Recordings & Journals
Posted onJuly 14, 2011
Filed under listening journals | 48 Comments
Some recordings and journals by Sheng Wen Lo:
1. A few weeks ago I took a trip to Da Jian Hill in XiZhi District. The 460 meters high hill is a nice but seldom mentioned hiking spot overlooking Xinbei City and further mountains. The rain had just stopped and it was three hours after mid-night. The air was cool, and the scent was clear and natural. The insects seemed to be extremely pleased by the long awaited rain, as they roared into an unorganized concert, swarming my ear with familiar and unfamiliar sounds. With scores with a myriad of pitches and tempos, the bombardment was such a chaos that it had been impossible to filter out nor concentrate on one particular sound. And then a surprise popped in: there was a voice coming from the ground; with careful listening, I was sure that the sound originated from beneath the concrete/tarmac floor. It sounded like an ill man uttering mock arabic very slowly, making a lot of emphasis with a dry and soar throat. The wicked murmur had no rhythm at all, yet it stood out despite the fact that the volume was way lower than those of the bugs. The voice continued an I could not conjure up a convincing explanation.
Final Report on “SDINGUHOTS”
Posted onJuly 1, 2011
Filed under Treasure Hill (寶藏巖) | 1 Comment
For us, “SDINGUHOTS” is a loaded word. Just say it and memories of searing summer heat, splashing afternoon showers, jam-packed night markets and overreacted facial expressions of modern bourgeois pour forth unbidden, like snowflakes in a blizzard. We re-examined the city of Taipei with our eyes end ears wide opened, and what we found out surprised us, disturbed us, intrigued us, and sometimes confused us.
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The Soundscape and Sound Art Final Presentation ~ Meng-kuei Chang(張孟葵)
Posted onJune 30, 2011
Filed under 尚未歸類 | 78 Comments
The Soundscape and Sound Art Final Presentation ~ Meng-kuei Chang (張孟葵)
1 The Cinematic Space
The Cinematic Space— Visual Aspect
Stephen Heath: “Narrative Space”
1. Film is the regulation of that movement, the individual as subject held in a shifting and placing of desire, energy, contradiction, in a perpetual retotalization of the imaginary.
2. The investment is in the process. Space comes in place through procedures such as look and point-of-view structure, and the spectator with it as subject in its realization.
The Cinematic Space—Audio Aspect
A. Film Sound Elements: Sound, music and voice.
B. There is no auditory container for sound
Michael Chion: “Audio-Vision”
(1). The Image=The Frame
(2). Most Cinema as “a place of image, plus sounds”. There is no auditory container for sound (Film). No auditory scene already preexisting in the soundtrack (There is no soundtrack)—
(3). We classify sounds in relation to what we see in the image. There is spatial magnetization of sound by image. (Where is the sound – Locating its sources)
(4). Dolby: fluid border—a sort of superscreen enveloping the screen (superfield)
2 The relationship between sound and vision
The traditional film sound model
(1) offscreen
(2) onscreen
(3) nondiegetic
Chion’s Film Sound Model
(1) offscreen,
(2) onscreen,
(3) nondiegetic
(4) Ambient sound (Territory sound)
(a) enveloping a scene
(b) identifying a particular locale
(5) Internal sound
Corresponding to the physiological and mental interior of a character.
(a) objective-internal sounds
(b) subjective-internal sounds
(6) On-the-air sound
Sound heard in a film narrative that is
supposedly transmitted by electronic source.
3 Research Purpose
電影文本 –蘊含某種敘事結構 –結構的運作, 為sound, vision, spectator三元素在電影的Frame中競逐的結果。
The sound connect different space of dream or illusion.
There is audio scene and audio container.
Pathway: Extemsion
Extension of the (diegetic) sound space:
the degree of openness or largeness of the cinematic space suggested by the sound. In null extension the sonic universe is shrunken to the sounds heard by a single character. In vast extension there is as nearly infinite a dilation of the sonic space as possible. (Michael Chion, 1990)
Following the idea of “Extension”:
Sound can expend or compress
cinematic space.
4 Designing the Graphic Analysis System in Film Sound
Question: What should the illustrations tell us?
–The process about the extension and the compression.
– The elements in film sound.
– The ways of storytelling : Linear or Nolinear
– The shapes of the sound events.
– How the sound affect the image.
– How the sound connect the scene.
5 Research topic: The Illusion and The Dream
Inception:
Space – One Space affect / contain another, or connected with another.
Time — Different Time at the same space / between two spaces.
(Keyword: Kick, Time expanded, slow motion)
Black Swan:
Space – Different space overlap.
