Bubbles

My 300 word description is on a separate blog...

Audio Project

I was unable to upload the video onto the blog (it was taking too long). So I uploaded it into youtube and will post the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm3g7IRf9Po

This is just a very basic project. I chose to work with my buddy Henry on this. Instead of Audacity, he has Sonar and it was the obvious choice. We just went head on for this project. We made a very basic techno beat that we thought was decently catchy. I chose the word blasphemy because it has played a huge part in my life, sadly. I deal with blasphemy everyday of my life, along with 95% of the world. I always thought it was a fun word to say because it makes someone sound a bit more intelligent haha. As for the photo I put in with it, I just chose one off of google that came up after I typed in "Techno." We modified my voice using a lot of different voice modifiers that Sonar had to offer. Reversing it and changing my pitch, cutting it up and so on and so forth. Enjoy!

Happy Halloween

I chose the word Halloween since it coming up in a week because it a fun way to make this project entertaining.When i think of Halloween the first thing that come to mind is scary sounds like a villain laughing at a low bass tone. So i gather all my sound with a zoom microphone it able to pick up any sound soft or loud. I got my earthquake sound from a free sound site. The wind, earthquake, and thunder are in the back ground so the don't over power the voice. I can the pitch on my voice and can the tempo of one copy so i can get a demonic sound out of it. After that i change the balance of the two separate voice to get one going in the right speaker and one in the left. The overall concept for the audio is have a fun Halloween is a time to throw eggs  shoot paint balls and get free candy so celebrate.

Bubbles

For my sound assignment, I decided to choose the word bubbles. Everything on the recording is purely my voice with some changes to pitches and things like that. I was really trying to experiment with the audacity program, but I found it kind of difficult and frustrating whenever it would freeze. So basically the video consists of me saying “bubble, bubbles” repeatedly in a bit of a beat. Sometimes it stays the same and some the pitch of my voice changes at some points. Then I made two more sounds that were associated with the word bubble. First I recorded myself doing popping noises using my lips. I made that go on repeatedly along with me saying bubbles and at one point you just hear the popping noises. Just like how the sound of my voice changed when I said bubbles, the pitch of the popping noise did as well. After that, I made snapping noises using my fingers. I used the snapping noises because I thought it sounded similar to bubbles actually popping. Plus, I really couldn’t think of any other sounds to go with the word bubble. I wish had more skill in using the audacity program because I feel like my work would have come out a lot better than the final resolution. If I had more experience and more time to do this assignment, I would still choose the same word but do some more things with it. For example, I would add a little soundtrack to go along with it in the background. I would change up the way I said bubbles a lot more. And I would also have the bubble sounds go along in some type of beat to make it a lot cooler. But since it was my first time doing this, I think I did a pretty decent job.

A Meditation on Potato Salad

This project was a bit difficult for me. I'm not an audio person and I never have been. So I decided to just try and have as much fun with it as possible and hope that it didn't end up sounding like crap. I decided to use a phrase that would be random and at least somewhat funny. I had no idea what to use at first. Then I happened to see some potato salad and decided that the phrase “potato salad” was suitably random, so I went with that. I recorded the phrase with my computer's mic and then went from there.
Since Audacity is a free program, I downloaded it and installed it and used that to make my project. I tried to make it rhythmic and a bit minimalistic. A lot of the experimental music pieces from the UbWeb response were had these characteristics, so I tried to emulate them. I also think that a minimalistic sound goes well with the idea of a meditation. Most of the sounds in my track are the recording of my voice edited. The rhythm part is the recording followed by two drum beats that were generated with one of Audacity's presets. There are also two other tracks that use the recording. One is the track slowed down to 50% and repeated numerous times. The other one is the phrase slowed down until it goes the entire length of the track. There is also a track with plucked strings, also generated with Audacity.
The track didn't come out sounding quite as musical or harmonious as I would've like. In fact, it's almost discordant. But, that's what a lot of experimental music is. While it's nowhere near what most people would consider good music, I like to think of it as exploring the boundaries of what can be considered music rather than a failed experiment.

Shenanigans

Shenanigans by ktharsis

For the audio assignment I chose the word "shenanigans." Why: For reasons I'm not even sure of. Most of the process for creating this bit of audio was unpremeditated, including the title. The only thing I knew before messing with audacity—before ever actually opening audacity—was that I wanted to create something creepy sounding. I notice I have some kind of infatuation with creepy, eerie themes. I'm not sure why, but it just makes the whole creating process a bit more interesting and entertaining for me.

Since I wanted to make it creepy I searched for some sort of "Roaring 20's" type music to play throughout my clip. I always felt this type of record playing/old time radio music sounded extensively unpleasant when played with a lower tempo/pitch or just played backwards. I found a couple royalty free songs and messed with their tempos, pitches, and added a couple effects to them to make them sound the way they do in my clip. I also applied a low pitched chirp that plays through most of the entire track, giving the audio a low hum, imitating some sort of amp feedback coming from the back.

I added a few cuts of noise to add to the feedback imitation and to give it a distressing sort of feel to it. I added in a conversation I had with my friend and changed the pitch and added a few affects so that all you can hear is a low grumble of sounds throughout most of the clip, and towards the end you finally hear my word. You'll hear my friend saying "shenanigans!" but I altered the audio so much that it's hard to discern what he's saying at all. Then some white noise will come in low and gradually gain in volume until you hear him once again, loud and clear, yell "SHENANIGANS!" My clip ends with the same friend laughing. I thought he had a pretty creepy laugh so I wanted to put that in the end. And I finish it off with a couple noise breaks.

