Sound Art Observations and Lesson Plan

Observations: With any art form there are products that individuals enjoy and dislike. Some forms are meant to irritate the viewer while others are supposed to comfort and everything in between. Sound art is no different. I have blogged previously on sound art which I personally find enjoyable and tolerable. If someone took the sound for nails on a chalkboard and called it sound art I would probably not like it as much. It is a form that is good for teaching because of its potential for creativity and exploration.

Lesson Plan: Through recording soothing or irritating sounds using the program audacity and proper discretion, students will learn that sounds can have a dramatic effect on people and how they can tolerate space or the world in which they live in.

Sound Artists Scott Sherk and Minihui

Scott Sherk is a well known sculptor, sound artist, and teacher at Muhlenberg College. In his piece 23 fountains of Beverly Hills he recorded 23 fountains of beverly hills and the surrounding public life. He creatively merges the sound into a 33 minute and 46 second piece that actually is quite soothing. The link below allows a person to download the music for free and listen. One does not need to hear the whole 33 minutes.

http://www.stasisfield.com/releases/year08/sf-8001.html

Minihui is a Youtube user. he has ingeniously made an instrument out of old floppy disk drives. Minihui realized a floppy disk has a range of sounds that when meshed together with other floppy drives they produce 8- bit tones. There is also a difference between the amount of floppy drives used. The more used the more succinct and smoother the transitions between notes and parts of a song. The fewer there are the more choppy and 8 bit the music sounds.  Here is Super Mario Brothers with 15 floppy drives and 4 drives (different artist).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c52JQHVVqFM



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81qrG4ixR8E

Sounds of 609N

In a creative effort to explore audacity more. I have recorded the sounds of my room. I have delayed some sounds by pushing them forward with space and I have faded some sounds in. The sounds are my printer as if I was scanning an object, my freezer, my printer as if i was copying something, and my light stand. Please enjoy.

https://soundcloud.com/lowell-wynn/sounds-of-609n

Revisiting Flipsnack

Due to recent events at 116th street, I thought I would share my experience on my way home. I was very excited to take the 2 train back into manhattan because I have never been to Wakefield 241st street before. Here are the images of the neighborhood as seen from the train. Some are more wobbly due to the subway ride. enjoy. http://www.flipsnack.com/FDC9C55C5A8/fuk84j39

Scanography, flipsnack.com, and lesson plan

As i was viewing different scanographers I came across a person that distorted his images with an action or movement. I was thrilled that someone would try to make art this way with a scanner because the purpose of a scan is to create a still image that is rendered well. I started my own attempts with a pencil that was slowly moving back and forth. As i did not realize my scanner scans twice, the first photo has those shakes of the hand, but the second scan of the pencil was still. The scanner merged the two together to give you what you see. For the second image, the scanner merged a still pencil with nothing and the result was nothing. I then wanted to see what a fully filled scan would look like and incorporated chocolate wrappers into boxed images. This led into an adventure in with multiple chocolate wrappers and different sides of the wrappers. finally i wanted to show a chocolate orange and thought that that would be the best way to go about it. I then returned to the pencil idea for another attempt and that was well worth the effort.

As a first attempt into flipsnack.com I did not realize it is a book created website. i find this lends itself well for an art class and for my scanning experience because it tells the story well and can be used to tell other people's stories with images.
http://www.flipsnack.com/my-flipping-books/details?flip=fui2xl0s

Lesson Plan:
Through scanning an object or objects in various positions on the scanner using a variety of non heavy, dry objects students will learn that a story of progression and relationships can be learned.

Richard Rownak and Rebecca Wild

Richard Rownak started his career in hotel management. He returned to school at the University of Arkansas and started a photography business. He is now in Los Angeles  where he continues his freelance work. His images have appeared in newspapers and magazines. Richard is also does scanography. He specifically scans a range of flowers in groups so as not to leave an opening in the picture. The images are very charming and peaceful.

Rebecca Wild is another scenographer. She explores the world of scanning paint. She is not limited to using the whole scanner space, but often does. She is able to throw the paint down and just scan it or she can smug it out to see cool effects. her work does have an glow that I find somewhat scary. 

