Pressure Project 3
Posted: October 30, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Recently an area of my art-making has been rooted in archival research. I’m curious about our human instincts to keep records and return to memory, and I wonder about the role remembering plays in the human experience. For this project I used sheet music that I found while exploring a community digital archive called “Watsonville is in the Heart.” This community project is maintained by the descendants and relatives of the “manong generation,” which is the term used to talk about the Filipino men who immigrated to California and worked as migrant farmers in the early 20th century. I have a personal connection to this, as my great-great uncle Dionisio Duque was among that first wave of immigrants. I don’t have a lot of information about him or his life during this time, so doing this kind of archival investigation feeds some of this curiosity.
Here is the original sheet music. This music was hand-written by a man named Arsenio Lopez; he and a few other gentlemen would play music at cultural events and parties together. This song, “Dahil Say-yo,” is a famous Filipino love song (called a “Kundiman”).
Arsenio was a saxophonist, and so is my brother! So the next step of my sound piece involved asking my brother if he could send me a recording of him playing this song. After he sent it to me, I added some record snaps and pops from freesound.org and played with some distortions to try and make his recording sound a little tinny. Because the music notation had words included, it made me think that this song needed a vocal element as well. I did a few recordings of me singing and humming in different octaves, and then added those into the track. I made the humming quite faint and only come in at the beginning and end, and added some reverb and other slight alterations to the highest octave vocal track. I wanted the highest octave to sound sort of haunting and distant, and this is the track that continues for most of the piece. The lower octave voice joins in halfway and sings with her.
As the source material felt important to me, I wanted to include it in some way. I decided to make a diptych with the sheet music and did my own “annotations,” taking some inspiration from illuminated manuscripts. The piece to me is about reaching for something, and the moments where something reaches back to you. I included tracings, transfers, drawings, and collaged elements of his and his wife’s hands.
At our presentation, I was so pleased that a lot of my thoughts and concepts came through for the group. I was especially interested in the conversations that came out about lullabies, and how the songs we sing to our children are especially important carriers of memory and culture.
Pressure Project 3:
Posted: October 29, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Pressure Project 3:
For this project, I chose to work on a sound design and composition piece centered around a narrative poem by the contemporary Persian poet, Ahmad Shamloo. Shamloo’s poetry had a profound influence on me growing up, and I consider it a personal cultural touchstone. Poetry plays a significant role in both my country’s culture and my own personal development, which is why I selected it over other cultural elements for this project.
I utilized a recording of Shamloo himself reciting his poem as the foundation for my work, aiming to create a text painting that captures and visualizes the atmosphere of the story he narrates. I recorded and designed all the sounds specifically for this project. Below is a screenshot from the Ableton project I used to mix and master the audio.
The story of “Parya” by Ahmad Shamlou is centered around three fairies called Parya who lives in a small, conservative village. Parya are free-spirited and imaginative child, qualities that make her stand out in her traditional and restrictive environment. The narrative unfolds as Parya encounters various social constraints and prejudices that aim to suppress her individuality and aspirations.
The villagers, including her own family, are depicted as being bound by old customs and superstitions that limit the roles and expressions of women and girls. Parya’s attempts to explore her identity and pursue her dreams are met with resistance and misunderstanding. Despite this, she shows resilience and continues to nurture her inner world of dreams and hopes.
As the plot progresses, Parya’s struggles become symbolic of the broader fight against societal oppression. Shamlou uses her character to critique not only gender inequality but also other forms of social injustice. The story of Parya ends on a emotional note, reflecting the harsh realities faced by many in similar situations, yet it also carries a message of enduring spirit and the need for societal change.
Pressure Project Two:
Posted: October 29, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Pressure Project 2: Enchanted Chest
For the Magic Door Project, I decided to focus on a small, personally treasured chest rather than a conventional door, aiming to imbue it with a sense of magic. This transformation involved equipping the chest’s door with interactive features that engage both visually and audibly as it is opened, creating an immersive experience facilitated by the software Isadora.
