Throughout Sonophilia, I attended as many event as I could – admittedly I wasn’t able to get to many, but these two were my favourites, and the ones I found most useful to my project.
Amie Slavin’s “Other Ranks”
Before you even entered the basement, you could hear the audio from this piece. What surprised me was the amount of senses this piece interacted with. The sound was the first, then when you enter the room you are not only greeted with visuals, but also smell. Hundreds of pairs of military boots were placed around the edge of the room, giving off a leather scent. The visuals consisted of army camouflage netting covering the numerous large speakers around the room, and photos of current and past troops beneath your feet. Next to hit was the cold in the room, whether intentional or not, but it certainly added to the audio, especially the drills – you could just imagine marching on a cold, crisp morning.
The final, but not so obvious sense, if you can call it a sense, was affect. A mixture of the cold, the smell and the audio hit me at certain points, particularly during the marching and the vehicles, especially when followed by birdsong. The recordings were in dispersed with interviews, making the whole piece quite emotional at times.
I really loved the mix of sensory media. Whilst I like sound pieces that you can interpret in your own way instead of being lead by pictures, I think visuals can add so much to a predominantly aural piece, and visa versa.
Jo Hamilton’s “Fractal Sparks”
This was also the case with Fractal Sparks, a gig by Jo Hamilton. Each of her songs included a different visual display, consisting of projections onto the stage and from the stage into the audience. The gigs and concerts that I have been to previously which have involved a larger amount of visual display (not just pyrotechnics) have generally been far more enjoyable, due to the extra storytelling involved. This is probably the reason the performance was one of the best concerts/gigs I’ve ever been to. The projections in the audience really included us in the performance, and the changing visuals gave a totally different feel to each song.
These made me feel more confident about using images in my piece. I have been struggling to find areas/objects to photography that properly represent my three pieces, but I think it will work well with the three tracks.