Robot

Concerts of Everyday Living Response

I thought the overwhelming theme of the Concerts of Everyday Living article was the relationship between music and the composition and performance of it, to what we see and perceive. This concept is examined in relation to Fluxus artists and many examples are given in terms of how these artists tried to examine that relationship (between sight and sound), in their work.

For example, the article describes Cage's four and a half minute silent "performance," in which the performance demands that the audience takes on an active role by listening and looking. Also the article refers to George Brecht's Incidental Music in which objects such as beans are repeatedly dropped onto the keys of a piano.

I tend to think of Fluxus as more of an interactive performance art than a musical piece or concert, i thought the article really was trying to examine the relationship between the audience's perception and expectations during a performance, which is what Fluxus does. The Fluxus performer or artist's role is to create and maintain an environment where the audience experience constitutes having the tables flipped so to speak, and they become part of the performance.

One part of this essay that i thought was particularly interesting and really ties into the idea of the environment, audience and material performed all coming together to form the dynamic of a performance, was the section where the composer Wagner's role in modern theatrical performances is highlighted. Wagner was the first person to request that the auditorium be darkened before and during a performance. When this is done, it ensures that we begin to listen carefully. Since, as audience members, our visual capacity is obviously reduced when it is dark, we are forced to rely keenly on our other senses like sight and ability to listen. To me, this simple idea almost forces an audience to focus before and during a performance. Pure genius!

"Refreshing" word audio - assignment two

For my audio assignment two, I chose to pick the word "Refreshing." I chose this word because I  thought it seemed inspiring at the time (especially from the sound samples from the previous response assignment – History of Electronic / Electroacoustic Music) and that I may find multiple sound resources for this word and have some fun with it. While listening, you will notice I tried to insert a variety of different sounds such as: the word "refreshing," the process of getting ice from the freezer, closing the door to the freezer, putting ice cubes in a glass, sprays from a water bottle, a shower running, a moving fan, a rainstorm, a soda can opening, and a brief tone for an added piece.

What I learned while doing this assignment is that once I made a noise, for instance, to jumble around the ice cubes in the freezer... the sound within Audacity really seemed more complete if I added the action of having those ice cubes do something that is more of a true action as putting ice cubes in a glass. Otherwise, just hearing ice cubes in a freezer by itself sounded weird, because no one would really go into a freezer, move around the ice cubes and then close the door, for instance. Then I also noticed when I first recorded the fan noise, I was initially too close to the sound that I actually wanted to hear. So, a lot of my time working with the sound became times to learn how to help work with the sound to try to make it more real and true to the the source of the sound I wanted to hear.

To assemble this assignment, I used Audacity software, my laptop and my Mac earphones to collect the sound and finally Adobe Premiere to merge the audio with some generic video (copyright free) together and then uploaded this assignment.

Brad Parkkonen's Kickin' Adventure!

I know nothing about editing audio, so going into this assignment, I was pretty terrified. I looked through all the menus, all the tools and all the effects but I was still lost. I had no idea where to start. I recognized a few tools, but only because I’ve seen them used before. I didn’t know what word I was going to center my audio around nor did I know what my audio was even going to be.

I decided I would mess around with a song just to get a feel for it and picked one of my favorites. I can still remember the first time I heard the opening riff of the song The Adventure by Angels and Airwaves (the main audio track used in my audio project). The riff is a swinging, fast upbeat sound that kind of inspires hope, and I’ve had it stuck in my head all do so I decided “why not?”

When I imported the song I quickly cut out everything that wasn’t the main guitar riff and started editing that. I put on a bunch of random effects just to see what they did and it ended up sounding kind of cool. But I still needed a word. The search didn’t last long as I was scrolling through my music library and found Beastie Boys’ (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right. I uploaded that and the intro chord and words “Kick It” came to life. I used the chord throughout the audio, underneath The Adventure’s riff and in between it, putting on some cool distorted effects.

Working with the words was kind of tough. I didn’t really know how to edit them to the exact way I wanted, but I feel as though the repetition in beat with the tempo of The Adventure worked nicely and the few effects I got on them sounded alright. Overall I like the audio sample I made and I enjoy it, hopefully other people will too.

Kickin' Adventure by Brad! :D by ktharsis

MONKEY AUDIO!!

I chose the word monkey for my audio project because I really wanted a random word that nobody will pick and it sounds funny if you say it in a different voice. I chose the program garageband on my Mac to do my audio project and because it’s the only audio editing software I have. I was still new to this editing software the recording was easy the rest was hard. It was a very difficult time doing this project since I nearly spent 3 hours on a project that looks that would take 30 minutes. Plus choosing what instruments will fit with this word, but then I think of monkeys are random poop throwing natures jokers creatures so I just put random instruments and hopefully. I couldn’t made make it the word backwards because I was still new to garageband so I was only able just edited my voice to different pitches. Though throughout the whole entire process it was a long and hard duplicating voices, changing voice pitch, picking background instruments to go with the word and I somehow finished the assignment and it was fun experimenting with my editing software, but I doubt I’ll be using it for sometime now.

Electronic Music Resources Response

Regarding the music resource articles, I chose "Notes on Place and Moment" and the article on "Josephine Bosma."

