A Few Favorite TV Moments

Audio

For the curiosity of anyone (if there is anyone) here is the audio that I will be using. It is called "First Train Home", this is the instrumental version by Imogen Heap.

New Edition: Jaime Gimenez

My friend Jaime added some amazing falsetto tracks to the choir, I am working on figuring out the very minimal instrumentation I want to add towards the end, most likely it will be clarinet, trumpet, and violin.

Burial UpD8

Upon investigation this evening, one of the tubes and its contents is totally missing from the site. Another item was found on the ground a few inches from the others.

All of the lids were off, and only 3 of the original 5 remained. Of those 3, 2 were misshapen as if they had suffered some sort of trauma of impact.

There was a strong foul odor coming from the site that was noticeable about 5-6 feet away, and especially offensive up close.

The Simmer (Stage 1: Overview)

CONTENT: Brother/ Father Collision
-Juxtaposition of behaviors
-Reversal of roles
-Loss of self

CONCEPT: Change. We know we are always changing, but not purely in a forward motion.
-One changes forwards, and one backwards. We flip, and spiral, and loop.
-The time line is not a single straight line!

THEMES:
-Tradition
-Preconceptions
-Ideals/Perfection
-Vulnerability
-Violence/Terror
-The Unknown
-The Hidden
-Family
-Responsibility
-Freedom Vs. Entrapment
-MORE??

MATERIALS:
Sound
Writing
Pictures (Old and New)
Movement
Time

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I'm also posting a video of an installation I had in the A&D service elevator. The music/sound aspect of it is similar to Josh's project in that it is a collaboration of many people. For a full explanation you can see the description on youtube.

Elevate.

(Another) Update on Moa

So I went to the burial site and excavated my copper bird, Moa. The site really has changed quite a bit and so has Moa.

Before the burial.








Midway through the burial.








On the day of the excavation; the oxidization that occurred on the wings really makes Moa blend into the burial area.

i don't know what this is...

...but it's definitely time mapping.

a friend in our blog community.

a.beryl.a.day

(A map of a beryl on a day in time:

See the full size image and the other beryls on the map at a.beryl.a.day
(italicized content added by forkergirl)

Chicago

I've been in Chicago for the last few days, I didn't get much video footage because I was pretty busy but I did get some nice stills that I might be able to work with in my video.

New Edition: Miss Katie Lee

Mmmhmm the choir just got that much soulfullerRRrr, my friend Katie was kind enough to come over on the spot tonight and add some vocals... and and and it was a 3 part harmony at that! I am looking forward to getting some guys onto the first our brother the native choir, BOYS WHERE YOU AT?!

Pants in Spring time

the wind's doing?

Free Stuff!

I found two boxes full of free stuff on Packard street last week. I took everything. I plan on placing each object around campus as little presents to whoever wants to take it.

Someone left their freshly made sandwich by west hall...such a shame....looked tastey. I wonder who ate it. maybe a squirrel?

Embodied disembodiment

I felt very inspired by these "echo mousepads" that recorded and mapped the artist's hand as it operated in virtual space:







































































To map my own physical use of digital production I started recording myself as I work.

Raw TV Footage

I am uploading some of my raw footage of the television in my living room. I plan to work with each clip as a separate entity. I will experiment with re-filming it and seeing how the sound and video changes...

Further wanderings...

I have most of the footage that I hope to collect now but yesterday I went to a 'masquerade ball' for the apartment area that I live in. While it was not the most noteworthy of events it was much more interesting to wander about in costume in exceptionally ordinary places. The reactions of the people that we saw was pretty fantastic- ranging from taking pictures with us to pretending that they couldn't see us.