Time — Stream of consciousness
Audio container / audio scene
The sound connect different space of dream or illusion.
There is audio scene and audio container.
6 Scene Analysis
(1) The Inception: Bathroom Scene
– The combination two different spaces:
Dream 1 (slow motion)
Dream 2 (within dream 1, normal speed)
The Meaning of slow motion:
– More time on each level. (ex. 20min-1 week- 6 months- 10 years)
How to connect two spaces of dream:
– 1 Sound reduced or deleted ; 2 Low speed of the sound
– The sense of the space is lost.
– The scene is unrelated to spectators.
– 2 Sound replaced.
– Two scene overlap.
(2) The Inception: The explosion in Streets in Paris :
The combination of four different time lines.(sound and image)
– 1 The explosion (variable speed)
– 2 Cobb and Ariadne (normal speed / static)
– 3 The passengers and the streets. (normal speed / static)
– 4 The sound from upper level. (Edith Piaf’s song, low speed)
How to connect four different time lines:
– 1 Sound reduced or deleted
– 2 Different speed of sounds. (according to different speed of images)
– 3 One layer of sound and image sustain the continuous movement.
– 4 one layer of sound trigger another.
(3) The black swan— On stage: black swan scene
One space overlaps another.
– 1 Stage (drama within a drama)
– 2 Nina’s mind (internal sound creates its own virtual space )
narrative mode
– Internal Sound: Liner.
Representing evil genius and black swan themselves.
(Dissociative Identity Disorder)
– Image and Music :Stream of consciousness (Following internal sound)
Three fragments from ”Swan Lake” :
A: The Prince dances with black swan (Odile)
B: The Prince sees the real white swan and realizes his mistake.
C: The evil genius appears and tries to pull the lovers apart.
The order in ballet opera: A-B-C become B-C-A
7 Conclusion:
1 Film sound might affect the whole space in cinema, not just be the
accompaniment to the image.
2 The process and the shape of the development in film sound are the important factors to define the space in cinema.
3. Sound might has its blurring “space” in the cinema, though we can’t prove there is audio scene or audio container right now.
Victoria, Carol and Ding-Ding’s Final Report
Posted onJune 30, 2011
Filed under Treasure Hill (寶藏巖), projects & personal works | 99 Comments
→ By the way, we can not upload the file onto Ceiba (?)
Soundscape v.s Sound Art
Project Report
Date: 2011.06.09
Time: 14:30 pm
Location: Treasure Hill Artist Village〈寶藏巖，山城排練場〉
Jobs Distribution
R99144001 李健嫆 (Victoria): Recordings, Images, Text, Report
B96102048 賴翊瑄 (Carol): Recordings, Images, Text, Images-editing
B97801024 丁逸年 (Ding-Ding): Recordings, Actor, Poetry, Sounds-editing
Introduction
At first, we had our own directions of sound-recording, such as Victoria preferred to have sounds from “restaurants,” Carol would like to record sounds in “Cafés,” and Ding-Ding had interest in sounds “shifting between indoors and outdoors.” When we began to combine these three types of recordings, we decided to conclude a principal idea to express and display it in front of audience. As a result, the idea of “traveler” came into our minds, which idea inspired by Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities. In his writing, he categorizes those fantasy cities into different topics and each chapter includes many topics with its related cities. It seems to have no direct relationship between each city, topic and chapter at the first glance, but sooner or later we could find some common points hidden inside for readers to discover. With this inspiration, we planed to make every personal memory or concrete ideas into fragmentation as well as abstraction, and then looked forward to seeing audience’s discovery and reactions while having our presentation.
Content
The most difficult part in our project is how to combine multiple materials together: On one hand, we have three kinds of multimedia, including recordings, images and texts. On the other hand, Ding-Ding has complete structure inside his recordings, Carol has an obvious storyline in her photos, and Victoria has numerous layers of retrospection to recall. In the end, we simplified factors to have something constant and something variable: First, Victoria’s images were taken from one situation (eating dumplings) but recordings from different areas. On the contrary, Carol recorded sounds in a main place (cafe) and collected photos from different sites and periods. Next, Victoria and Carol wrote their own texts according to their memories and classified into “black words with white background” and “white words in black background.” Ding-Ding selected some poems and took his recordings as a role of connection. In addition, he acts not only as an image of traveler but a connecter who gives some hints for audience on the spot.
