GYRE Execution:
The DisOrganEyesd concert at Melbourne Town Hall was a great deal more emotional to be a part of than expected. Perhaps in part because this is the final year of my program, but also due to the history of the venue and the high turnout of patronage. There was something of a hallowed feeling in the air during the anticipation of the performances and at the peaks of each. There is a level of respect for the history of the venue that was palpable.
I was pretty impressed with the work everyone presented. Shane & Pat's performance really lifted the room visually and sonically. Denby and Lisa brought a nice, heavy sense of atmosphere and Job was entertaining with his performance as well as providing some pretty stunning detailed visuals. Keith's piece was pretty mindblowing. Unfortunately I think it went above many people's heads (probably everyones but his to an extent!) and I think it was a case of overcooking it a little - as the version at his rehearsal the previous week sounded perfect - the changes he made pushed it over the edge in my opinion.
After weeks of agonising over my composition and the visual performance, I was pretty happy with the performance of GYRE! I'm usually quite critical of my own compositional work, in the past sometimes allowing it to overshadow the development process - but with this piece I feel that the restraint I exercised paid off in the execution. I feel that the reductionist direction I began to take with this piece is an ethic that I've had the need to pursue with composition for some time. It felt good to satiate it and the results were equally gratifying. This piece represents a greater control over deploying melodic structures in the facility of heightened emotional content than previous work in my folio. I attribute this to the limitations imposed by the organ and working to a theme. These necessitated a greater focus on arrangement and greatly assisted with establishing a musical logic that provided the framework with which I began to work in to create the piece.
In the performance of GYRE I gained a sense of the audience reaction in certain moments which felt like the piece hit those emotional peaks quite hard - which was gratifying. I also felt that critically, the piece could have been improved by shortening the length as I feel it stretched the attention span of the audience slightly beyond the threshold of maintaining those emotional moments. This is perhaps what became a key consideration during the development of GYRE. With the primary objective being to create a "hypnotising" composition there is necessity to avoid major deviation from a central musical motif or to work with rupture or strong contrasting harmonic juxtaposition. Peaks require troughs. I used the accompaniment of the synthesised tracks and the organ idiophone accompaniment to disperse and embellish these during the swells of the main organ score - however I feel that the troughs could have been pushed further with harmonic minimalism to prolong attention to the conclusion of the piece and within the scope of the "hypnotising" concept.
I received great feedback about the piece and people felt that the sound and vision worked in harmony which was gratifying. People also made reference to the masking in the visual elements of the projection made the surface feel as though it was a part of the piece and there was a level of kineticism present that made the performance feel synchronous and engaging.
CoDesign: Study 3 - Creative Agency Walking:
Creatively, a very fulfilling project. Explored two of my key passions which are Sound Design and Interaction Design in a postgraduate context which was fantastic. Also a great opportunity to work with dance/body work and sound, which is an area I'd been very keen to explore for years. Hopefully this leads to more work in that direction. Great relationship with Frank Feltham and Kirsten Packham. This project has in turn led to an application to a second degree in Industrial Design and working on a large project that will comprise my honours work. I could not be happier with the outcome! I will be assisting FF with the interpretation and writing up of the data collected, which may be presented at NIME. Very excited! I came to academic study with the pursuit of exploring the use of sound in a practical context (how I expected that to be present in an arts program I'm not sure, arts and pragmatism are almost polarised!) I really feel that I am on track to developing skills that will take me to the next level of post graduate enquiry and start raising my own questions that will inform my PhD.
HMsEx Final Thoughts:
Where was this course in the Arts program! I imagine some of the Art Music and The Brain material (which I missed out on) informed the HMsEx content. I was searching for this type of content in all of my Arts program! The mechanics of how not the historical or political reasons of why. A neurological framework for media art facilitates artistic pursuits with scientific relevance. I gained a greater understanding of how arcane psychophysiology still is in the 21st Century and how media art actually comprises almost all of the key modalities to explore it. This opens up a wealth of potential academic inquiries, I find myself considering the psychophysiogical implications of the work I'll be undertaking next year and into the future.
Final HMsEx Slide Presentation
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