Writing Laboratory Research

We've Forgotten James Powell - Nate Dimeo (2014)

Story: As we near the end of a violent summer of 2014, we look back to the summer of 1964. Late afternoon, New York City: a group of kids hang out on a stoop after a day of summer school, just kicking it, like they always do.

The imagination and what takes place in our imagination is of paramount importance in the way we view writing. In this sense, we may view a sentence one way and another person may view it differently, creating two different "fictional reals". The ability to create/rely on 'Spaces of Interdeterminancy'  – things that aren't formulated completely for the reader – entices us to continue with the text. 

"Roland Barthes’ late 60s envisioning of the multilateral “consumer” reader summoned up a reader who, reading across many forms and interspersing reading across mixed media, had largely lost touch with any long-term sense of the literary text and who was not specifically concerned with, nor intellectually equipped to deal with, the contemporary" (Martin Harris 2011).

MY UMAMI GAS MASK  -  Sam Agee (2013)

My Umami Gas Mask was one of the five stories chosen as a winner in the 2013 ShortDocs Challenge. 

A short audio story inspired by "appetite", presented in three courses, and featuring one of the five tastes in the title: bitter, salty, sour, sweet, umami.

Looking through ideas currently, I'm interested in focusing on the area of comics - they allow extensive textures, poignancy, and a plot driven by character movement/action between each box to keep it interesting. Creating an audio soundscape for this can help me achieve the background I desire (a contextual atmosphere), and I can then add voice actors to this for dialogue to further develop the storyline.

In the first tutorial we spoke out about the opportunity to work with other people not in the class. Immediately, I spoke to my good friend, Bec, – a student visual designer - about her recent works. She recently created a comic for an assignment which was based off another text.

A recorded podcast - My Umami Mask, produced by Sam Agee - was used by Bec as a foundation point for her comic strip. Utilising various ideas from the comic led to this:

- The idea of every individual having to wear a gas mask outside, - Governmental distribution of Protein Cakes because of lack of organic material, and - The general atmosphere of the audio post being an almost seemingly post-apocalyptic world.

'Two by Two by Two by Two by Too Many by Too Much' - Janek Schaefer

"In the gallery hang 4 giant inflatable see-through rotating globes. A projector shines through them, casting shadows onto the walls. The images pulse on and off at the rate of a heart beat, alternating between sequences of human eggs, the sun, hurricane clouds, multiple planets, fire, ice, sky horizons, and my short summary sentences that illustrate the crisis we have created.

My soundtrack appropriates audio from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and re-weaves them into one long continuous season, mixed with the sounds of fire, ice, water, etc.

Each time a visitor enters the gallery the sound is killed for a second - we all make a difference."

Composition: Heatwave Composer: Colin Bright

A socio-political/music documentary that continues alongside the current trend of Climate effects. Portrays the experience of the heatwave, with a message about the future of Australian climate.

This piece is interesting because it is made up of sections with melodic ideas, character ideas, ("mood ideas") that are written in a larger structure, but the performers can choose when to play this in contrast to the other instrumentalists. 

Composition: Give Us This Day Composer: Erik Griswold

A prayer and a call to action, utilising percussion instruments and performers.