Discussions
Thanks to a number of suggestions from all participants on that day, we learned a lot from this presentation. And the following is our summary of feedbacks and our introspections for this project:
1. We had an ambiguous indication to communicate with the audience and presented too many materials directly in front of audiences, so that many spectors (listeners) had difficulty in concentrating on everything we put in the project and they might feel exhausted gradually. Also, we have almost forgotten the possibility of acceptance from audience, multimedia events like sounds, videos and stage-performance played at the same time, which challenged peoples’ attention and immediate understanding of our presentation. Thus, we had learned a lesson that an artist could not only think about what he or she wants to do in a project but thinks in another shoes, and also takes human perception into consideration.
2. Though we tried to merge different recordings together by keeping background music, which has a clear characteristic to identify soundscape. However, it caused the audience to have an imbalance of listening because such background music is too strong to remember. With this finding, here comes to a condition: it is easier for presenters to transfer one sound event into another because those are recorded exactly by themselves. While on the other side, the audience is still unfamiliar with these recordings, thus, it is not proper to ask them to distinguish different situations immediately by sound itself, not to mention the images changed simultaneously.
Further Possibilities
In the original project, we do not anticipate the audience to watch video static or listen to a fixed edition of sounds. We design to make the actor improvise on the stage freely , and interact with images, sounds and people at the performing moment in order to make the project have a chance to be performed not only for once. For instance, a rainy weather and the thunder were especially unique for our debut, which had a special effect that day. Going further, we consider it is better to provide all the participants more space to create by themselves and associate with self-experiences while taking part in this project.
In the thoughts of deconstruction and post-modernism, we have more approaches to deconstruct and construct frameworks, metaphors or interpret conceptions. In the process of engaging in concepts of fragmentation or abstraction, we should not decompose surface materials at random or deliberately but attempt to do it in other dimensions like the aspect of synchrony or diachronism.
Loooffy’s final report
Posted onJune 29, 2011
Filed under 尚未歸類 | 108 Comments
First thing to say ,I had a lot of fun during the week I was working for the project.
Actually, I was quite worry about the demo that day at 寶藏巖, because I haven’t seen the whole piece yet before the demonstration. Fortunately, the surprises(mistakes) were not that bad, someone was even touched by them.
The original of this project is those old folk songs which my parents often played during my childhood, my father even whistled when he was showering, those are vivid images in my memory. I don’t get rid of these images until now even they don’t play much in recent years. Sometimes, I would find some old folk songs to listen, I like them, they bring me back into some old stories. They are part of me. Then, recently there were two songs remind me of the varieties of quality of sound from different recording and playback devices, they are 林生祥’s “菊花夜行軍” and 純純’s “月夜愁”. I realized that the noise in the recordings and the “bad quality”(most people would say it bad) of the recordings really make differences, they are tactile, and I see them as textures of a particular period. I’m lucky, because I’m able to access to almost any kind sound devices, from vinyl to mp3. And Yannick has said that if I ask people to show how they play music would be interesting, so the idea about “play a song for you” suddenly comes out. That’s it, the story of the birth of the project. Next I’m going to talk about what I’ve learned from the entire project.
I found something interesting about music in a sound project. At first, I couldn’t imagine that there will be a whole song in my project, because people tend to focus on the melody of the music whatever the type of it when it comes out , and then define the sound as “music”, this action is quite dangerous for listening a sound project, so trying not to let music appear in my project is my first thought. The group which recorded chess sound has similar concern so they decided to shorten the part of there recording that include music. The group recorded the sound of cafe and the group showed the commercial-like video faced some problem with this, too. So dealing with music in a sound project is really a big deal. However, the problem seems not so serious in my project, though the whole song goes through the entire video. I think it is because the environment and the qualities of the songs coming from each sources were really different. The gaps between each sections are great, so audiences may have a strong conflict at the transitions, then try to feel the differences and have fun in it.
The second thing I learned is about communicating with strangers when I’m wearing a camera. Even I show respect and try to be really humble and harmless, they still fear to face the camera, and don’t care about what my purpose is. In this situation, try to talk about some old folk songs seems working great, at least they know I tend to do something with the songs they are also interested to. Find some common interest to talk about is never a bad start.
And I have two surprises(forget the mistake in the video, ha), one is the the quality of Yannick’s equipment, the quality of the sound is super good. Actually, I would have been stunned by the gorgeous sound if I didn’t have to hold the camera. I haven’t realized that the effect of a equipment could be that huge. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring all the audiences to Yannick’s room (and other places in the video) 
This remind me of the fact that no matter how good is the recording device, once the sound (the situation) is recorded, it is distorted. But I still can give the audiences a clue, they may listen carefully next time when they find some interesting listening situations, that’s all I can do with the limitation of the form of demonstration.
