Presentation slides

Final Exhibition thoughts

IMMERSIVE
VISUAL OVERLOAD
EXPERIENTIAL SPACE

I want my final exhibition to be a musical space which you have to enter to view. An insight into my musical self, my personal bubble.

I want it to be an immersive experience, where you are overloaded with colour and pattern, like the overload of sound and pattern in music.

I wish to show a lot of pieces because I think it is the exploration and progress of my work which aims to capture the aura of musical experience rather than a few finals.

I want a combination of movement, sound, imagery and tactility.
Posters, Prints, Vinyl Records, Video and Audio.

4th 7x7

4th 7x7

4th Reflective Post

Evaluation 4 - Refinement and Exploration

I decided to break the project in a more manageable chunk. I decided to hone in on the song ‘You’re The One’ by one of my top 10 bands Fanny and investigate that more thoroughly, rather than trying to explore 10 different bands. Feedback from my COP was to delve deeper rather than thinly explore multiples and this is what is necessary to examine in this project. I need to consider what I can achieve in the time frame for this module. It is a project that will ever evolve, there will never be a completed or resolved point. It is about the journey, the exploring and the experimenting, as visualising the aura of music can never be completely achieved. Therefore, this is something that will become my life long practice and investigation.

Serendipity is important in my practice as my experimentation relies on the boom and bust of having a break-through/discovery and then exhausting the idea.

I began to unpick each element in the song, exploring how I could most effectively communicate each sound - deconstructing the song entirely.

A huge discovery was applying these shapes into mono-print making. They were development, applying the research and instinctive responses into something more crafted and sophisticated. I was applying the genuine responses and creating lots of unique variations, like the uniqueness of experience. Creating many multiples of prints mean that I have a large body of visual responses to that song and they help capture the allure and essence of the music through their quantity. Having so many digital edits was quite overwhelming having so many files which existed only digitally. I was inspired by Jimmy Turrell to print them out as tiles, like storyboard.

I found myself singing the song like an earworm in my daily life, completely immersed in experiencing this song. It is such a fun song to sing and makes me feel so excited every time I hear it (even after studying it) and decided that I would record myself singing each part. This is another form of personal response to the music. I gave myself one chance to record each section, trying to keep the recording genuine and expressive. After applying it to visuals where I was listening to the original recording of the song, I realised that I have missed out a few little elements so not all the visuals completely marry up. I think that using myself singing gives an insight of myself, helping others relate to my experience of the song.

Turning my responses into music videos has been extremely important to this project. It is a method that really ties together my 3 passions, which create who I am.

The use of video combines time and visuals and adds duration into the imagery. Some of the videos include snippets of footage of my personal musical experiences. This mix of media maps the visual/musical exploration holistically. The videos almost work as an archive and portray all of the different variations of responses I have created in one place, in time with the music. Watching the videos are an engaging way for other people to connect with my artwork, even though they are extremely personal and subjective visual responses and experiences of music.

Tap sound video

Tap sound video

I wanted to create a video which visually had the lyrics with my images, had the rhythms of expressed tap dancing and my recorded vocals ... combining my response to the song in my 3 different disciplines.

I appreciate to some ears that this will just sound like a hammer banging on the inside of your brain. 
However to me, these were the steps that I chose to reflect the sound best. Just like with the deconstruction book I considered what sounds fit best, whether they were an up or a down beat, whether a shuffle or trapped beats sounded best, where my weight was. 
I think that perhaps the lyrics are too randomly dotted around and I could have better considered a way to guide the eyes around the imagery? Too difficult to follow?

Constructing this video I recorded each section separately. I compiled all of the sections into the video to find that when there isn't any pitch involved even though the layers work in the song, they sounded horrific when it sounded like unarticulated stamping, so I got rid of some of the sections to keep any listener sane.

Although there aren't any melodies in the tap dancing, only the rhythm, I know the song so well that I can hear the tune without needing the pitch. I think I could consider each specific image in relation to its imagery and colouring better. However I think the motion of the imagery is important for implying what the pitch would be... 
for example zooming in alludes to ascending melodies and the imagery scrolling down alludes to descending melodies.

