Our final assignment for FACS2930 was certainly an interesting one. A group dynamic was both exciting and challenging, but in the end produced (in my opinion) excellent results.
The sounds I used in my editing process that the group and I did not make ourselves were the hospital sounds towards the end of the piece. They can be found in the folder "hospital sounds" in the data folder we submitted. They were collected from the website: http://www.hark.com/collections/njtpqxxdms-emergency. They are entitled,
"Defibrillator paddles being rubbed"
"Defibrillator"
"Electrocardiograph" and
"Flatline"
Artist Statement
We wanted to create a piece that was a surreal experience, where the listener could come up with multiple interpretations of what was going on, until it becoming more clear at the end.
We started with the idea of trying to imagine a person who was schizophrenic, and what they would hear/experience as they were walking through campus. Eventually the setting of the piece got changed to an asylum/compound, which as you can imagine from a student's point of view, draws many parallels with university life.
The beginning of the piece starts off with what seems to be a chase; it seems someone has broken out and is escaping from their confines, but the truth of the matter is that they were dying and the sounds the listener is hearing is people attempting to revive the patient, though this is not revealed until the end when their heartbeat ultimately flat-lines.
While the protagonist/patient in the piece seemed to be experiencing escape/freedom, it was intended to be an out of body experience just before they died.
Reflection
Overall, I think the class did a great job on their sound walks and was pleased we got to experience at least some of them. Listening to others from home is interesting, but certainly would have been nice to experience them in the contexts/setting that they were intended to be in.
I really enjoyed the RPG/video game feel of the Wizard adventure (Pavel's group) and thought the voices and effects were very well done.
While other pieces led to interesting places and were well-composed, I found I did not enjoy them so much because I found the content to be a bit sexist. Particularly I am referring to the "war" piece done by Evan's group; while they may have tried to stay true to the types of video games they play, I found myself getting very irritated at the constant shouting of "boys!" ("Lets go, boys!" "Come on, boys!" etc) - all I could think was, half of the class are girls, thank you very much. How about using phrases such as "Let's go, team!" or "move out, troops!"
In terms of reflecting on my own group's piece, it turned out both better and worse than I had expected.
In terms of the worse, I was sad the the timing did not work out as we had intended, due to the variable pace - some parts were intended to be quite fast, while others slow/still and contemplative. Evidently I am not the best leader and pace-keeper for this type of thing, because while the timing worked out fine when I did it on my own, at certain points during the group walk I would turn around and not everyone had kept up with my erratic pace.
On the plus side, towards the end of the walk, a certain participant absolutely made my day by taking the walk to a whole new level and getting through a locked door that we had never intended - hell, we weren't even sure it could open at all. This surpassed my expectations by about a million times, and kept me smiling all day. :)
I think this is a really great example of the walk taking on new depths and perceptions that no one - not the artists nor the participants - ever expected to come about. It really took our "open interpretation" concept to a different place (literally).
In terms of the impact that the experience can have on not just the participants but the people who encounter and observe us while we are having these experiences, I am absolutely sure that the effect my group's walk had crossed a threshold from people thinking, "Wow, look at that strange group of people running around together with headphones on," to "why is there a large group of headphone-wearing people assaulting our office door?!"
Conclusion: awesome.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Deep Listening - Magda's Lecture
That is what I heard.
Classroom noises, aka, the ambiance of impatience.
The fear of being asked to do something
in a space where we ordinarily just observe
fills the rooms with a thick ambiance of nervousness.
What does this tell us?
Evidently, more people need to attend lecture in order to fill the classroom with more sounds.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Location Scouting with group for Project # 4
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| Some of the places we plan to take the class on our audio walk tour. |
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| Our group! |
Friday, February 11, 2011
Assignment 3 - embodiment
Virtual Alpine Challenge is a 3D reality video game that is different than the other snowboarding video games on the market. It features a virtual reality helmet that simulates incredibly real looking terrain. Additionally, the interface allows one to select whichever course they want to play, and connect through WiFi to gain access to additional terrains and parks once the user has completed the 50 that the game initially comes with.