Utilizing a MakeyMakey kit, I established a connection between the chest’s door and Isadora, setting the stage to activate the project upon opening. The moment the chest is opened, it comes alive with the sounds of traditional Persian music, enhancing the atmosphere and setting a culturally backdrop. Alongside the music, a narrative unfolds, detailing the art of Negargari—a traditional Persian miniature painting—which is aptly depicted on the exterior of the chest itself.
Visually, the project leverages a camera to generate dynamic images that respond to the opening of the chest. These images, including a depiction of the chest itself, are then projected, further enriching the user’s experience and blending the tangible with the magical. This interactive installation not only showcases the chest’s aesthetic but also transforms it into a portal to a world of Persian art of Negargari.
Pressure Project 3: A Sonic Quilt of Taiwan
Posted: October 25, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »As a choreographer, much of my creative research and artistic practice emanates from my identity as a Taiwanese-American. My choreography is deeply concerned with ideas of hybridity, multilingualism, and interculturalism. I see intercultural encounters existing within each and every interaction with another individual or environment.
This past summer, I had the opportunity to return to Taiwan for a 6-week research trip. During this trip, I created a daily practice of capturing artefacts of Taiwan through video, photo, and sound. I am particularly drawn to sonic artefacts due to their ability to completely just place me in a fully embodied sensory memory. In all honesty, upon returning to the US in June, I had procrastinated listening to and digesting what all these sonic artefacts meant to me. This pressure project 3 felt like the perfect time to listen to and layer these artefacts into a quilt of what Taiwan sounds like to me.
Because I had captured sound recordings daily, I spent a considerable amount of time identifying which sounds I wanted to integrate. The first sonic artefact that I instinctively wanted to utilize was an audio recording of my mom and two of my aunts in conversation. I was deeply drawn to this recording for many reasons. I can track a different closeness with each of them and I have, at various times throughout my life, lived with and depended upon each of them. There is a strong feeling and memory of home in this recording; it immediately evokes early memories of sitting around the living room table, eating snacks, and hearing a wash of languages over me. In the sound recording, they are speaking in both Taiwanese and Mandarin Chinese, sometimes switching between languages every other word. I am not very fluent in Taiwanese, but have always been so enthralled by the rhythmic quality of the language and its seven tonalities. I initially desired to split up the audio track by speaker but found this process quite difficult due to my mom and aunts interrupting and speaking over each other.
I chose to interrupt the sequence of the conversation with recordings of birds chirping at the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial in Taipei, the sounds of cicadas on the mountains near Taipei National University of the Arts, a local temple playing rhythmic cymbals and gongs on a procession, and the theme song of the grocery store Px Mart. As I was selecting each of these sounds, I was reminded of the most quintessential sound of Taiwan through a garbage truck playing Für Elise to signal that it was time to take out the trash. At any time of day, throughout all of Taiwan, you can hear Für Elise played through the sound systems of a garbage truck to let people know it’s time to bring their trash out. I chose to layer all of these sonic artefacts together to build a cacophony. This layering is legitimately how Taiwan sounds to me—that at any moment, you can hear ancient cymbals and brass instruments against the electronic humming of Für Elise, the zooming of mopeds, and people speaking in multiple languages.
In our in-class feedback, it was super interesting to hear how people resonated with feelings of home, comfort, and traveling in and out of different locations. I deeply appreciated how people identified that there was clearly a different meaning for Für Elise in the context of these sonic artefacts, perhaps evoking a memory of ice cream trucks in the US. I always personally experience an activation of the imagination when listening to these sounds and was encouraged to hear that others had a similar experience—that they were able to imagine for themselves what visuals or memories might accompany the sounds.
