How can I translate a music album, dealing with a contemporary vision of repetition and rituality, into a virtual reality experience? This is the research question for my Final Major Project.
Main aim and concept for the music album
The main aim for this project is to translate the concept of a music album, as an artistic medium, in a virtual reality experience. On the other hand the concept that I’ve chosen for the music album will be a contemporary interpretation of the prehistoric notions of repetition and rituality. I decided this concept for the music, since I want to go back in time to the origins of humanity and music. I don’t want my exploration to be misunderstood as an archeological approach to prehistoric artifacts, since I want to re-elaborate this audio and visual material with a contemporary attitude towards it. For instance one of my objectives is to use autotune on some of the vocals, and make evident the repetition by digitally looping the audio. In addition to this I want to use some electronic drum machines, to have a powerful drum and bass instrumental which is going to support the ritualistic vocals. This element is going to be examined and explained further in my dissertation, since I believe that ritualism is deeply present in contemporary electronic music. I’m going to study Aldous Huxley’s The Door of Perception for this part of my thesis.
Visuals references and connection to my other projects
For the visuals I want to reference the first artifacts in human history, like the Venus of Berekhat Ram. That is because the representation is fairly abstract and will create a gnoseological confusion in the user. This consequence on the user is what I want to achieve, since it has been my main research for the whole duration of this master (e.g. Osmosis, Limbo, Andante, Synesthesia). The shape is only suggested, and it’s fairly difficult to consider this artifact figurative. “The grooves accentuate the natural shape to suggest a human form which has been drawn as female” (Foundation, 2019). Some researchers even concluded “that it is problematic to identify a human body, as the cognitive and cultural context is so alien, saying that probably there will never be any agreement about what was intended by the marks” (Errico 2000). This allows me to link to this project also the topic of ‘unconscious/ abstract actions’, that has been one other subjects of my research during this MA (e.g. Osmosis, Andante). I want also to pursue my research on ritualism that I started with my MA project glortha.
The project is going to be developed for Virtual Reality, because I want the user to be fully immersed in the digital soundscape and completely surrounded by voices, music and drums. I’m going to use the software Fmod to create the complex interactive soundscape featured in this experience. My goal is to emphasize the immersion in the music piece with the spatialization of sound. That is why my main focus will be in the music, not in the visuals, which they will be supporting the songs in the experience. This has never been done before. By now there aren’t any interactive VR music album publicly available. The only VR music album I’m aware of is Björk’s Vulnicura VR album, which is going to be released soon. On the other hand she’s creating VR music videos for each track of the album. In my opinion this case study, which I’m going to further analyze in my dissertation, can’t be considered a pure VR music album, since the visual aspects in the experience are more important than the music itself.
In order to develop the concept of my project, I am reading at the moment the following books, which are going to be the core literature for my dissertation:
Gilles Deleuze - Difference and Repetition
Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
François J. Bonnet - The Infra-World
Aldous Huxley - The Door of Perception
Sabina Meyer - Dare Voce all’ Invisibile
Some case studies that I will undertake in my thesis are:
Björk - Vulnicura VR album
Hamish Fulton - The Repetitive Walk
Dead Can Dance - The Serpent’s Egg, Dyonisus
William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops
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