I thought the "Notes on Place and Moment" article helped to understand the experience, process, and some of the excitement behind creating sound projects. Max Neuhaus, from this article, mentions that he is interested in sound to be the foundation to bring his sound piece "come to life." He says he wants to impose his creativity and understand what others hear within it, but not what they are experiencing. I am only assuming this statement is because he is more concerned perhaps that his "message" is understood, but whatever the audience gets as a result may be fine with him. So, the article goes on talking about how a sound piece is built by taking each development step by step, yet keeping a solid perspective. In sound, it is apparently better in Neuhaus's perspective to take some time away from creating a sound piece in order to differ what parts are best to refine. He wants the audience involved to explore than to initially recognize what his pieces may be about. Neuhaus also liked the idea of finding what happened when sounds were taken away. Overall, I thought it was interesting to learn more about another person's process.

Within the article "Josephine Bosma" it was interesting to have this article setup as an interview to learn more about this cross media artist. She has been working with sound as a medium for about ten years. I learned that she enjoys collecting information via antenna to learn more about the relationships of how vibrating objects activate another objects. And then she explains how sound is a type of movement, since changes in air pressure actually creates physical effects on all objects, including people. Regarding this article, she used antennas to collect sounds and based her works on experimentation. Some of her works include "Aeriology" where she considers an antenna as an alternative power source and "Electrical storms" where it is more about gathering information about energy and analyzing that information. And she was also working on a project where she collaborated with her partner David Haines to utilize transmissions from the polar earth weather satellites to work on an unique 3D video/animation installation. The article mentioned they will collect and process information in different types of transmission environments.

It was really fascinating to learn what these media artists accomplish. I think in the "Josephine Bosma" article I learned more specifics about her different sound projects, while the "Notes on Place and Moment" was focused on the general process of sound. Both articles were great to learn more about the unique possibilities regarding sound as a medium.

Assignment 2 - due October 26

History of Electronic Music Collection Response

For this assignment, I chose to do a comparison of two pieces of music from the History of Electronic Music collection on UbWeb. There were a lot of songs to choose from, so I decided on listening to the first song and then a random song from further down the list. The songs were For Ondes Martenot by Messiaen and 2 Pianos and Ring Modulation 4 by Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The first piece, For Ondes Martenot, was a fairly simple track. There was not a whole lot of different sounds. It sounded a lot like some sort of ambiance track that you would hear in a video game or a movie. It was slow and very smooth. There was very little in the way of percussion or other sharp, staccato sounds. The sounds that were there were all played in sort of a drone. It had a very ethereal sound. There was a couple sounds that sounded like strings, but it mostly reminded me of someone playing a glass harmonica. I was impressed by the fact that the artist managed to create electronic sounds that imitated instruments fairly closely back in 1937.
The second piece, 2 Pianos and Ring Modulation, was a bit more complex than the first track. While it also only had two or three different sounds, there is a lot more going on in terms of notes and chords. This piece was also much more chaotic, almost as if it was performed by someone randomly slamming their hands down on a keyboard (which, given the movement we've been covering lately, would not surprise me). The thing that was interesting about this piece was that even though it was very random and discordant, I could still pick out bits and pieces of an actual melody. These snippets of what sounds like an actual song inside this chaos makes me think that maybe, just maybe, some people who make “noise music” may actually know what they are doing.

Electronic Resources Response

The first sound I heard was Etudes de Bruits. It sounded something that would come from a horror movie. It was like a music that would be a in a movie and you just knew that the suspense was about to build up. It sounded like it had the sound of a piano along with some knocking sounds along with other noises in the background. I could also hear what sounded like a bell also. The next sound I heard was Fantasy in Space. I feel like the sound went really well with its name. The song did make me think of space and I actually thought I was there searching for the unknown. The song took me on a journey and I started using my imagination. It was really cool to listen to. As to what I think which sound sounded better I would definitely have to say that Fantasy in Space was better. Etudes de Bruits was interesting but it just sounded like there were sounds being clashed together randomly and there was no creativity whatsoever. Anyone could do what they did. But with Fantasy in Space, it sounded like the artist actually put some time and thought into the work and it came out pretty well. I basically judged both of these sounds on how easily it would be for someone to duplicate them. Both of them can be duplicated but the Etudes de Bruits would be a lot easier. That’s why I think Fantasy in Space was so much better for me. Plus, I actually enjoyed listening to it all the way through as opposed to Etudes de Bruits. I cut that one off halfway because after a while it got kind of annoying to listen to. So Fantasy in Space gets my vote in being the better sound.

Response to Electronic / Electroacoustic music

As I sat down after watching a mass spree of The Walking Dead on Sunday. I was having a hard time remembering what it was we needed to do for the homework. Then I remembered that we took a look at Kraftwerk and will continue this today.

Once I remembered, instead of reading I chose to listen to some of the Electro music that was posted on Ubuweb; this is also because I love music more than anything.

Right before class last week, I talked to Mr. Oleksiuk about Kraftwerk and how me and my cousin would occasionally make fun of them for their live performance of "Pocket Calculator." I did not appreciate their music for what it is, and after watching half the video last week I had no idea what their part was in anything. Regardless, I took a listen to some of the songs.

