Prior to the sound block I felt a little unsure of how I would do, as I had not worked with sound before. I gained a lot of confidence after completing the sound Appropriation segment, but am still not sure how successful I was in terms of what I produced. Without a lot of technical skill, I found it hard to experiment while working on my projects, but made sure to keep iterating nevertheless. This meant that I often either made small changes within my understanding or large changes that I didn't always grasp the full impact of. Because of this, I found it hard to gauge how well I did on a lot of these projects. That being said, I very much enjoyed working on every assignment.

I was quite proud of how my sound appropriation and collage work turned out, possibly because working on the collages and recording ambient sound gave me some time to learn and understand the process, and boosted my confidence. This gave me a bit of leeway to experiment, and apply theory and meaning to the piece I created. If anything turned out poorly, I think that I could have been better organized during the instrument assignment. I took some time to plan and construct the instrument and ran into several problems that I didn't plan ahead and schedule time to solve. One of the biggest of these was finding a way to keep the strings of my instrument taught, which I ended up doing with one gloved hand. I think our performance for that section went well, though not without some technical hiccups. Our performance surprised me by being among the more experimental, and after watching the recording of the performance I was very happy with the narrative structure we created. If I had any serious regret, it was that (after a comment about how we looked like a group of bodyguards) I didn't think of a more interesting band name. I just hope no marks were deducted for a lack of onomastic ingenuity.

Both the collage work and sound appropriation project combined theory and practice together, which meant that they lent themselves well to metaphor, which definitely contributed to my success in these projects. For the instrument project, any success I had lay in working out a lot of different ideas before settling on a single one, however I should have researched DIY instruments, figured out what problems I would run into before starting work. In the final performance piece, using the Jabberwocky as inspiration for our performance worked well because the piece is quite short, with very strong emotions and frequent dramatic shifts, giving our performance a range of emotions and a strong structure. However we didn't test our backing track before performing and I think that because we had not formed a group before creating our instruments the performance was quite odd. I don't know whether this worked in our favor or against it, but I quite enjoyed the dissonance.

I've learned to do research on the specific problem and before brainstorming my concepts, rather than decide on what to do and then figure out how to achieve that. That way I will realize when something is unfeasible, what precedent there is for an idea and I may even be inspired by previous or potential projects. I've also learned that I work much better conceptually, and am more productive when I can identify a meaning, or philosophical or artistic theme in my work. I tend to have difficulty diving into a task physically without first identifying a clear purpose, whether artistic or practical.

The Sound Project – Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle

I probably should have done this post like two weeks ago but I was so busy writing and having a social life I didn’t get around writing this. I did write 10115 words in six days though so no one can say that I was being lazy (and yes, having a social life also counts as me being productive because I generally have a tendency of not seeing people, like ever). Anyway, here we go with the reflective…

The Waste of the World Becomes My Art

Description:

We were to create two collages out of traditional and digital media to represent music sampling. We could sample from anywhere and compile our resources together to form two images. We weren’t given a theme for the collages so we could make any type of appropriate image out of anything we wanted. We were also given a week to complete them.

Feelings:

I felt a bit nervous before creating the collage because it was the first project we were doing in Creative Technologies. I was confident, though, in the fact that I wasn’t going to use paper as the base of the collage. Overall, it was a mix of feelings beforehand but I remained excited nevertheless. When I established a plan of what I was going to do, the process became less conceptual and I grew more confident in what I was doing. It took a day or two to get into the making of the traditional collage but at this point, I still hadn’t figured out what to do for the digital collage. The idea of gathering images from anywhere on the internet was slightly daunting. Doubt and uncertainty did plague my thoughts every now and then as to whether I was on the right track despite being told there wasn’t a right and wrong in this activity. Once the project culminated, there was a sense of happiness in what was created and I did understand why sampling can be difficult but also an enjoyable experience.

Evaluation:

What worked for me was the conceptualising beforehand and finding meaning in the images I was creating though it wasn’t required. The vinyl record I used as a base for the traditional collage worked well as a different type of surface other than paper. Experimenting was also something that worked well as it brought about ideas that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. I think what didn’t go as well was not gathering more resources beforehand. I also think that the process became a bit linear once I tried to imbue the images with some kind of meaning rather than try a more randomised approach. All in all, both the collages feel completed but had I more time, they may have been more elaborate.

Analysis:

The collages went well because:

I had drawn up some plans before starting and developed what I wanted the images to convey.  This saved much time and I was able to control what the end result looked like which, to me, would be aesthetically appealing.

Researching artists I like such as Matt Manley and looking closely at how they developed their work set the bar for the standard of work that I wanted to produce. 

I had previous experience in the field of traditional collage through art in high school and it made it easier to identify aesthetic issues and infuse the work with some flair. This also saved much time.

The collages could have improved:

Being a “perfectionist” didn’t help in regards to time management and I found myself occasionally wasting time on working on small details for hours on end without much avail. 

Spending too much time on trying to create meaning in the collage images, something that wasn’t required in the first place. But it gave me direction so it worked out eventually,

Those around me were encouraging especially with my use of the vinyl record. They thought it was quite different and that made my resolve in utilising it, even stronger.

Conclusion:

Overall, I think next time, my approach would be more randomised and not so planned out. I didn’t do it at that point because randomising something may have compromised the aesthetic feel and that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. I learnt that my unwillingness to be random in this project was a mindset from high school art. The look was so important that I was too afraid to go “crazy” with it and didn’t embrace the idea of neutrality in this project. I did understand the purpose of the project and how what we were creating was music sampling but in a different medium.

Action Plan:

Areas to be developed:

Ricardo introduced us to concept of the Gibbs Reflective Cycle - a method for evaluating and understanding events or projects. The following uses this method to reflect upon the experience of the “Sound” portion of the Studio I paper;

 Description

The Sound project, taking up the first four weeks of the Studio I paper, involved a variety of subprojects that ultimately taught us about manipulation of variety media. We began with digital/physical collages, progressed to sonic appropriation/soundscape design, then onto instrument design and building, and finally to a live performance that utilized all of the previous skills we'd refined.

 Feelings

There was a wide range of emotions and feelings generated by the whole process. Prior to starting the projects, I experienced excitement, given that audio's my thing and that I knew I could do well. I then experienced a tonne of frustration when things didn't work, that was doubled by the fact that I knew I should have been able to do it well. However, in the end, I was so proud of myself that I'd accomplished so much.

 Evaluation

I went into the project with the mindset that I'd be great at this, given my audio background. However, it's not healthy or productive to just take the easy way out and do the stuff I already know how to do, so I decided to challenge myself. The issue become that I was trying too hard to challenge myself and I got stuck. SO, so stuck. However, I did manage to get the whole way through and finish my entire projects which was super cool.

 Analysis

Things went south simply because I didn't go into the experience with an open mind, I went in with a bit of an ego, really. This meant that not only did I limit my ability to learn everything on a fresh slate, as opposed to relearning stuff I thought I already knew, but it also meant I missed out on experience the excitement of my first successes, or learning processes from my first failures. However, it was important for me to realise that I'd done this, allow myself to acknowledge it, and to realign my learning path to where it needed to be. From this point, the work I produce was of a much higher standard, and all my projects ended up being piece of work I can be proud of.

 Conclusion

I believe that because of my newfound ability to admit when I am wrong and start again, I was very successful in this project. Not only am I very proud of the physical work I produced, but I am also proud of the progress I made in terms of my professional academic development.

 Action Plan