The following venn diagrams chart my motivations and influences going into my thesis project. The first diagram breaks my initial idea into 4 semi-distinct categories: Music/Sound, Technology, Narrative, and New Media Performance. Inside each category are sub-categories on which I'd like to focus. The second diagram puts these four main categories together and contains the individual influences relevant to my project.
Download MotiVenn.ai
Sound / Music -
Music is the central focus in my life and informs and influences everything I'd like to do artistically. The exponential growth of technology in recent years has changed the way we produce and consume music in such a way that it seems the possibilities are limitless. Everyday, people are creating greater quantities and varieties of media, and in most cases regardless of form, sound and music are involved in some way. What I am most interested in right now is the development of music in a multimedia context where it is the focal point, but is also accompanied by and interacting with the moving image, an audience, and/or machines. A specific example of a work that reflects these interests is the Hyperstring Trilogy by Tod Machover from the Media Lab. He integrates machines and organic instruments into a seamless continuum in which the technology blends into the composition rather than using it as a gimmick or a distraction.
http://www.media.mit.edu/hyperins/projects.html
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/crb/iap/index.html
http://www.sensorwiki.org/index.php/Sensors
Another area of sound that I’ve been interested in exploring is its ability to tell a story. I’ve attempted to make a number of short “sound films” which I think of as the inverse of a silent movie. The visual element is taken away, and in its place, the sounds tell a story in a non-linear way. I’ve used dialogue from old radio programs, sounds designed to mimic the big bang, and audio clips from World War II, all in an effort to do with sound what the moving image does in film. My first exposure to the sound film was Revolution #9 by The Beatles (Download Revolution9.pdf ), and I was struck at the way it was able to create a detailed world filled with dense imagery and non-linear narrative transporting the listener to another place by piecing together disparate segments of sound.
http://web.media.mit.edu/~tristan/
http://www.media.mit.edu/hyperins/projects/deathandthepowers/powersdemoreel39s.mov
Narrative -
Second to music is my love of narrative, specifically those that deal in some way with the sub-conscious. If I were to look to specific artists that have greatly influenced the way that I think about narrative and imagery they would be author Haruki Murakami (The Wind Up Bird Chronicle), and filmmakers David Lynch (Twin Peaks) and Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey). These storytellers devise characters whose inner-worlds become transfigured into the world outside. The blurring of the boundary lines between sub-conscious symbols and reality is something I'm really interested in and is very important to the way I think about what makes good art. Like the symbolist poets, Murakami, Lynch, and to a lesser extent Kubrick, use a coded language filled with myth, sexuality, violence, and surrealist imagery in which they suggest activity in the sub-conscious. These ideas are a takeoff on the ideas put forward by C.G. Jung, whose book Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, solidified for me the ways in which symbols can be used as a universal language.
Download visual_mood_board.pdf
http://www.theknife.net/thesilentshouttour.html
Technology -
Third on my list of motivating influences would be science. The direction mankind seems to be taking in terms of blending with his creations is something I'd like to explore. We are at the beginning of a journey toward meshing biology and technology that will eventually change the natural fabric of our species, and it is within this framework that art will change dramatically as well. A great influence on my thinking in this regard is Ray Kurzweil (specifically his book The Singularity Is Near), who in addition to being a pioneer in the development of electronic music, is also a theorist and futurist.
Comments