I would have to say that Messiaen - Oraison might be my favorite. Anything that has to do with orchestraic instruments I fall in love with. I listen to a lot of Beethoven and Mozart. I do enjoy some Techno, but my main Music passion is metal obviously; which probably plays a part in why I do not appreciate majority of electronic music.

Response to Electronic Music Resources (Ubuweb)

When I listened to the Electronic Music Resources my ears started to hurt form all the sounds. On two of the tracks it sounded like static and someone scratching on a board it made my skin crawl. As I forced myself to listen to the techno the most annoying sound of scratching of eraser pop up it was unbearable I took the head phone of and stop the music. I honestly cannot understand why anyone will torture their self with this Gere of music. I do not consider this music because it has nothing in common with other music. I understand that the point but why not something with rhythm and vocal behind it. Luc Ferrari had some abstract pieces of audio that I could not interpret.

Music in the Cartoon and Experimental Animated Film Response

For this assignment I chose the article “Music in the Cartoon and Experimental Animated Film” in the electronic music resources link.

The reason this article peak my interest It talks about how music was created and being used in animation films. George Antheil was the one who wrote for Hollywood films, and led a group of musicians in Paris in the 20s in an avant-grade musical movement, which their musical creation was called “musique concrete”. Soon then it manifested to what we called now “animated sound”. Using of this type of technique dates back in 1922 by a Canadian Filmmaker named Norman Mclaren. Then Russia took a crack in it making something new by using the frame-by-frame shooting continuously moving pattern by using cog patterns. The article was a little interesting showing how the background music or should I say, “music in the cartoon for cartoon shows began. Without Antheil leading a group of musicians there wouldn’t be background music for the animated film and with that kids wouldn’t get into it without the catchy songs during the animated film. I just to say thank god for George Antheil for leading that band of musicians for making their musical creation.

Response: Electronic Music Resources

For my articles, I chose "Notes on Place and Moment" and "Making Analogs with a Magnet." I wasn't sure how many we were supposed to read. If you had explained it in class then I must have not heard.

Firstly, let me just say that I attempted to listen to some of the sounds provided by the History of Electronic/Electroacoustic music on Ubuweb before actually reading the articles. Keep in mind that I still had the bitter taste of last weeks assignment still lingering on my tongue. No toothpaste can clean that awful tinge that it left. So you could understand that I already didn't want to listen to any of these. I merely listened to them assuming that it was also part of our assignment. So I listened to around 3 songs, approximately 30-60 seconds of each, until I found myself falling asleep, leaving me to conclude that this is not my kind of music.

I was about ready to quit my broadening of my horizons in the oddity of music until I listened to a couple pieces from Henry & Schaeffer's Symphonie pour un homme seul. Note, I don't find myself putting these pieces on shuffle throughout my playlists, but I do think they'd work great in some horror scenes as ominous/ambient audio.

After listening to the audio bits, I started on the articles. Let me start by saying I actually enjoyed both of these articles, to my surprise. They were definitely up a few pegs on the ladder than last week's reading. I read Notes on Place and Moment, by Max Neuhaus, first. It's kind of funny to me when Neuhaus began speaking of how he wasn't concerned about an individual's frame of mind with the works he creates. The reason being is because when I was listening to some of the music samples, I was thinking to myself that most of this (the music) is garbage; that I didn't find any of it interesting. But I did think that it would be very interesting to attempt to make this sort of music myself. Similar to how I absolutely DESPISE watching baseball, but wouldn't mind if some of my friends wanted to go out and play baseball at a nearby field. I found his observation on how people react to walking into a created place or moment very intriguing. The way he explained it, I could almost get that sense of another door opening once you've already walked into the room.

The other article, Making Analogs with a Magenet by Jacob Meyerwitz, was pretty interesting to me, and I'd much like to conduct this project myself after reading it. The article starts with Meyerwitz coming to the understanding that tape recordings are merely a strand of tape with a magnetic band permanently inscribed on it. So he later goes into an explanation on how to make your own noise with a roll of recording tape and a magnet, preferably in the shape of a prism. Sliding the magnet across the tape in certain style and patterns, you'll be able to make your own music without the use of oscillators and the whole recording process. I plan to try and attempt this sort of sound making sometime in the near future during my down time. It should prove to be entertaining.

Video Montage: Blue

For this assignment i wanted to work with the theme of the color blue and different types of motion. Using a high definition 'flip' camera i captured footage of cars zooming by on lake shore drive, people riding bikes on the lakefront path and various shots of the lake and lincoln park.

I had fun using the camera and seeing how it works as i've never used the flip before. I found it to be easy to use, while the picture is so crisp its almost better than real life. The only problem i had was making sure the shots weren't shaky from not holding the camera still. I did my best, but these little flips are touchy! Also uploading the video after editing in Adobe Premiere was a little bit like solving a puzzle but i was able to get it to work after a while. What finally made it work was exporting as an MP4 of course, but in the process of exporting i had all the different parts on the timeline selected when it finally worked. Before i did that, i could not get it to export properly. Not sure if this was just a quirk with how it displays in blogger or if in fact all of the parts had to be selected, but that's how it worked out.

Overall though, I enjoyed working with video and I am definitely inspired to get a flip and perhaps delve into the world of film and video.

Concerts of Everyday Living Response

Within this article, I learned that to be interdisciplinary/inter-media is more virtual where art finds new ways to develop new object and language experiences.

