Makers: Analog Meets Digital
"I think what Ali means is the coding/computer work vs physically building things" John, Inna, Andrea and I discussed using Google Talk on March 10th, to discuss the plans for the Mississippi trip. The basis of our discussion was using the resource of water as a installation in our media making process. Since analog by definition is "is the process of taking an audio or video signal (in most cases, the human voice) and translating it into electronic pulses." This theme created three main concepts, create real-time sound, story telling, and organic projection.
One of the concepts that came out of our discussion was a way to create sound in real time using water as a sound source. Since we will be surrounded by water, there will already be these sorts of sounds in our environment, but if we have a way to amplify many other types of sounds made with water and perhaps process them electronically, we might be able to produce audio content that blends into the environment, or cooperates with it in some way.
To do this in real time poses some challenges. For example, wind could interfere with microphones, so some sort of wind screen or shielding would need to be used. Underwater microphones were also suggested, which would not have a problem with wind while under the surface of the water. An alternative is to prerecord a library of water sounds that could be used for performances. However, I think that being able to use water as an instrument for performing brings in an organic element has a certain charm that might be difficult to achieve with samples.
Feedback might also be a problem, but we could use processing in Max or other software to dynamically adjust the microphone levels. I've seen video of this being done with a feedback piano at Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Here's a video that illustrates some of their work including the feedback piano project.
http://vimeo.com/3384555
Some examples of how liquid could be used to create sound include: submerged microphones, pouring water from one container to another, droplets of water falling into a container, blowing bubbles into a container through a straw or hose, tapping on metal containers with moving water inside, water draining down sinks, and so on. Using prerecorded sounds we could also use surf, waves, rain, streams, rivers, splashing, etc.
Another concept that came up was in recording to do a play on how humans interact and a sort of storytelling occurs with a play on words. Like when little children play telephone under water and you see how stories change over time, and how meanings become distorted. It would be interesting to do an underwater telephone game where someone tells a story and see how that translates about going down the mississippi, but not only translate but to further it by changing the sound of a human voice into electronic pulses to match the meeting between analog and digital. Another aspect we looked at was how water affects us and what it means to us. It must carry a certain meaning since we will be traveing down it, so artists that use water in their work was suggested. The depletion and usage of water in today's society, and how that is affecting us and how it will effect us in the future. We want to use water as a vehicle for sound production and basically translate it to how past meets present, analog meets digital, how there are parallels that exist.
Some ways of executing the organic projections and sound was using some things we already have that contain analog: CD players, iPods... using it to project video analog. Let's carry out the visual aspect of analog. It is also important to state that even though we are making the plans of how to execute these programs, through MaxMSP, Proccessing and such, we should all educate ourselves on how to look outside the box and create new forms, new sounds, new images in a more lowbudget sense as well. USE THE WATER, it is our biggest installation/collaboration yet.
Artists we referenced were: John Cage, Beth (TJ Barnes' wife) and artists from http://eai.org (electronic arts intermix), http://www.wwar.com/categories/Artists/Subject_Matter/Water/
