Second Session/Progress – Collaborative Practice 12.10.2017

Thursday 12/10/2017 – Lecture

So for the first 20 minutes of the lecture we discussed artificial intelligence and how we were building these computers that will someday, in our lifetimes, match and even surpass human ability. And also that it was going to steal everyone’s jobs. We were then told that we, being in a creative profession, were probably in the safest line of work. If you’re telling musicians that they are in the safest line of work then there’s clearly something wrong here.

Anyway.

Let me jot down a few things from this lecture that stuck out to me, apart from the terrifying prospect of AI:

• People think of creativity as something that just happens, but it doesn’t really work that way. It is about uncovering connections that already exist. It’s about brainstorming, coming up with new ideas, acting on those ideas and troubleshooting until you come up with something that works. Creativity, usually, doesn’t just happen.
• There are a few ways to measure the success of an event or installation such as the numbers in your audience, feedback from the audience, feedback from your peers, the experience of the production team, how many errors and glitches you came across and of course if and how the artistic vision was realised.
• It’s a good idea to structure an idea in a chart. First, define it. Design it. Do it. And finally, evaluate it. It all seems to simple when you put it down on paper but it’s a different story in practice.
• And the most important thing, approach it like a professional project. That way we’ll put more effort into it and in turn get more out of it.

 

Group meeting

After the lecture I met up with my group with the intention of coming up with a definite plan of what we were doing. To recap on what we’d gotten so far, we were leaning towards making an interactive webpage where the audience would be able to manipulate the music by pressing on buttons, much like “Madeon’s Adventure Machine” or Optophono’s version of “Paragraph 7” from Cornelius Cardew’s The Great Learning. (Please see my previous post for examples of these.)

We started to develop this idea further. We thought it would be a good idea to have a clear target audience in mind as this would aid in the refining process. We threw about the idea of making it kid friendly because they love to create and play with things. That way we could make it fun and cool while also making it educational. If we came up with an interactive composition tool then we could inspire them to get into music and create their own sound.

We had a chat with a tutor who asked us if we were going to put in something visual and honestly we hadn’t even thought about this. I had ruled it out as impossible as we were one Music for the Moving Image and three Music Production students and none of us were particularly adept at recording film. The tutor suggested we look at Patatap which is a website developed by Jono Brandel in collaboration with the group of composers  Lullatone. The idea is that different percussion sounds are assigned to different keys on a keyboard, and when pressed various visuals are triggered onscreen alongside the sound. It’s a simple idea but it’s really effective. It’s also adorable. It is similar to our old idea while incorporating a visual element into the mix, which would work even better if we were targeting the idea at kids. It also helps that it incorporates my course subject because it justifies my involvement in the project a little more than it had before.

So we knew that we wanted to create something that was interactive in that the participants could alter the music and the visuals on screen. Initially we were toying with the idea of making an app (which would have worked really well) but none of us know how to make an app and we have to keep in mind the time frame that we have to do this. (not long enough to learn how to make an app.) So we’ve more or less decided to keep it as a webpage. Paul pointed out that he knew how to create visuals based on the frequencies in a piece of music so we toyed with that idea for a while, thinking we could create something similar to Patatap but going a little further to create a piece of music.

Something akin to this:

Source: Lunchyyy (YouTube Channel)

We developed the idea further still, throwing about the idea of making the installation into a puzzle, or a movie with scenes. We came up with the idea of having a 3×3 grid, with each square in the grid linked to a piece of footage on a loop with a track running underneath it. The idea is that the participant has to move the squares about the grid and solve the puzzle we’ve created. If the squares are in the wrong place you’ll know because the video skips, and the music is distorted or acts up in some way. This is an interesting idea because it is something that will be challenging for all of us but seems to be doable within the time frame. It also appears to be something we are all interested in working on which is a fantastic position to be in. The whole thing will be achieved on either one big screen in three sections, or on one big screen with two smaller screens to the side. We also have some ideas to accompany the installation with midi-triggered lighting. I am unaware of how to do this but I am told it can be done so I’m just going to believe them on that one.  

These are the ideas we came up with this week. So far the roles are semi delegated as follows:

• Paul is figuring out visuals and the technical nonsense.
• Joel, Matt and myself will be working on different elements for the track. Matt will be recording some guitar and percussion, Joel some guitar and I think synths and I will probably write something for piano and violin (and maybe something random; let’s go crazy!)

I am aware that I need to push my boundaries out a little and get involved in something I don’t know much about. I am going to have to look into how Ableton Life works and how Paul is figuring out the visuals so I can help out if needs be.

All in all this was a productive meeting. We’re meeting up again tomorrow (19.10.2017) to discuss out ideas further. Watch this space!

 

 

P.S If you’re still reading this please go look at Patatap.com because it is entertaining as heck.