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.