The article therefore discusses Flux, which is understood as a noun, a verb, an adjective, and even as a dictionary definition as part of a process for change. This type of inter-media art seems to challenge the meaning of the traditional art object and reasoning to extend to instead an "occasion for experience." I learned Flux deals more greatly with a type of performance art. This type of performance art is composed of visual, textual, and sound qualities. And in Flux, sound becomes more like a conversation, rather than a "feeling like an actor" to complete a piece of artwork that is within a specific definition and finds beauty in what is a new perspective. It was interesting in the article comparing the story mentioned about "The Sound of Silence: 4'33" where an empty canvas is no more silent than having an interdisciplinary piece be silent. A blank canvas seems to actually offer the permission to compose silence within a Flux piece and it becomes actually part of the piece.

And in the "Cage: from tone to noise", it expanded more on the awareness of what it means to be interdisciplinary regarding sound and building ones experience to hear what may be suitable for art and considering the context of perspective. The article questioned the resources of music or what could be music. John Cage, a regarded avant-garde composer, was mentioned that there is more joy, in his opinion, to combine various everyday noises than it is to rehearse a specific music composition. It is interesting to consider that to collect sound as noise, which may be considered meaningless, becomes a focus of this art and it emphasizes that natural beauty as a part of culture.

The article also describes a series of actions, but not sound and music in a usual way. When George Brecht, a prime mover in Flux, mentioned the concept of incidental music it was mentioned that the boundaries to cross includes the nature of sound in music, with sight and sound being between culture and nature. This article here draws attention to the ways in which culture interacts with nature. The aspiration of Flux art is to identify it then with everyday life. The artist becomes more the listener to share what they have learned. What is discovered is that in the unexpected nuances of life there is actually variety. The audience begins to see something other than what they thought was there and the performance becomes a newly created experience to explore. This article then discusses an open perspective that one should not have any expectations of what may be performed, but to look forward to the unexpected experience. Overall, I think this is an interesting article and the Flux movement seemed to help build audience awareness that they should be willing to move past assumed boundaries and enjoy the "music" of new types of experiences.

Concerts of Every Day Living

While I was reading the passage I was hysterical when I read that John Cage had a performance that was quite for four minutes and thirty three second what made it worst the audience was clapping afterwards. This performance reminds me of the Pootie Tang movie when chris rock was on the radio promoting his new single "       ".  Fluxis is a wide range of artist media meaning it cant be put in only one categories.  This 4'33 is amazing because he being paid for nothing. He even have a 4'33 single in the itunes account who will ever actually listen to noting. This passage is hilarious it shows how Fluxis is widely diverse.

Concerts of Everyday Living response

I am not posting this as a response to Brad's post, but to respond to the same thing.

In Concerts of Everyday Living, it states that musicians do not play as if they are someone else like an actor, but play as themselves.

This statement is pretty straight forward. And I agree. When I go on stage to play a show, I do not try to act like Vinnie Paul or Lars Ulrich, I do not want to act like them. I play myself, I express myself through my music and the motions I put into playing my music is a way I express my emotions towards the song. I'm not disagreeing with you Brad but I would like to know how that sentence irritated you so much. I will agree though, I do not understand how silence is a song at all. I am not artsy either and do not have the mind or thinking process to be artsy.

They do state later on that Cage's piece dnies the raison d'etre of music itself though. Sound. This article then goes on to give reasoning towards this. "On one level, as is relatively known, there is no absolute silence. Even in an anechoic chamber, pitched impulses of the nerve system and the low pitched drone of the circulation of the blood." Tudor raising and lowering his keyboard was his demonstration of constant sound. Raising and lowering his keyboard was making noise, the audience breathing was making noise. There never is any silence. But I still do not agree that this is considered a song of some sort.

By: Lucas Tracy

Response to 'Concerts of Everyday Living'

The author's explanation of the difference between playing music and performing on a stage - in the sense of a play - is quite ignorant. The author explained that when one acts, they play another person, but when one plays music, they remain themselves. This was the only thins the author hinted at as his/the historians' evidence for the difference. This irritates me.

Later on, Tudor was playing a piano on stage. At the beginning of each movement, he raised and lowered his keyboard. He didn't play. What beautiful music. Now, I've never been the most "artsy" person and I've never claimed to understand art, but how can this... silence be considered music, much less art? I don't understand how silence is a song. I guess that one using this silence as a form of expression could be considered a form of art because art is just a creative expression of emotions, but really, it is something that doesn't take much talent, something that shouldn't be praised.

Well, that is all I could gather from the reading - frustration.

By: Brad Parkkonen

Concerts of Everyday Living Response

In this article it first talked about a movement that is known as ‘Fluxus.’ The author defined fluxus as a “defying group of artists” that were basically neglected by art historians. They didn’t do normal pieces of art though. He goes on to say how what they did was very unique or different from other artists. I didn’t get to read some parts of this article because some of the pages weren’t coming up as many times as I refreshed the screen. So I can only talk about what I was able to see. To be honest, none of what these artists did seemed very interesting to me. I couldn’t believe that people would actually waste their time conducting these works of ‘art’ and actually watch it. It just seems like anyone could do what they did. What I was trying to figure out was what made them so special if any regular human being could do what they did. There was one thing that I found interesting in this article. In the beginning it talks about an artist that is seemingly about to play the piano and come up with this new sound. But instead he did absolutely nothing. There was nothing but silence. I found this kind of different only because it probably surprised his audience. They came in there not expecting for that to happen. They were listening to the ‘sounds’ all around them whether that be silence itself or nature going on outside. This was interesting to read, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of those people in the audience. I just think it would be a waste of time to just sit there and listening to nothing. Yes, that was pretty much the point (with an even deeper meaning), but why go there and do that when you could easily do that from the comfort of your home?