Matthew Fitzpatrick and Technology

Matthew Fitzpatrick teaches elementary school, grades k-5, at Edgewood elementary school Scarsdale, New York. Matthew incorporates his Smartboard, aka Smarty for the children, into a majority of his classes. He creates cartoons, and shows his primary one, named Bob, to describe events that are going on in the school community. Matthew is currently explaining the process of making video games to his students and how they can make simplistic games in class. From his use of technology in class, I would believe he thinks technology belongs in the art room.

Bruce Nauman Template

Bruce Nauman is a video artist that has done many experiments. One such experiment was with a T bar and how he moved it around his studio. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td5ajnjj-EE. Bruce filmed in black and white and his video does not have any sound. His title cards are long and each time he left the screen he turned off his camera to pose the bar in a different way. The camera was also tilted for his first couple of shots. I took Nauman's manipulation as a template and made my manipulation of an L-Bar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKpaeekLbpY

During the editing of this video I remembered quite well how to import the video files into iMovie as well as how to drag them to where i wanted them to be. I also had to remember how to create title cards which changed from the previous version. Instead of clicking on a T for a text box a person double clicks on the title card itself. If a person wants a fade it is the same mechanic as the previous one. I took the initiative to add music to this video and also figuring out how to remove color. I chose the music for its title (Test). I thought it was fitting for what the video is. A test of moving an L bar around. The music also lines up with the end of each test. Fading at the end was also easy. One moves the green dot in the sound bar to the left to give a decrescendo. All in all this was a great learning experience. 

Richard Serra and Hayao Miyazaki and the Cindy Sherman Effect.

In 1973 Richard Serra produced a video entitled Television Delivers People. The video is just a long stream of yellow words with a blue background. There is also elevator music in the background. The idea that Serra proposed was that the consumer was actually the consumed and the advertising company was actually the consumer because they were giving people a commercial to actually drive to a store and buy a product in order to make the corporation more money. I personally enjoy this humorous video because it makes one think and Serra did not require any visual pictures besides words to do so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5wLk_CSSOc

Cindy Sherman is a video artist and she used film stills as a way to obtain art. Hayao Miyazaki is a manga writer, screen writer, and animator. Everyone of his fi,ms are very well drawn and directed. His skills are so well done that a random still of his films can be called art as well. here is an example from spirited away. I would totally put this image on my wall. Hayao Miyazaki is interesting because all of his movies take place in a time when technology is either just on the rise or very simplistic. People are just dealing with the rise in technology and how that is effecting nature. In the same movie there is a train that runs on water. The effects on the local fish population could be disastrous.

Technology and collaboration

Certain programs that can be bought such as photoshop and adobe premiere are very big and sometimes daunting programs to explore. Working on a 30 second video with four other people was a great way to experience one of these programs. The video was filmed in the teachers college cafeteria and had some excellent ambient music from the taste of Harlem event. The clips were edited in the computer lab using the program iMovie  From my past experience I have had a lot of trouble navigating the different tools and effects one can use in the program. The team really helped clarify what one can do with the program and how to use the tools. Technology learning collaboratively lends itself well in class because a person might be too embarrassed to ask the teacher for help and therefore can ask his peers if they know the answer. It allows students to gain ideas about being creative using videos as an art source. 

Visiting Artists Ebru Kurbak and Irene Posch

On February 27th 2014, the class New Media New Forms had the pleasure of meeting environmental artists Ebru Kurbak and Irene Posch. Their artwork deals with the clothes a person can wear to interact with the environment. Ebru described her work on a chart of body vs not body and environment vs not environment because of the interaction of all of them combined. The work itself involves the inclusion of technology in everyday clothing materials. One such work is titled Taiknam  Hat, which is a hat with feathers that respond to radio waves in the air. Another work of feathers that is not worn, but an installation picks up cell phone signals and moves to them. Their work is fascinating because it allows a wider audience due to the fact that people can wear it and move around for the public to see. I found their work interesting because before I had no idea metal could be made into a material that could be sewn into fabric and then sewn into a sweater or gloves. The potential of their work is endless and I thank them for coming in and explaining what they do.