I’ve just added a flash audio player in the new ‘Listen’ section of the site. I will soon be adding some new content to it, but for the moment you can have a listen to 3 different track! Firstly, you can listen to ‘Sedonic Hill’ from my EP ‘The Second Half of Nothing’ on Vacuous Pop. Theres also an unreleased track which was a remix of works written by an undergraduate orchestra I was involved in recording at The University of Edinburgh. Finally, theres an recording of an improvisation I did with fellow Sound Designer Louis Minnaar last December using a radio and a granulation patch in MaxMSP. More to come soon!
The Mirrorphone was created for a school in Ayrshire and funded by NESTA under Professor Nigel Osbourne’s research into building a ‘Universal Instrument’. It is a fully programmable, expressive musical instrument that is played by moving in front of a webcamera. The user is positioned in front of a reflected image of themself and can trigger both melodies and chords by moving a user defined tracked point into specific areas of the screen. The nature of the software means it can be calibrated to work with any range of motion - from small movements of the eyes, to full bodied waving gestures.
Klippus was a clip show comprising of a wide selection of different animations both long and short, created by Hanae Seida. There were 3 episodes in total - all of which required sound design, foley recording, adr, composition and also some audio restoration. The most important factor in my mind was to great as much variety as possible in the sounds for different clips, so as to enhance the diversity of the animation. I completed the sound design for each clip separately in Logic Pro as I received them, and then I resequenced all the audio to fit the final structure of each episode providing additional sounds where necessary. The foley sounds were either from my own library or recorded specially for the project. I also composed all the music in Logic Pro (with the exception of the Klippus Intro theme which was restored from recordings from Hanae). Finally, the dialogue was restored from recordings given to me by Hanae, either captured directly from the camera or via a separate microphone - although a couple of lines were added later using adr techniques. All in all the project was a great opportunity to work through all stages of foley recording, restoration, composition and sound design.
Sound Designer & Film Maker Pablo D. Herrera came to me asking for help to build an interactive program to accompany his 3 experimental short films entitled ‘Saukiness’. The idea we settled on was to create a simple installation that contained all the content of the film, but allowed the viewer to interact directly with it. However the project was due to be installed in a remote location, and had to be able to run on a potentially low spec. machine (with a built in a mic!). Furthermore, this meant it had to run on a self-contained DVD to allow storage of all the high quality dv content. Bearing this in mind I designed a simple program that allows the user to move between clips from all three parts of the film by making clapping (or making a similar loud, abrupt noise) - one clap plays clips from the first part of the film, two claps the second, and three claps the final part. The program runs ‘out of the box’, automatically monitoring the average noise of the space it is in and any noise above the threshold level will trigger a reaction.
Last year I was lucky enough to be involved with a fantastic project organised by Professor Nigel Osbourn, working with children affected by the Balkans conflict in the early 1990s. The project has been running for some time, and this year the group of volunteers returned to the camp based just outside Sarajevo. Over the course of a week, the volunteers help the children compose music and create their very own production for performance to parents and carers at the end of the camp. This year yielded some truly beautiful pieces and as always a wonderfully moving concert, and I look forward to returning again at the same time next year.
I have just returned back from a second residency at the Beatafarm in France - and as usual the experience was thoroughly inspirational! I met lots more fantastic people, and took part in loads of exciting projects. In particular I build an Sonic/Visual installation with artist Ella Barclay called RAVEJAR. The idea involved building an interactive piece of media art, using equipment salvaged from the Beatafarm. I build a contact mic as a trigger and we projected visuals Ella made onto an old jar we found in the kitchen. The MaxMSP/Jitter application controlled processing of both sound and visuals and was triggered into various different states by tapping the side of the jar. The final piece was installed outside on the night of our departure and left for the other residents to discover! I was also able to steal away some time to carry out continued musical collaboration with sound hero Lewis MacColl, carry out some epic guitar/computer jams with acrobat Andrew James Nelson, and develop an unnerving interest in making Italo Disco. Thanks as always to Jules Arthur for organising it all!
The final build of the Mirrorphone is now complete and will be sent out for testing at the school soon. This build is compatible with Mac OSX and runs with any web camera (although the performance is best with higher resolution cameras). It includes several presets for easy set up, but more importantly is fully programmable within the standalone version to trigger the sounds (2 polyphonic FM synthesizers) and the musical content. It is also possible to program both the number of points of interaction and the location of the interaction points. I will upload a video explaining the whole system in the sound design section shortly - but for now I have to pack and prepare to leave Edinburgh!
I’ve just finished off work on the sound work of the 3 episodes of Klippus for animator Hanae Seida - so I will have to upload an update in the sound design section for you all to see! The final work includes a wide variety of different ideas ranging from abstract granulation to game boy sequencing! The work on the Mirrorphone is also coming to an end, and I hope to be finished in the next couple of weeks so be sure to check back for an update.
I’ve just begun work on the Sound Design for a series of animations by animator Hanae Seida. ‘Klippus’ (pronounced clips) will be a series of 3 episodes, comprising of animations of varying length and in various formats. For the moment, the sound work will encompass all sonic aspects - the foley recording, sound design, composition and a little restoration work on location sound captured from the cameras. I’ve just seen some of the test shots and its already looking very impressive so I’m looking forward to working on such a diverse project!
After much discussion with Joel about the Webcam Interface and Matrix Interface I worked on previously - it was decided to push for full development of the Webcam Interface. The project will begin in full swing shortly under funding from NESTA as a part of Professor Nigel Osbourne’s ongoing project to develop a Universal Instrument. This project in particular is to develop an instrument for use by a 3 year old autistic girl in Ayrshire in conjunction with a mirror. The idea is that by using the ‘Mirrorphone’ she can move around in front of her own reflection, and in turn the webcam will create sonic reactions to her movements using a series of tracking algorithms. As with the Universal Instrument project, the main idea is to try and make the instrument as expressive as possible and to create something that is playable by people of all ages and abilities.