"Lately, I’ve been wondering if sitting quietly in a café, pretending to read a newspaper, and not writing is the most earnest expression in our age: no echoes of language, nothing to reblog, just pure unmitigated self sitting with self. I might, after a time of blank staring, find myself constructing a sentences in my head, maybe a paragraph, simply letting the words roll around in my mind. I will not. I repeat. I will not write them down. They are my secret sentences, not yours."
-Andrew Simone

New angel in the choir

So this weekend I recorded my friend Shannon and I got her lazer beam falsetto striking through the mix, it really strengthens the recording, she and my mom create a really full whisper tone, while me and the old woman project this more gritty rough timbre in the background. Its starting to come together!

Television Maps

I have taken a new direction through many failures and a change of heart. I have become very interested in low quality video this year. The sheer volume of low quality video out there in the world vastly outweighs the HD, which is an odd phenomenon considering the image quality of existing cameras and how inexpensive HD has become for consumers. Last semester I made a video of television feedback by filming it with a crappy cell phone camera and then re-filming that video about 60 times. I took the change in pitch and images and created a composition out of it (see video below).

My roommates watch a lot of TV so I am going to start mapping what they're watching by filming it with a portable video camera I got cheaply. I may also explore filming some epic moments in television history (man landing on the moon, first ten minutes of MTV...I don't know).

I have some crazy plan in my mind that I am going to combine this with Jitter (Max/MSP/Jitter) because I've been teaching myself how to use it and I think it would be a good thing to incorporate into my learning experience. Right now the thought is that there would be a television or a series of televisions that would show different pieces of the map. When someone physically changes the channel of the TV, the clip would change.

I could edit these piece of the map--each as a separate entity that is composed to be a part of the whole--or I could let MSP & Jitter do some of the manipulation work for me by using data and the drunk or random functions. More video data to come...

Surfacing from Laura Thompson on Vimeo.

Sounds of the State (Michigan edition), and the state of being touched by and touching sound (some of the maps inside [me])

In progress, as a joint venture of the University of Michigan School or Art and Michigan Radio, is a mapping of site-specific audio, in a collaborative venture Sounds of the State

featuring sonic vignettes curated for broadcast and sonic vignettes submitted by listeners. Check it out!

While an intention or stated objective of Sounds of the State may not be to map time, and to map interactions/collaborations that capture changes in sound, producing a sonic system in which sound-producing variables can continuously reconfigure the system, even across scale as what is not usually audible to humans is amplified in such a way that previously inaudible vibrations become audible, Sounds of the State can produce such systems. The linking of sounds to a map implies occasions (that happened, that are linked moments that the sonic vignettes both contain and are contained by), that once on the map are part of history; what something sounded like under particular circumstances. A record of what a moment sounded like, including he shape of sound, the structure of the sonic memory that includes that with which the sound connects. As the sound travels, reaching listeners, the sound may become able to attach additional memories and thoughts of the listener to the configurable structure of the memory on the map. There is also possibility of interaction of the mapped sound with other sounds and inaudible vibrations in the listener's environment at the time that the mapped sound is heard. It would be possible for a listener to re-record the sound in the extended listening environment, and then place that reconfigured sound interaction on the map where that reconfigured sound would be available for similar interaction. I am now listening to bats at sound of the state, and listening again as I type this, recording the bat sound interacting with the typing and with the aggressive chewing of a minty gum by someone working in the shared DL1 space —my iPhone is recording (as boldly as I dare in placing the phone closer to the chewer) the typing, the chewing, and the rattling of a cellophane snack-bag. Once I've uploaded this sound piece to the computer, I'll add it to this post. Love the human qualities of train voices (that I'm listening to on the website) and lap smacking from a train of gum-chewing (a chew-chew train); here's the modified engine, stilled and quieted, sent directly from the Limited Fork iPhone (chew-chew train):

Also heard in the wild is The Call of the Oropendola (from NPR's Secret Language of Insects), other components of a mapping of sonic shapes. Various physiological mechanisms help determine the shape of sound production; mouth, lips, tongue, teeth, vocal cords, air help configure the look of the sound being produced, as in the following video:

Tactile methods could be used when, for instance, visual cues are not useful or when more intimacy in sound-making is desired, perhaps a necessity of speaking in the dark; efforts to match one's own lips to the felt shape of the monkey lips to help in the making of a sound with similar architecture. Or to augment what it means to experience things, interfaces of the senses. This is response as vibration, the feeling of sound, of pulsations throughout the body manifesting in movement as demonstrated in this video in which styrofoam beads dance:


This is hearing with the body. This is some of the dimensionality of sound as it interacts with physical structures inside and on the outside of the body. The waveform pattern of hair moving with rhythms of air in various states and degrees of agitation.