Concerts of everyday living Response

This week reading “Concerts of everyday living': Cage, Fluxusand Barthes, interdisciplinary and inter-media events” talks mostly what we watched last week in class. The author goes into telling the reader about Fluxus movements that is different forms of media. Then he goes on talking about how other artist that uses Fluxus movements in their musical performance. One the first performances were the 4’33”. It involve just sitting down and open and closing the piano, which makes the audiences listen to the things what they normally ignore, but if I was in the audiences I’ll be very ticked off because I came here to listen this piece and all get is a guy sitting down on the piano and open and closing the piano. I would’ve just got up and left the concert and ask for my money back. Then reading the rest of the article and really wouldn’t call this art I call this torture. It’s a place where you want to take your girlfriend and make her suffer in order to break up with you. I just find this kind of art really idiotic really who wants to sit or stand there for 2 or 3 hours hearing people screaming that sounds they’re giving birth, smashing things making your ears bleed, and just seeing them do nothing, which really ticks me off. All that this article talks about is really not art to me just people doing things that a 5 year old would do and if it was really art then my nephew’s and niece’s are freaking geniuses.

Concerts of Everyday Living Respons

In this article, the author at first talks about how the Fluxus movement is all about the connections between different forms of media. He then goes on to illustrate these connections in the context of musical performances by various Fluxus artists. The first of these performances was 4' 33''. This piece involved the performer sitting at a piano and doing nothing but opening and closing the piano at certain intervals for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The audience is supposed to notice the noises that they normally ignore, like the sounds of their pulse and the murmurs of the other audience members. The article states that it is a kind of social music. To be honest, I find the idea of this performance astonishingly stupid. I suppose I might be thinking about it too literally, but if I go to a “musical” performance, I want to hear some music, not sit there and watch someone do nothing.

Other things discussed in the article seemed a bit more interesting and relevant to the topic of intermedia art. One of the things that I found really interesting was the idea of the visual aspect of music. The part that made me think more about it was about a piece that, similar to the previous one, was about simply trying to close the piano lid in a such a way that it is inaudible to the performer doing this action. The article talked about the visual aspect of this performance, though the performance is written as a piece of music. While, again, I found the idea of the performance boring, the idea of visual aspects of music was interesting. Another interesting piece was the one where La Monte Young used the visual elements of fire and water to create music.

While a few were interesting, most of the performances in this article did not sound interesting at all. Some were downright stupid, and one in particular managed to be stupid and disgusting at the same time.

Concerts of Every Day Living Response

The truth is, I greatly disliked this reading, along with this section in general. Which, I think is fine. Some people are into this sort of art or non-art, or music or un-music, or whatever you want to call it. To me, this is all pointless. This statement may make me a shallow person who doesn't think deep enough to understand this "Fluxus" movement, but that's just me and my personal opinion. To me, there is nothing deeper to a man not playing anything for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. This moment of silence is then categorized as music. Then someone goes, "Well how can this be music? There's no sound, therefore there is no music!" And that's when a "deeper" individual will retort, "Well there is no such thing as absolute silence. Even though the Cage isn't playing anything on his piano, it doesn't mean there is nothing playing. Listen to the sounds of your body, the sounds of nature and industry all around you. This is music, for this is sound." And so on. To me, this isn't thought provoking at all. This is merely just being a smart ass.

I get it, all sound can be, and is, music. One thing I can agree with was the statement that when an erratic, unknown noise comes to pass, and we do not pay attention to it, it is bothersome to us. Whereas when we actually stop to listen to it, focus on solely that noise, it becomes interesting to us, becomes music to us. Sure I respect that, since I've done this on numerous occasions, usually when I'm bored with nothing to do. So is that the underlying meaning? Boredom? Fluxus was all about change. I mean, change is the literal definition of Fluxus. So this would make sense. These artists were bored of what art currently was, so they took it into their own hands to change it. They did something that was the exact opposite of what everyone else was currently doing, and called it a revolution.

Sure this may make me sound closed minded, but this is just completely uninteresting to me. I love art, and I respect what some people have done/created/preformed in the name of art, but there comes a point where I just can't accept it. Granted, art isn't meant to be accepted anymore than it is really meant to be observed. But since our assignment is to observe and opinionate, this is my observational opinion.

Concerts of everyday living new link

Those of you who can't get into the link in Oasis here's another link http://www.scribd.com/doc/51344363/Concerts-of-everyday-living-Cage-Fluxus-and-Barthes

A Purple Video Montage

This video is a montage of various elements that I found that may be a little unusual. For example, I included a record player and a cat to combine some different elements to add interest at my first attempt at video montage. A record player is something not usually seen nowadays and a cat seemed to add a little character. I tried to limit the amount of effects that were used while at the same time trying to make a piece that included abstract continuity with an understandable beginning and end. I tried to lean towards purple colored elements that were in motion, but continued to have reddish purple color frames throughout the video to create additional abstract shapes and forms. Purple, I feel is a great color to create some inspiration. I was careful not to have too many sounds and intentionally left out the music that was playing on the record player, because I realized it really was not needed. I also used a few closeups to focus on more non-representational imagery and therefore this piece may rely on some individual interpretation. Overall, I enjoyed making associations between each frame in order to compose them together.