The beam that holds the deck is incredibly responsive; it raises, lowers and swivels based on the riders preference, pressure and stance to allow for maximum room for any angels the user wishes to achieve. None of the other snowboarding games on the market have a life-size deck or bindings to hold the user in, which means that it cannot feel very real or simulate the sport properly. The large deck and bindings (which one should be wearing shoes before stepped into) allows the avid snowboarder to keep up their muscle definition and skill even in the off season.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Presentation: Embodiment & ORLAN
Embodiment can refer to so many different things, and we don’t even really have a solid and workable definition of everything that it can encompass in relation to our course yet. But we know one thing for certain, and that is that it will absolutely border on art, technology and society. When I initially set out to do this presentation, my ideas of embodiment in art was basically just that it was installation art which would combine the body and physical space, with some computing and digital technology in the mix. But there are some artists who combine installation art with performance art in a new way, and that is by physically becoming their art using new technologies that were not available in the past.
Orlan is a French artist who was born in 1947. She uses a variety of mediums including performance art, as well multimedia in the form of video and digital photography. She has gone beyond conventional artists who use their body in their art and had surgeries performed which she calls “Orlan Carnal Art.” The plastic surgery she has undergone changed her face in a way that defies traditional ideas of beauty; she used surgery as a medium to communicate her views on beauty standards. Furthermore, she turns each of her surgeries into a live performance piece by staying awake during the operation, having it recorded and broadcast, and even reads aloud and answers questions while it is going on.
At first it may seem that Orlan is just another example of a woman getting plastic surgery to try to conform to a set of beauty standards, and that combining technology and her flesh is just something excessive that is typical, and almost to be expected in our modern-day society. 
However, if we look closer we can see that this is not the case, because when she talks about cosmetic surgery as a whole, she says that she is not against it, it is a technique of our time, but that she is against its attempts to standardize people. She uses it in an entirely different way, as she tries to use it to cultivate an individual identity, not to construct beauty in the way of dominant ideologies.
These philosophies about beauty standards and the way she goes about attempting to challenge them is also what sets her apart from other artists who work in the same mediums as she does, such as Stelarc, because the art that she does explores different themes. The issues that her art explores are feminist in nature. Someone like Sterlac’s work such as the ear on arm is using a similar medium to Orlan via the way of surgery, but his goals and what he is trying portray are entirely different from hers. Stelarc explores wanting to extend the bodies operational capabilities. 
Orlan’s work follows a certain methodology, each operation she has performed is chosen very deliberately. When referring to all nine surgical performances it is entitled “The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan.” Each surgery has a specific theme, which is revealed during the process as Orlan reads aloud literature and philosophy. “The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan” began when she created a composite image on the computer that combined her face with the faces of famous women in art history. Their portraits represent idealized femininity from different time periods, and it was that digital image that served as the basis for the cosmetic surgeries that she would take on.
Orlan does this to her body to critique notions of beauty which she feels are due to male power structures. In Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway takes the same stance but she uses the metaphor of the cyborg to say that something we think is a natural, like human bodies, are not natural, but are constructed by our ideas about them. Haraway believes that women are often discussed or treated in ways that reduce them to bodies, which is reflected in Orlan’s work as well. Both of their works make the audience examine the role of the body in contemporary digital art and culture, but Orlan takes it a step further and actually physically alters herself, and because of the technological means attached to what she does, she is in a sense becoming post-human, or a cyborg.
Its not just about the type of art she is doing on her physical body, (lots of artists have used their bodies as a canvas before) but also the way she chooses to broadcast the art using technology to increase her stage and performance.In the end, it is difficult to distinguish Orlan’s life from her art because her art has become her life, which to me is a strong characteristic of what embodiment is.
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