This is also Evelyn Glennie, a percussionist who is also deaf, experiencing sound throughout the body; hearing is but one outcome of interactions with vibration in the acoustical range of what's audible to humans.
David Merrill offers something I find very compelling, vibrations of excitement swirling in my mind and brain, mapping my enthusiasm for The Sound of Touch: a new instrument for real-time capture and sensitive physical stimulation of sound samples using digital convolution. The hand-held wand can be used to (1) record sound, then (2) brush, scrape, strike or otherwise physically manipulate this sound against physical objects. These actions produce sound in a manner that leverages peoples existing intuitions about sonic properties of physical materials. The Sound of Touch permits real-time exploitation of the sonic properties of a physical environment, to achieve a rich and expressive control of digital sound that is not typically possible in electronic sound synthesis and control systems. quoted from the Sound of Touch MIT webpage)



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Of course, ultrasound offers a use of soundwave frequency technology that is familiar to many of us as a tool that helps visualize the dimensionality of the fetus in the womb, creating a picture with sonic or acoustical energy above the range of human audibility; but even though we can't hear it, as the mind interacts with sonic energy, there are likely effects of responses to the interactions. It is through ultrasound that I saw my son's face for the first time and also saw, well before a face developed, my son as a comma, the embryo's insect impersonation. (image from wikipedia)


AND NOW: The Call of the Oropendola whose vibrations could be amplified to a scale that forces obvious dances, obvious movement, perhaps to a point of collapse. Sound maps of locations (scales) of what most unassisted auditory maps (human ears) do not hear.

Moa

An update on the progress of my burial (a copper bird named Moa).
The name "moa" comes from a now extinct bird that was hunted into extinction. A bird that leaves only remains behind. A picture of what the moa looked like can be found here.





Moa before the burial








Moa yesterday afternoon: the copper has started to oxidize and is giving the bird's wings and head a splotchy pattern.

Byron

So, I've been spending my spring break at home in Byron. I have been out and about taking pictures and video. I've captured some really great stuff outside and I've found some old photographs around the house that I might be able to incorporate into my video.

spotted: dead shark on singer island

While walking on the beach today on Singer Island located in West Palm Beach, Florida, I came across a dead shark. Exact species unknown but there were ferocious teeth as well as a dorsal fin. The seagulls and buzzards were unable to puncture his skin so he may remain intact tomorrow or possibly will be washed away. Unfortunately I decided not to bring my phone as a sort of "media detox" so there are no photographs.

Later on the walk, I found a weird bone. I gave it a proper burial in memory of the shark.

Catching up

So, I've been a bit behind on posting my wanderings to this blog.
Sadly, I have been ill- but I'm feeling better now. So there should be plenty more posts to follow this one.

I've been filming the different places that I ave been going since early in the semester, I plan to put together a video collage of my wanderings. I've noticed a lot of recurring natural shapes that I would like to incorporate into my editing style, particularly spheres/circles.
So, a review of some of the places that I have been filming recently:

The Botanical Gardens
They had a blooming Bird of Paradise, this is the first time that this plant has bloomed in the last fifteen years.

Sunrise over Ann Arbor

















Tea
I have also filmed other types of tea (blooming tea flowers and loose leaf). Some of the patterns that the steeping tea creates are fantastic to watch grow and spread.

















Basement Arts Show: "Strings"
An original play about the life and adolescence of Pinocchio, in the play he simultaneously describes his experience childhood, adolectence and adulthood





















Around my Apartment