Another surprise is that almost everyone had fun while they were watching and listening to the video. I think one of the reasons is that everyone are familiar with the content, so can be easily touched. It’s just that the technology is developing and spreading so fast that people soon take it for granted , so they don’t pay much attention on the differences that everyone should have already noticed. Anyway, I’m glad to see surprises and joy of audiences.
I’m not going to do the similar work recently, or at most one piece more, because the form is almost developed, the rest things to do are just find some new place, new people, new devices, also funny but not that much; discovering a way to put things and ideas together and realize it is much fun, that’s my favorite word – tinkering. Yannick has talked about this notion in the class, try to do more instead of letting the process to be like this: an idea come out –> realize it –> done. I was surprised at the moment when he said that, and one day I suddenly figured out , Oh! It’s tinkering!
Thank for this class, give me a new way to discover a place with sound now(like this), I think dealing with “soundscape” is mainly about this process. And that is the next step.
Loooffy
the two songs I have metioned about in the essay:
Public Presentation
Posted onJune 6, 2011
Filed under Treasure Hill (寶藏巖), 尚未歸類 | 1 Comment
Thursday June 9th & Thursday June 16th
Between March and May 2011, the Institute of Musicology of Taiwan National University was hosting the class “Soundcape and Sound Art” , by Yannick Dauby and Pr. Chian-Chang Yang.
During two afternoon, the students of this class will share their (first) experiences with sound creation. Come to listen and discuss with us !
Keywords : sound and narration, memory of sounds, disturbance of audio-vision, body listening, field recording
Location :
Treasure Hill Artist Village 寶藏巖國際藝術村
Treasure Hill Atelier, 3F, N°15, Aly.51
51弄15號3樓山城排練場
share my recording
Posted onMay 29, 2011
Filed under 尚未歸類 | 74 Comments
hi
I recorded some interesting sound yesterday
and I want to share it to you
the following is the mp3
hope you would find it interesting too
Loooffy(星翰)
Soundscapes of Fukushima
Posted onMay 28, 2011
Filed under 尚未歸類 | 1 Comment
Koji Nagahata is a researcher in Fukushima, studying soundscapes. He recently published this webpage containing field recordings of Fukushima and its surroundings after the earthquake and tsunami of 11.03.2001. http://www.sss.fukushima-u.ac.jp/~nagahata/fsp_311/index-e.html
Final Presentation List
Posted onMay 26, 2011
Filed under 尚未歸類 | 50 Comments
Presentation: 30 minutes ; Discussion: 30 minutes
6/9
A 李健嫆、丁逸年、賴翊瑄 (2:10pm )
B Jenny Leung, 楊光月 (3:20 pm )
C 李翔齡、林瑜昕 (4:30 pm )
6/16
A 羅晟文、陳韋安、鄭伊里 (2:00pm)
B 吳亭儀 (3:00pm)
C 張孟葵 (4:10 pm)
D 陳星翰、黃婷筠 (5:10 pm)
Alvin Lucier “I am sitting in a room”
Posted onMay 20, 2011
Filed under history of listening | 117 Comments
please listen to this entirely and carefully :
http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/source/Lucier-Alvin_Sitting.mp3
ALVIN LUCIER
“I AM SITTING IN A ROOM” (1969)
for voice and electromagnetic tape.
Necessary Equipment:
1 microphone 2 tape recorders amplifier 1 loudspeaker
Choose a room the musical qualities of which you would like to evoke.
Attach the microphone to the input of tape recorder #1.
To the output of tape recorder #2 attach the amplifier and loudspeaker.
Use the following text or any other text of any length:
“I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any sem- blance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physi- cal fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.”
Record your voice on tape through the microphone attached to tape re- corder #1.
Rewind the tape to its beginning, transfer it to tape recorder #2, play it back into the room through the loudspeaker and record a second genera- tion of the original recorded statement through the microphone attached to tape recorder #1.
Rewind the second generation to its beginning and splice it onto the end of the original recorded statement on tape recorder #2.
Play the second generation only back into the room through the loud speakerand record a third generation of the original recorded statement through the microphone attached to tape recorder #1.
Continue this process through many generations.
All the generations spliced together in chronological order make a composition the length of which is determined by the length of original statement and the number of generations recorded.
The versions in which one recorded statement is recycled through many rooms.
Make versions using one or more speakers of different languages and in different rooms.
Make versions in which, for each generation, the microphone is moved to different parts of the room or rooms.
Make versions that can be performed in real time.
http://www.ubu.com/sound/lucier.html