Here is a list of the types of motion that I included: 1) Human motion was reflected in the blanket shaking and the object blowing stuff off cement (and shadow moving), since these types of motion would not be done by the objects themselves. 2) Vehicular motion included the car movements, but I realize I did not need to use a car to show this type of motion. 3) Environmental motion was shown with the drape moving by the wind and the outside backyard scene. 4) Camera motion made this video appear perhaps more abstract from manually moving the camera without a tripod. 

All of the shots were done by myself.

Example shot details:
1. Text title with credits: Reddish Purple
2. Old record player starts to play
3. Seattle World Fair record cover spinning
4. Blanket shaking
5. Cat closeup meowing
6. Cars moving
7. Inside car driving
8. Raspberries thrown into a strainer
9. Drape panels moving in soft wind
10. Panning a backyard space
11. Blowing stuff off cement
12. Closeup of wild flowers in a flower pot
13. Repeat Cat closeup meowing
14. Old record player ending play

Blue Motion by Brad Parkkonen

Dark Things Can be Creepy

UPDATE: So I've attempted to try and upload this video three times in the past week (I've only been able to attempt it three times throughout the week) and to no avail. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I do have this video. I swear!

So I chose black as my color. I chose this color, one, because I enjoy dark colors, and two, because I have lots of black colored things. So it only felt suitable to use it. As for motions. I decided to go for a creepy feel because I have this radiator in my apartment that scares the bajeebas (sp?) out of me. And I have a really leaky faucet that starts going off randomly at night. It's relatively hard to sleep with the combination of noises. Using these two aspects, the dark objects, and eerie noises, I attempted to make this video with a very ominous mood.

I used a lot of camera motion and human motion in my video. They are both used to create a state of panic and disarray. The video starts off somewhat smooth and calm, but then jumps into a heightened pace. Hopefully this was successfully conveyed. I think it does. The shaking and erratic movements were used to give the viewer some sort of disorientation. Towards the end of the video, everything starts to calm back down. The audio was used to help amplify this creepy feeling. And towards the end, I added a clip to ease out of the creepiness quite effectively.

This was a really fun experiment to work with using different motion techniques, and though it wasn't really part of the assignment, I had a lot of fun working with the sound, too. It also helped that I got some help from my friend, Adam, who helped film the outside portions so that I could look like an idiot in the middle of the road. Hopefully you all get the mood that I tried to convey in my video!

And hopefully this video uploads already so that I can get to class... :o

Black motion and action

The color that I choose to do was black, mostly because it is my favorite color. What I did was video a person that I know in a club who would sometimes act silly sometimes. When I was at the club I decided to video tape his actions and movement to show how he feels sometimes and how he would standout to get attentions. The types of movements that I got was a left, and right, and zoomed in moment of him. I also got some action movement of how he would act and display his own types of movement

Orange In Motion

My short film Orange In Motion is about the color orange, flames, and a cat. I was initially hesitant to include any cats in my short, but then I remembered what I was taught in MTD 1: The internet is made out of cats. Seeing how this film will only be viewed via the world wide web, I felt justified placing two cat shots in it. Thankfully my cat is very orange.
I wanted to tie the various shots together with something other than color, so I chose a repeating shot of an orange candle to alternate between disparate shots. While there was no attempt made at story telling, I feel that the use of flame and the color orange, combined with the excellent public domain soundtrack created by Rutger Muller, do impart a hint of emotion, perhaps even a since of urgency. All shots feature movement ranging from human and animal movement to mechanical and light movement.


All footage taken by Jesse Walsh unless noted

The shots are as follows:
1. Top of orange candle and flame (light and flame movement)
2. Orange cat with pumpkin hat meowing (animal movement)
3. Orange lighter being lit (human and mechanical movement)
4. Orange toy airplane rolling toward camera (mechanical movement)
5. Orange candle in mirror
6. Orange shirt over battery powered sander spinning on wood floor (circular movement)
7. Orange candle and flame side shot dark
8. Orange fridge magnet
9. Orange candle top shot
10. Orange leaf falling
11. Orange lighter being lit
12. Orange race car doing burnouts *from YouTube
13. Orange candle top shot
14. Orange cat chasing orange ball
15. Inside of a toaster

Video Montage project

For my video, I chose the color blue. Originally I was going to go with purple, but I thought about some really cool shots I could do with the color blue, so I changed colors. To me, blue is a very calm, relaxing colors, so I tried to take shots and find videos that were a bit slower to give a feel of that calmness. In a lot of the shots, I used videos of liquid moving. Blue is often related to liquids, such as water (though the blue liquid in the shots that I actually took is either Mountain Dew or soap), and liquids make shapes that are interesting to look at when they move. A couple of the shots are only supposed to emulate liquid movement, like the shot of the teal sheet moving. In regards to types of movement, there is camera movement in the shots of my dorm room, which is conveniently blue. A lot of the movement is either abstract or environmental motion. There is technically a bit of human motion in the shot of the sheet, as the motion was created by me grabbing the end of the sheet off camera and shaking it. There is also a bit of animal motion in the clip of the whale towards the end of the video. I did use a bit of editing, but it was mainly just mirroring or rotating the clip. One or two of the clips were a bit too fast to fit with the theme, so I slowed them down a bit. At first, I wasn't going to have sound. After watching the video through a couple of times, I decided that it really needed some sort of sound. I cannot even begin to say how tempted I was to use this song, but it's copyright material and wouldn't really fit with the calmness theme, so I didn't use it. Instead I grabbed a general ambiance track from a list of resources I have bookmarked on my computer.