Lastly, we briefly touched upon why I chose to use Isadora to edit the sound together and it prompted a very interesting reflection on ways of making and how different programs and software support different ways of making. It reminded me of our class conversations about Software Takes Command and how different software embody a myriad of values based upon their design and how those values might ripple down to us as users. This prompted a lot of self-reflexivity on my biases in making and what is rippling out into the work that I create. I value non-linearity in making. I frequently will take movement apart and put it back together again in a different sequence in an attempt towards meaning-making. This approach was supported through using Isadora. I felt incredible freedom to start in what ended up being the middle or climax of my sonic quilt with layering different sounds before I chopped up the conversation recording and added the beginning and ending.
Pressure Project 3
Posted: October 23, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »So for Pressure Project 3, I wanted to include several video game soundtracks and sound effects that I have listened to and has sort of resonated with me throughout my life. I started off by playing the Sonic the Hedgehog OST because that game was one of the first games I ever played back when I had a PlayStation 2. I played three songs that I remember quite fondly and stuck with me the most. The first song is from the Green Hill Zone which I think was from the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. The second song is the Mystic Cave Zone 2 player mode which I thought was a very catchy theme and one that I liked a lot. The third theme is from the Spring Yard Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 1. This one was quite memorable for me as well and another one I really liked.
For the second group of sound effects, I chose to do Helldivers 2 because it is a game that I currently play. The first sound clip you hear is from when you land onto a planet with the Helldivers 2 theme playing in the background as your Helldiver dives onto the planet inside their drop pod. Then you can hear the Democracy Officer say “Let them come. Let them brawl. Let them face the insurmountable might of the Helldivers.” This voice line is one of my favorites from him and gets you motivated for the mission that awaits you. The second clip is from actual gameplay where a squad of Helldivers fights off against a horde of Terminids.
For the third group of sound effects, I chose to do Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 because that game is one of the more recent games in my Steam Library that I play with my brother and cousin. The first sound clip is from an Eternal War PVP match, where it has the music that plays when it shows the map fly around cutscene. Then it shows the class selection screen and then you hear the voice line from the faction leader that says, “Bring order to the Chapter brothers.” This voice line only plays if you are on the Adeptus Astartes team. The enemy team are the Heretic Astartes but that depends on which team you are on. The clip then plays in-game sound effects of PVP combat and voice lines from the characters.
For the fourth and final group of sound effects, I chose to do Buckshot Roulette multiplayer, which is an upcoming mode for the game Buckshot Roulette that will come out on October 31st (this Halloween). This game mode is something that I am really excited for as I have played the original single player mode and I am familiar with the gameplay (I can’t wait to play this with other people). Also, I really love the soundtrack for the game as I like the kind of music that plays in the background while you are playing the game. The soundtrack is composed by Mike Klubnika, who is also the solo developer and creator of Buckshot Roulette. The soundtrack for the multiplayer mode comes out the same day multiplayer mode releases, and I am excited for both to come out.
Pressure Project 3
Posted: October 22, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Naiya Dawson Sound Project
My idea for the sound project was to find different sounds that represent me in different ways. I tried to find sounds on the site Freesounds.org that match the music and rhythm that I was envisioning in my head. I started with gathering and downloading all of my sound files and then I organized them in a way that was interesting to me. I then used garage band to edited and overlap my sounds together.
For my sounds specifically I started off with a rain/water fall sound. The sound of rain and water has always been something I enjoyed and something that helps me relax. I then added in a jazz music sound, african drums, afrobeats, and a ballet class sound to represent parts of my dance background.
Pressure Project 3
Posted: October 22, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »For pressure project 3, I tried to think of something centered around sound that was really important to me growing up that I would able to find resources for or representation sounds for. Something that really stood out in my memory — and what I eventually settled on — was my time in my highschool marching band. I spent all of my free time and really grew up in band, so it seemed like a good topic for an assignment about sound and culture.
