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12.02 Sound Art Workshop 1st Meeting

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Sound Art Workshop Session Notes 1

^ “Sound art prioritizes space; music prioritizes time.” – from Sonic Genealogies podcast: Thomas Ankersmit on Maryanne Amacher  external link

Activity - Listening to Objects:

Students demonstrate their sound making objects, solo. Discuss after each one, focusing on:

  • Identifying and describing the sounds themselves (avoiding analogy or affect, i.e. “it sounds like a….” or “it makes me feel…”)
  • Imagine strategies/mechanisms for translating your approach to activating your sound objects – from a manual/performative process, to a sculptural/automatic one.

Presentation - Sound Sculptures:

View examples (videos) of kinetic sculpture / sound sculpture

Jean Tinguely (Swiss, 1925 – 1991)

Zimoun (Swiss, 1977 – )

Anne-f Jacques (Montréal (Québec), 1980 – )

Petr Válek (Czech, 1976 – )

Discuss sources of motion driving animation, the use of simple machines to transform or guide that motion, and interactivity.

Videos

Discuss sources of motion driving animation, the use of simple machines to transform or guide that motion, and interactivity.

Group activity - Automating Sound Objects:

Prototype sculptural devices which simulate the playing / sounding actions students performed with their sound making objects. Emphasis on the qualities of sounds themselves, and on structural designs/engineering to create robust mechanisms (setting aside for the moment visual aesthetic concerns). Substantial portion of class will be devoted to this work, emphasizing group problem solving & collaboration.

References

  1. All content written by Bob Drake , included with permission and slightly modified to fit into course formatting. ↩︎