U7 #5 – Exporting and Waiting

exporting in progress

After filming eighteen people (including me) listening to a mixed track with extracts from various songs with different styles, I have put them together into a video so that the reactions can be compared directly one next to the other.
Setting and coordinating the videos with the music was quite difficult as I relied only on the people’s facial expressions and reactions to orientate the timing.
I am surprised by how little people actually react to music, even though there were one, two songs that affected as good as everyone.

I am still waiting for the video to finish exporting and hope this version is going to be the final one.
Here is a screenshot preview from one of the earlier exported video versions.
I was sceptic about whether I should put everyone in the video or isolate a few, but I think this allows for the widest range of reactions and diversity and gives people something new to discover each time. I am going to have to decide if I am including the music as well.

preview

During this project, I have learned what I cannot do in processing unless I am a coding master, how to book the film studio, set up/prep  and film (30-minutes-videos are a bad idea unless you want to end up with 120 gb files to transfer), how to make a music mix, how to edit a video and how to export it (with a lot of patience). So many things I had never done before. Even though my end result may look a bit rough around the edges, I think I managed to get my message through, visualising music through people’s perceptions and reactions, while showing that music is perceived differently by each individual.

U7 #4 – Retouches

I am currently getting my student organiser from the calendar/time is the essence brief ready for assessments. The week has been changed to seven equal days (in comparison to a shared Saturday/Sunday column) and I replaced the monthly overview with the term overview. The stamps stayed the same, but I am thinking about adding “raw” stamps (meaning erasers) so that users could form them according to their moods and change/replace them easily. Unfortunately the A5 is too large as a size to transform into a stamp (which was my initial idea, to make it as affordable and reusable as possible), so I included three sets of ten weeks and a term overview pads. There are also the card pads for the to-do list and legend that goes with the stamp. In order to have some kind of pad paper, I binded the pages together (in their respective stacks) so that it is possible to rip out a page and carry it along with you, although the stacks aren’t very heavy to carry. The paper used is recycled paperback which is better to write on and still keeps a similar look to the sugar paper thus making it look ready to use instead of being too nice/prestigious to write on. I sticked to the simple green/black colour scheme, but realised that it would be possible to vary the colours for the three terms, even though this make them more even and equal.
I have been thinking and thinking about how I could package this without creating a huge box to carry it around with and as I want to keep it as simple as possible.

The whole set is meant to be as affordable as possible as well as reusable (through photo-copying or stamping the week schedules onto different papers).

Event: PureData Workshop and Laptop Choral with Giuliano Obici

On Friday, NomadLab organised the last of it’s series of lectures for the season at CSM. During the day, we got a short introduction to PureData from soundartist Giuliano Obici which was followed by a lecture and a small laptop choral recital in which we participated.

During the lecture, Giuliano Obici also mentionned an earlier project collaboration, which consisted in paying people in the streets around the black markets  in Brasil a dollar to listen to the music. They are being payed because it is considered work to listen to music and in opposition to downloads.

Paying people to listen to music isn’t something I had thought of during my music project brief (which I am currently exporting and finishing of for assessment on tuesday).

Pure Data:

 

Pure Data is an open-source program that allows the user to create music and visual representations while allowing to distribute the information over multiple computers.
Music is represented through specific numbers and coding and associated with commands that let the user decide how to represent the music/sound that is heard visually over screens.

The program runs in the same rails as processing: an application with coding that give you the freedom to do what you want, if you know how it works. In the same way that I had originally planned to use processing and the video only as base, it failed on technical knowledge. Even though the program runs a common coding language (apparently), it would take me a long time to understand and know how I can do what I want to do. But it is good to know that this option is out there.

U7 #6 – letterpressing and assembling

After a day spend finishing the covers in the letterpress workshop, I have been able to pick up the covers and start to assemble them.

ampersands overflowing the letterpress workshop.

I decided to go with white thread after all as the blue doesn’t go with the grid or print. Meaning I am going to have to buy new thread as I coloured all of the other one in.

the first finished notebook

assembling

assembling

folding and assembling to get it on the right place (it being the ampersand)

folding

It was quite tricky to get the ampersand formed through the three covers together, for the letterpress printing as well for the folding, but worth it, it retakes the idea of creating a whole through the three parts of the notebook.

U7 #5 – Refilming: What if Music could be seen?

I am re-filming people listening to music in the studio today in order to create a collection of people in a video, this time with a selected/made mix of different kinds of music, the same for everyone. Hopefully I can record enough people as I only managed to book the studio for today.

U7 #6 – the blue thread

Yesterday I coloured in the bookbinding thread, and even if it didn’t turn into a dark blue as I hoped it would, I’m still happy about it no longer being white.

such a profound blue

U7 #6 – notebooks in progress

buy paper: done
cut paper to right formats: done
buy dye for the bookbinding tread: done
print grids: done
cut grids pages: done
typeset cover and packaging lines: done
print separate covers: in progress

step by step.