Sound Workshop- Working with Protools

In this second session of my sound design workshops, we started looking at protools and tried to grasp the basics of it, as this is the software we were using for our projects. Having previously used Adobe Audition, I was sure I could pick up this software fairly easily, as I figured that the tools would be the same in many ways, but the layouts and placements of these would be different.

We firstly looked at very basic settings, like how to set up your project, what the layout of the program was like and how to add new tracks and import files. All of this was fairly similar to audition and it was easy to see how you could build up from a blank canvas to a complex project quite easily.

We then looked at some basic tools like cutting and extracting bits of audio, We did some recordings of our own, and then looked at organising the tracks and creating buses.

Having gone through the basics, we started looking at some of the effects we would be using for our projects. I have to say that this was a major difference for me from Audition as the interface of Protools is a lot more user friendly, which was not a bad thing, but not having everything simply listed and more as you would see it on a physical desk was a change.

One of the cooler things about Protools I found was this selector that allowed you to select multiple tools at once, and changed depending on where you hovered your mouse over the audio. I liked this as it eliminated some of the use for shortcuts, and could make your work slightly more efficient as it saves you from changing between tools all the time.

After this session I decided I wanted to aim for using Lynda.com to complete the essential training for Protools so I could have a more complete understanding of the program, which would ultimately make it easier when it comes to creating my project.

Psycho Geography

In our first session with Leah Gordon, and the day after our first briefing on the maps and journeys project, we were asked to read an article written by Leah on a psycho geographical journey she took while in Stockholm. In it, she wrote in detail about writing the name 'Bill' on a street map and walk it, taking pictures as she went. The name 'Bill' was chosen as it was the inspiration of the psycho geographical artist Bill Drummond. In his work, and many other works of psycho geographers, there is an element of chance to the work as you are not setting out to take a particular photograph or see a particular thing. I can see the links this has with our brief, the artists here are taking a literal journey to a place or a group of places, and involve physical mapping. This is one way of exploring the brief literally to produce a creative outcome. Leah had us research some of the artists she had shown us in the morning a bit further to see what we could discover about their work that had psycho geographical elements; I was given Thai artist Rirkrit Tirivanija.

As I found out, Tirivanija mainly produces works which involve audience participation, however he has produced a few psycho geographical works as well. You can see the presentation I made on his work here.

As we all presented our findings, I was particularly interested in the work of 'Janet Cardiff'. Her psycho geography walks either included photographs, or video, and then a separate audio to listen to. They were intended to accompany you as you walk around a specific place, and it reminded me of audio tours you can rent in museums to give you more insight into the things you are viewing. This, I feel, gives you a unique insight into the experience someone else had when they visited this place, and is something which we can't otherwise experience fully. You can view some of her works here.

At the end of the session, we were given the task of doing our own psycho geography exercise by writing our own names, creating a shape etc. into a map of the surrounding area and producing a creative outcome from this. I want to try and experiment with the idea of chance that is involved in a lot of psycho geography, and also try to produce something similar to the works of Janet Cardiff since I was so intrigued by the experience she could give to an audience through her work.

Professional Toolkit- Sound Brief

In this unit, I have been given the option of choosing three, four day workshops to attend, and for each I will have to come out with an end result. This first one, sound, will be introducing me to Protools as a program, and increasing my skills further in sound design.

The brief I have been given is to create a 30 second-1 minute soundscape using a handful of recorded sounds, based on a piece of text that we may choose ourselves. The aim is to hand in two versions of this, one with the piece of text spoken over the top, and one without it. We are to convey as much detail and emotion about the text as possible.

In this first workshop, we were shown a few aural illusions, and interesting pieces of sound design, such as the Orson Welles radioplay of 'War of the Worlds' and the more recent 'Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy' to give us an idea of the potential results we have when we create a piece of sound design. We also were inducted in the Marantz recorders, which have mono microphones that we shall be using for this project.

As soon as the brief was given, I knew what piece of text I wanted to use:

Was I there?Or is that troubled surface something elseshadowy under the dipped fingers of willowswhere satiny mud blooms in cloudinessafter the treading, heavy webs of swansas their wings beat and whistle on the air?
It is an extract of a poem called Cold Knap Lake by Gillian Clarke, and is one of my favourite poems. I thought it was suitable as I can imagine it to be very interesting and challenging to recreate as a soundscape.

I went ahead annotating the piece to try and get my thoughts and feelings about the piece down on paper, and then made a list of sounds I thought I should record to be able to create my soundscape. My next step will have to be to book out the equipment I need and get to recording my sounds because of the quick turnaround of this project.

Initial Briefing and Presentation

For this brief we were given the task of coming up with a response to the metaphor of 'Journey'. This could be a photograph, installation, film, sound piece etc. However it was made clear that it has to be inventive and expand my potential.

Rosie showed us some films first of all to get us thinking about the project, some which were installations and represented certain themes.

London Orbital (2002) by Iain Sinclair. This film was an exploration of the M25 in many mediums. The artist here filmed many parts of the M25 and collaborated with other artists to produce photographs, drawings, and paintings of parts of the M25. It is essentially a piece of psycho-geography work which explores not only the geographical elements of the M25 and the surrounding areas of it, but also the controversy under which it was built using radio excerpts and news clips.

In my opinion the film was very long, and very boring. I admire the dedication of the artist in creating this piece, and the more that I think of it, the more I consider the idea that the artist wanted this film to be very slow paced and very long a likely one. Throughout the film, he consistently uses poetic language in voice over and supporting imagery to reinforce the idea that the London Orbital is a very long and boring road to drive on.

Measures of Distance (1988) by Mona Hatoum. This was, interestingly, made to be in a gallery space and uses voice-over, photography, and overlays to tell its story. It is simply a woman writing to another woman to talk about her life with her husband. The conversations mostly concern sex and moments of an intimate nature between her and her husband.

For me, the idea that this work so openly talking about sex in the way two women would talk to each other privately is a bold move from the artist, and conveys its message in a very effective way. The stills of the artist naked are illustrative of the relationship her and her husband share, and the arabic script overlay could be an indication of the heritage of the artist.

We also looked at the work of the artist Chris Welsby, who appears to work a lot with nature and film. In a documentary we watched which exhibited some of these works, such as the one below:

In this piece, and many other pieces, the artist takes a lot of time to record in different ways, many natural processes that we could otherwise not see happening around us all the time. The piece above records a shadow as it moves with the sun and the clouds, and it appears as if the artists moved the camera to follow the sun and keep the shadow looking the same across the whole piece. This type of dedication to his work, and the creative way in which he decided to present it interests me, and opens my eyes to new ways of filmmaking. 

We also watched other installation pieces by artists such as Pipilotti Rist.