Week 2 Wednesday: Sound + Faith

As we were going to be working with some realtime sound processing (on the gumstix) it felt right to go back into a bit of research, specifically into rjdj, definitely the most known and commercially available realtime sound processing ‘experience’.I’d like to forword these thoughts with my absolute love and respect for rjdj and the people behind it, I love what they/it are offering to composers/artists/musicians/audiences, and there are some great outcome so far, but ….
the constant frustration for me with many of the rjdj experiences is their lack of structure. coque iphone They have a strong novelty factor but there rarely seems to be any thought about the possibilities of narrative.

One work (‘a tool to experience the city’) suggests so much but in the end falls in to the trap of just being a set of random sound processing (looping, resonating, echo-ing) the sounds around you), the possibilities for structuring the processing over time woudl give it the drive of a composed experience, rather than a random drift, which although often rewarding, doesn’t ever ‘say’ much.

We tried the ‘Inception’ app, which has been highly publicised and successful. bijoux pas cher For me it’s greatest strength is the use of music and the fact that it’s clear about ‘when’ it shifts into different processing modes and musical shades. coque huawei The fact you unlock different modes also lends it some form of narrative structure. bijoux personnalise I have to say I was a bit surprised by the cheesy bubbling melody that accompanies entering the ‘dream state’, i felt more like some cheesy 60′s sci-fi moment rather than Hans Zimmer’s stunning film score. pokemon peluche (c’mon Hans, you worked on this application!).

Some of this led to me thinking about the physical narrative of our piece, similar to the way we’d moved the Bristol test group from College Green to inside the Cathedral, I started mapping out spaces and ways we could move our ‘participants’ from one to the other.

When we finish this project I’m definitely going to write a narrative time-based experience using the rjdj system.
Our other research carried on into how simple layering of music and voice can be a powerful tool. coque iphone (not that we didn’t know this already of course)One wonderful experience available online is the ‘you are listening to …’ series, From cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Montreal you can listen to a live stream of police radio mixed together with ambient music by local composers.

What is essentially mundane material combines to create a melancholy and richly atmospheric experience.