for film, the muted character certainly reinforces the idea that there is just as much power in silence, if not more, than there is in any sound.

[s-v-m]

IMMERSIVE AUDIOVISUAL ENVIRONMENTS - VII

List of five stage performances that happen inside responsive or interactive audiovisual immersive spaces. Check more under Immersive A/V Environments IV and Immersive A/V Environments III.

[pic: HAKANAI, Adrien M, Claire B // BREAKDOWN, R.Carvalho, Y.Quay and S.Shen ABSORPION, M.Schlesinger, H. Delimat // D. Harrer and F. Voggeneder. Details below].

Below four stills from the ending part, where spherical particles on the screen are transformed my magic into physical ping pong balls that drop from the ceiling:

Full performance video here. By Rodrigo Carvalho [Interactive Visuals] // Yago de Quay [Dance, Voice, and Music Composition] Sunny Shen [Dance and Choreography] // Po-Yang Sung [Lighting] // Meg Seidel [Videographer] More info here. ABSORPTION "Correlating Movement, Sound and Light, Delimat/Harrer/Schlesinger/Voggeneder investigate different concepts of Absorption in a stage concept for Ars Electronicas DeepSpace theatre. "

By Magdalena Schlesinger [Dance/Movement] // Hygin Delimat [Dance/Movement] // Dominik Harrer [Composition / Generated Audio] // Florian Voggeneder  [Projection] More info here. APPARITION An interactive dance and media performance that looks for the answers to a four main question: "What choreography emerges when software is your partner? When virtual and actual image space share the same physics? Where everything that moves on the stage is both interactive and independent? And any form, dancing or still, can be transformed into a kinetic projection surface?"

By Klaus Obermaier. More info here. HAKANAI

"Hakanaï is a haiku dance performance taking place in a cube of moving images projected live by a digital performer. In Japanese, this word Hakanaï is the union of two elements, one alluding to man and one alluding to the dream. It is used to define the ephemeral, the fragile, the transitory, the intangible nature of matter. This words together with the tulle covered cube, create the starting point for this piece."

By Adrien M / Claire B. More info and full credits. CÂMARA NEURONAL "Câmara Neuronal is a neuro-audio-visual performance that unfolds itself around the confessions and reminiscences of an alien, performed by Adolfo Luxúria Canibal, with his physical movements and his mental and sensitive activity being captured and translated, in real time, to sound and visual compositions, creating an environment of immersive projection."

By Adolfo Luxúria Canibal [Performance, Poetry] // João Martinho Moura [Digital Art] Miguel Pedro Guimarães [Music]. More info and full credits.

[psm-research]

“…the anchor could have made fifty other ‘redundant’ comments; but their redundancy is illusory, since in each case these statements would have guided and structured our vision so that we would have seen them ‘naturally’ in the image.”

Michel Chion, Audio-Vision. 1994:7

[slwthw]

"We gestate in Sound, and are born into Sight... Cinema gestated in Sight, and was born into Sound...."

Walter Murch in Audio-Vision by Michel Chion.