Some of the shots that I was planning on doing didn't work out as well as I had hoped. It turns out that it's really hard to get ink out of a ballpoint pen to get runny enough to drip onto paper or into a glass of water.

List of shots:

1. Particle animation from Youtube

2. Me shaking a blue sheet

3. Pendulum video from Youtube

4. Slow mo wave video from Youtube

5. Mountain Dew pour

6. Mountain Dew pour (mirrored)

7. Dorm room (left)

8. Soap into water (upside down)

9. Slow mo wave from Youtube (mirrored)

10. Dorm room (right, not edited)

11. Ink in water from Youtube

12. Blue whale video form Youtube

Assignment 1: Blue is everwhere

Blue was choosing for the project because it’s one of primary colors and can’t be duplicated by others colors. In my first scenes I used my hand as an example of human motion. I changed the color of the scene to make it part of a theme in my video. I made it more abstract to make the viewer see only the hand and not the background of the footage. The title scene is next it has my name as the credit it the real footage starts. When I first got the assignment I was thinking of what color will be my theme. As I was going to school I saw the garbage truck and decided the theme will be blue. I film the garbage truck and as I was done I saw the plane in the sky next to the sun the plane got to close to sun and I had to shield my eyes and ended the footage.

The beer bottle and broken glass was a way to show even litter has the color blue in it. Majority of humans don’t think about what colors the see every day because it human nature to adapt and not think about it. But toddler and new born baby are trying to comprehend all these colors they are seeing on the regular to get an understanding of the world that revolves around them. The bus was a good example to show how I didn’t even think about how I was surrounded by blue as film everything I pass.

RED Montage

I chose different details of my own daily life for this video, with a definitive Red color theme.  I tried having the camera be as still as possible for a majority of the shots, mainly because I wanted to capture motion in front of the lens instead of creating it.  A couple of the sequences are actually pictures that I took in sequence, then added to the video in seemingly appropriate areas.

There wasn't much of an overarching theme to the clips, much of it is simply meshing them together.  Some meaning can definitely be brought out of the clips though, especially once I begin showing graffiti on a curb; "An eye for an eye-", shots of Spiderman's eyes on a RedEye dispenser, "-makes the world go blind", with a fade-out from a sign for "Vision."  A couple others are also thrown in there, such as the ascending staircase before the time-lapse of water turning red is through.


I used very minimal special effects for the video, save the title screen.  The vision fade-out is how my camera captured the scene in the first place, probably due to light adjustment.  The only effects I did use were for making certain scenes go faster, such as the time-lapse of water turning red.  I doubt many people would find a 20 minute video of that kind of thing to be very interesting.

Assignment 1 (Video Editing/Montage)

For this assignment I decided to shoot a video of my cat. My cat is the main focus of this video with my voice being heard constantly in the background. I shot this video with my computer’s web camera. I didn’t add any other audio than the sound of my voice. In the original video before I edited it, I was trying to get my cat, Juju, to move around. She was being very stubborn and had very little movement. But with the editing that I editing I did in the video it makes it look like that she did a lot of moving around. The reason why I chose the video to be focused on her is because I thought it would be different than using an actual person. With a person, you can control their movement and tell them what to do and say and they’ll understand you. With an animal such as a cat, you can’t always control what they do unless they’re trained. In this case, my cat wasn’t trained and didn’t want to move like I wanted her to, so I was forced to use a lot of editing to make it appear that way. As far as the color I decided to use just one instead of changing it. I felt like using different versions of the colors would involve too much cutting around to new clips. While the video is shot in a bronze like color my focus is pretty much black (one of the colors on my cat). At some points the color of the video does change back to its natural self which was out of my control. Apparently I could only add one effect to each scene. I also reversed some of the videos as well especially where it repeats one scene for a few times. There is one example of camera motion in the video but it is very brief. Then of course at the end of the video I gave credit to myself.

VIDEO MONTAGE

Making a montage sounds simple, but with the criteria for making the video it was it made a little difficult. It was still fun filming random situations and I almost got hit with a plastic ball. In my mind I just wanted to finish this project, but I didn't have anyone to help me out till my cousin and brother came home. I asked them if they could help me out with the video. I was soon just try finding random things that they could use, which I found a plastic bat and plastic ball so I told them just play a game and I’ll record them. Once that shot was done I saw plastic bag and recorded it right away before the bag hits the fence. Then I told my cousin to throw a few beanbags in the air till I feel I got the shot, but since the bags go so fast I have to put slow motion on that part of the montage. Since there was a good amount of wind I decided to film the tree in my backyard since, leafs of the tree were moving at a good pace for the motion montage. I still was missing some shots so I looked into youtube for the extra shots and looked at my footage and it looked boring so I looked for funny videos though it sill went with the montage criteria assignment. I just put the youtube videos in between my footage so it doesn’t seem all my footage goes first then the youtube videos are last shown. Even though this project was fun the editing wasn’t because my computer kept slowing down and I was afraid that the program might crash, but in the end it went all well.