Mixed media music video

Scrapbook music video

I have been creating this "music video" throughout this module. It has been a slow burner. I wanted to explore a way of combining music art and tap dance and a video puts these disciplines into one product and adds the element of duration and time which still imagery does not.

I appreciate that it is not professional (lots of thing were recorded at my home - no green screens). It is not something which could be used to accompany the song, as an official music video. This isn't the point of my project though. I have used this video to document (like a scrapbook) the work I have been doing, applying it in a different form.

This was created on Premiere Pro, a software I have taught myself, so this video has been about playing with the software, experimenting and exploring what I can do on it (hence all of the effects).

I think the graphics of the video aren't too random to accompany the song, it was created in the 70s when technological development was at its early stages, like my stages with Premiere Pro.

Here are some still which portray the overlap between dance and visuals in the same place.

Remy Charlip

Remy Charlip

This is inspiring. It is showing how somebody followed a career within interdisciplinary arts, combining art music and dance (the things I am passionate about) and helped support children through these art forms.

- passion and talent for art from an early age
- “being a painter seemed hopeless to me,” and he turned to other art forms including dance and acting.
-a dancer, choreographer and founding member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company
- never lost sight of writing and illustrating for children, and eventually published more than 38 books, which he often claimed helped support his other pursuits.
-work cut across a wide spectrum of art forms, aesthetic registers and audiences. He drew no particular distinctions among them. All were forms of an “internal dance,” as he called it, that he liked to stage in his own and other people’s minds.
-dance and children’s books, shared some essential elements. Both speak in a visual language for the most part, and both move through a series of scenes.
-He became a founding member of the company and did publicity and designed flyers as well as danced with them
-Remy was an exceptional teacher and helped people of all ages and creative disciplines access their creativity with a whimsical and profound simplicity and holistic depth. His teaching brought together many creative practices and healing modalities.
-Remy wrote and illustrated many articles about his creative philosophy, teaching, performing and healing practices. CQ published five of these articles in the First Remy Charlip Reader (1986).
-He wrote a manual for teaching an interdisciplinary approach to teaching the arts to children.

He sent illustrations like this to dance companies, as a stimulus for them to choreograph dances as they interpret them.

His VS Mine. They both focus on the shapes and body language of the dances. His is before the movements have been created and mine is after the movements have been danced. Similar yet different.

Jimmy Turrell

http://www.jimmyturrell.com/projects/universal-yellowire/

I found this extremely inspiring. I love the combination of analogue and digital. It is thoroughly process driven.

I have been struggling that everything is digital, hundreds of files and file names that are tiny. They don't seem real and aren't helpful. This made me decide to print everything I had made off as little thumbnail show reels. It shows the work I have done but is analogue and you can see and touch it, it seems real and tangible. It helps see what works.

Collographs

Collographs were a good way of developing mono prints. These were a3 and therefore there was room to have nice overlaps - using the positives and negatives of the boards but also overlapping when printed. There were nice textural qualities added which were more sophisticated than mono prints and added some depth in the musical imagery.

I think these are essentially a development on my initial sound map collages, the very first pieces of visual art for this project. Collage is a way that I like to work as I find mixing media important within my illustration practice.

Mindmaps

Monoprints

I really enjoyed making these. 

They are controlled (because they are using pre-planned deconstructed cut-outs) but then the results are uncontrolled "happy accidents" which make some interesting overlaps - serendipity.

I even quite like the mono-print boards before the prints as they are very vibrant colours and you can see the marks from the previous prints in the background.

Deconstruction of You're the One

'You're the one' by Fanny deconstructed

I created a deconstruction book, unpicking each element of the song and trying to visually communicate it accurately. This therefore meant that I have a body of shapes and line qualities which are considered yet through the same expressive response method.

From this experiment I can then apply the visual language to different things.

Photocopies

Photocopies

I find that for me these take the authentic experience out of the artwork through the nature of manipulating out of my control.
 I appreciate that they add motion and digital grain to the pieces however I think they get rid of the expressive and authentic qualities.
They are not for me.