I realized when doing this project that I don’t have nearly as many videos and sound recordings of my life as I would like. My photos app on my phone, social media channels, drives, and physical storage are filled to the brim with pictures capturing my life, but there are barely any videos of anything. In the current age of technology, I’m so saddened by this. It’s so easy to press record on my phone and capture things and yet there’s not a lot from this time in my life and others to work with.
With this in mind — and determined to not switch ideas or give up — I contacted some old friends and asked for anything they had, as well as scoured the internet for things that other people in the community had posted openly around eight years ago. I was able to scrounge up a fair amount of videos, so then it was a matter of making meaning out of them.
My intention with the project was to capture the feeling of being in marching band and the community that went on behind it. Most of what anyone ever see’s with performance groups is the final stage piece — polished and clean for public consumption. The final performace is a bit part of it since it’s what we work toward for months at a time, but it’s not everything. It doesn’t really capture the people that make up the performace, how we interact with one another, and the work that goes into the end vision.
To do this, I tried to mix and match videos of performace with the band goofing off and bonding. I tried to keep away from any chronological order with my source videos and tried to balance putting silly stuff next to serious stuff. I also book ended the project with the ‘standard’ announcement that all bands here at a performace and the more personal send off that our band did at the end of every practice. This mix of universiality of personal memories was also important to me in this project.
One note I have from the project was I wish it didn’t rely so heavily on the visuals. For something so centered around music, it was hard to find audio that made sense without the context of the visual to go along with it. I suppose I could have centered the audio more around a feeling than events and people, and that might have made more sense in a solely audio context, but in the moment I couldn’t justify getting rid of visuals when the medium on marching band is also highly visual. If I were to go back and do it again, I would work more towards a piece independent of video though.
Regardless, I had a good time doing this project and living in my memories for a little bit. It’s always nice to look back and feel nostalgic for awhile. 🙂
Pressure Project 2: The Mystery is You
Posted: October 16, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »The theme of pressure project 2 was “A Mystery is Revealed”. I wanted to build a cohesive experience with internal thematic consistency. To save time I chose to start with the physical resources I had available and find digital assets to match. For example, I knew that I wanted illumination at the point of reveal and I had a string of golden twinkle lights that I was able to trigger with an Arduino. I knew that I wanted to use some consistent symbology and I had a cedar plank that I had carved a feather into a year ago. I found a golden feather image that I could use for the projections that would tie the two physical resources together.
Top: Chest with the golden lights and cedar carving. Bottom: Golden feather image that I found for thematic consistency.
Resources
- Time (10 hours)
- Laptop
- Isadora
- Arduino Board
- Door
- Webcam
- Video
- Forest audio
- Chest
- Feather carving in wood
- Mirror
- Twinkle Lights
- Photos of the Motion Lab (MoLa)
- Michael H. (Master of the MoLa)
- Overhead projector, 360º projection
Score
I chose to use the monomyth template to help craft a compelling story and expedite the writing process. The experience is meant to be a group experience that leads to a single-player experience with group observation. At the beginning of the experience, each member of the group is considered “the character,” but at the turning point one self-selected member becomes “the hero.”
The story begins at the character’s baseline. They are walking through a forest they’ve known their whole life. Today something feels different. The character enters the MoLa where they see an idyllic forest projected on the main screen with a less prominent projection of stone and vines on the door to the left.
The character is called to action when they happen upon a strange symbol and a mysterious audio track begins to play – a simple chord progression played on a synthesizer in the key of C with some dissonant notes on the second and fourth chords. A disembodied voice provides supernatural aid. The voice is meant to skate the line between enticing and menacing. The voice promises to set the character on a path to an eternal mystery that many before have sought. The mystery can lead to riches or ruin, enlightenment or deception. The overhead projector throws a white circle onto the ground in front of the main screen and beckons “step forward.”
When motion is detected in the circle of light, the path is revealed. The symbol from the main projector materializes on the door and the voice beckons “seek… me.” The music changes from the mysterious track to a sparse, driving bass track intended to build tension.
The character approaches and opens the door to the storage room. From previous experiences in the MoLa, people are hesitant to pile into the store room. The hero is expected to descend to the chest alone, while the group gathers outside the threshold. As the hero opens the chest, they are bathed in light (atonement). As they look into the chest, their own distorted face gazes back in a curved mirror (gift of the Goddess). For a moment, only the hero knows the mystery until they choose whether or not to share it with the group.
Valuaction/evaluation
My pressure project centered around two themes. The primary theme is that each person is a mystery even unto themselves. Self-awareness exists on a spectrum, but even those on the high end know themselves only within the limited context of their own experiences. For example, if life has granted you relative safety and security, you don’t know the person you would become if you were starving. Conversely if life has handed you constant hardship, you don’t know how you would respond to sudden abundance.
The secondary theme is that while self-knowledge is a worthy pursuit, it is not without its perils. The ego can deceive. Sometimes we justify our preconceptions and externalize aspects of ourselves that make us uncomfortable.
While these themes are personally meaningful, I was not convinced that they would come across in the performance.
Performance
The performance went well, especially for not having access to the MoLa prior to the morning of the installation (due to illness during the week prior). There were two minor issues, one my fault, and one an unforeseen environmental constraint.
Isadora began to crash in the hour leading up to the performance, and some of my progress was lost. I was unsure how the final performance would go and what would be lost. Because of my nerves during the performance I found myself pacing and accidentally triggered the reveal by walking in front of the camera. This rushed the reveal, but I believe that this went unnoticed by the audience.
When developing my score I envisioned the chest to be sitting in a dark room, lit only by the bleed from the door projector. As the hero opened the chest, they would be bathed in light, increasing the intrigue and anticipation for the rest of the audience. During installation I learned that the lights in the store room could not be controlled. As soon as the hero crossed the threshold, the lights would automatically trigger. This detracted a little bit from the dramatic image that I had intended. This was a minor bummer, but it wasn’t a major dealbreaker.
Initial forest video projection
Call to action and Supernatural Aid
The mystery unveiled (re-recorded from home in the intended darkness). It looks really cool in the dark (hard to re-create the unveiling of the face with a phone).
Initial Score. I ultimately decided to swap the makey makey for the Arduino because it could run self-contained in the chest without worrying about routing the wires back to the computer when the chest was closed. In the final experience several of these ideas were altered and removed for time. Note from the time log that I made the audio very simple. This is the type of thing that I would normally sink a lot of time into, but the demands of the pressure project forced me to strategically simplify so that I could divert valuable time to other aspects that would provide more value. Overall I think the simplicity worked really well for the experience and putting more time into intricate music design may well have detracted from the overall experience.
Sketches of the door and MoLa. I used these to help develop the vision remotely and to continually simplify my initial vision to balance the time that I had available and the vision that I had in my head.
Atmospherics scene in Isadora. This enabled me to keep all of the persistent projections and atmospheric audio tracks playing seamlessly throughout the experience. I named all of the scenes after the corresponding phase of The Hero’s Journey, which was a really nice organizing schema during scoring, evaluation, and performance.
The experience was heavy on exposition. I created a User Actor called Speak Chain that allowed me to introduce and control meaningful pauses in the disembodied voice.
Pressure Project 2
Posted: October 15, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Naiya Dawson
For my pressure project 2 my idea was to create an interactive door bell/smart house alarm system. I started by researching the makey makeys and different ways they can be used interactively. I found videos explaining how people used the to create doorbells either by creating it to work with a door mat, a piece of paper, or hangers. This was very helpful for me to understand how to use the makey makey. After figuring out the makey makey idea I went into isadora and create scenes that related to the house alarm/ door bell. I created scenes that used sounds such as a normal ding dong for the door bell and then one for the security alarm noise. The next couple seems contained messages I thought would be cool to have as a going away or welcoming message at the door bell. The last few scenes were used with cameras and my idea was to show different ways motion could be detected or some type of surveillance. For the makey makey I used a piece of a cereal box and wrapped a piece of aluminum foil around it. I then added the clips from the makey makey on to both sides. This allowed my to create a touch door bell so that when I hit the makey makey with my finger it started my isadora patch and you could hear the ding dong sound.