This one in particular really captures the speed, momentum and continuity of the psychedelic fast paced song by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

I really like the coloured overlays and how this is an experimental, happy accident way of applying colour however it is incredibly expensive.

3rd 7x7

3rd 7x7

3rd Reflective Post

Evaluation 3 - Colour and Application

The square rhythmic visualisations were very dense and compact and don’t capture duration particularly well. I decided that creating a horizontal and long scroll of music would show the different elements of the song in time better, they would show the ebs and flows of the music and could be something more engaging than a built up square expression. Having said this, the paper I used was still not long enough to capture a 4 minute song so they were more like stretched out dense expressions. 

I then thought I should use bigger paper to try and get some clarity between the lines and patterns. I wanted to break up the mark making and make the images less structured, however when I used bigger paper, my mark making scaled up proportionally and it looked extremely messy (but very expressive). 

I then decided to pick apart one song ‘Youre the One’ and turn it into a scroll which you could read - an experimental music score, using 10 sides of paper. I wanted to mark every element in the right order, in perspective with the other elements interacting with it.

The application and digital editing of my initial and raw rhythm responses was a break through! I took small sections of the longer visualisations and digitally layered and edited them into tiles. It was extremely important at transporting my artwork to another level.

It turned the responses into abstract snapshot patterns rather than the images being a composed and compact image. I realised that most imagery created for music are square (apart from posters). They are created for album artwork. This gave me framework for the format of my outcomes of this project, something that will tie every outcome together smartly.

I associate music strongly with vibrant colour therefore this is something vital to consider. The use of colour differentiates music genres, it adds to the mood of each band and creates an essence of their music. 

Initially with my first rhythmic square responses I tried using coloured stock to communicate colour simply. However, the black didn’t work that well on the coloured stock and they were still very dense images. I also tried to Photoshop colour into the background of them but they looked very rough, flat and unprofessional.

I really like the coloured digital square images (3 colours applied to the lines/marks). I like the variety of colour and pattern and I think they have become my experience of the music. I know they need to be developed more for example, they have very similar line qualities and scale even though each band is different.

I needed to consider: Who are the audience of these square tiles? How I could turn the concept of personal musical experiences which is subjective into something engaging?

I applied my initial black and white squares onto records and Tshirts but they don’t look right. They detract from the strength of the artwork, degrading it.

Experimenting with poster design seemed like a natural route into applying my artwork more commercially, to an audience. Graphic design is not something I am comfortable with at all. I just can't see what looks good, what doesn't and why. I took inspiration from other band posters and researched poster designs for layouts and then applied to my own imagery. I think I have made progress with poster design but I feel that perhaps the images don’t need to be applied anywhere. They are bold and striking and need to having confidence in their own right. Perhaps all that needs to be applied is the name of the band. This would turn an abstract pattern into a concept with purpose and viewers can engage. The audience therefore will be people who like the music of the bands I have chosen, or simply people that like the bold and colourful patterns.

Posters attempt 2

So far my posters are horrific. 
I think I need to really strip everything back to simple, get rid of my photos and capture the experience abstractly through the music visualisations as they are the most striking. 
I need to keep the colour palette limited and keep really simple type. 
Also I need to add information onto the posters... perhaps that of the gigs I actually went to.
Even though screen print is not something I enjoy I think they would look really lovely as a set of large screen prints.


BUZZCOCKS

This was a turning point image. It was the stepping stone between attempt 1 and attempt 2 posters.  It combined the line work from my long rhythm expressions with type in a poster format.

With these posters I just experimented. I am not going to pretend that I have a lot of knowledge about graphic design but I think they do they job as posters and are unusual, eye-catching and aesthetically interesting.

I think that these 3 are the most successful.

A psych for sore eyes

A psych for sore eyes

This is really cool. It fits with the psychedelic nature of the bands involved. It is a screen print that folds to become a vinyl cover so you can look whilst listening.

Even further they created an exhibition which takes this further and uses the same imagery to create a musical space to listen to the music. Maybe this is something I want to do for my end of year show?