I think the most challenging part of the project was actually coming up with an idea and adding in the makey makey to it. I enjoyed how this project showed me how much of isadora I have learned and now understand. I started with my isadora patch and after creating for a little while I started to get way more ideas.
To improve my pressure project or add more concepts to the experience I think it would have been interesting to play with projection. I think this would have made my project way more engaging and challenged me to use more resources. I think it would also be cool to play with space and see the result of my project in different places and settings if I were to try incorporating the projection aspect. I also enjoyed seeing my classmates projects and ideas it was really inspiring to see and it helped me see all the different possible resources available and how they can be used.
I have added pictures of some of my isadora patch and my makey makey button.
Pressure Project 2
Posted: October 15, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »When I started out this project, I was really excited to get into the storytelling and create a mystery. I went through a few different ideas including a treasure map, a secret agent entering a vault door, and turning the door into a magic mirror with an evil spirit. These were all really cool, but I was having a hard time fitting them into the required resources, so after a lot of brainstorming and trying to make things fit, I switched approaches. I looked at the resources I had and figured out the best ways to use them and then built a story around that.
The end story I ended up with was a story about an adventurer going on a journey to rescue something and the pressure project being the adventurer finally getting to where they are going and having the final boss fight.
With the makey-makey I decided to make my own controller to cast magic spells. I used the webcam to make the evil spirit more angry (symbols changing on screen more frantically) when there is more movement in front of the camera. I used a stuffed unicorn (his name is Craig) as the final treasure that you find behind the door. Since I have an interest and focus in storytelling and animation, I tried to find ways to incorporate more narrative into the built system. This resulted in three different scenes. The first scene is the ‘villains monologue’ where we are introduced to the task at hand. The second scene is where the battle and interaction mainly takes place. The third scene was the indicator of success and telling people they can now open the door and receive their prize.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no idea how long things take to complete. I started out this project with really grand ideas and a big vision of what I wanted and thought “This is completely reasonable and doable in a ten hour time frame!”. I was very wrong. That being said, when I realized just how long certain things were taking me, I was able to scale down my ideas considerably to get to something that was more manageable.
There are two different mindsets that I’ve had professors try to instill in me over the past two years. The first one is to work in slices. The whole thing doesn’t need to be complete, but at the deadline, that section of the thing needs to be a complete and working thing. The second mindset I’ve been referring to is to look at the software and figure out what I can do with what I have, rather than trying to fit what I have into something I want to do – working from inward as opposed to outward in. In terms of scale, I try to remind myself of these things on every project I work on. I’m more successful on some occasions than others.
Obviously, my first attempt at presenting this didn’t go as planned. Apparently, the last time I worked on my project, none of the progress I made saved, causing the initial break in the system. Then when I tried to fix it, my laptop decided it had had enough and gave out on working for the rest of the day. Over the weekend, I was able to figure out the issue with the saving, and make the changes necessary so that it should work fine when I attempt to present next.
Other than that, there was a lot of iterating in the process and trial and error in trying to get things to work. I had a vision of what I wanted to make, but I ended up exploring different nodes and trying to find realistic ways to make things. I started with a small task of making the butterflies move, and figured out how to be creative with the other spells.
I really liked getting to work with physical materials in this project. A lot of the work I do usually exists only on the computer screen, so I liked getting to play around with the makey-makey, and doing arts and crafts to make my controller. I think if I were to go back and do it again, I would focus more on finding better ways to make the experience more immersive and using my environment to my advantage.
