You will now begin your journey. Your journey within the York University Keele Campus. Right now, you are outside the Goldfarb Centre for the Arts.
You will circle the interior of the building. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you go, or how long your route is. Just find a way to get back to where you started.
No matter how many times you walk by this place, every journey made will be different. Be attentive to your surroundings and you will see this difference. Start walking now if you’re ready.
To better understand the Goldfarb Centre for the Fine Arts, we did a bit of research on the location itself – who it was named after, what classes go on within the building, the designers and architects of the Goldfarb, and other historical and interesting facts that will change our perspective and understanding of the building.
After contemplating on all the examples, inspiration, and research material we have accumulated for this project, my group members and I have decided to change up the narrative of our field recording.
Our new plan focuses on interactions between various students at York University. This experimental project will work like this: different students will be given a recorder and told to walk around the interior of the Goldfarb Centre for the Fine Arts. They can walk around in the building however they want – they are leading us and teaching us their method of navigating through the building.
Students will be chosen at different times of day to record their paths to also study the contrast of volume, traffic and movement during the morning, afternoon, and night. Each student will then be given a map of the interior of the building and will be asked to draw the path they took onto the map so that when we listen to the sound recording, we will be able to follow along what location and area they visited.
We hope to choose students from different years of study form different degrees programs. That way, some students may be more familiar with the location, and for others, this recording experiment will be a new experience for them and may even change their perception and method of getting around the Goldfarb building.
Below are several sound clips we got recorded:
———–
My group members are:
Amy Yang: BLOG
Justin Zhou: BLOG
Magda gave a lecture today on field recording and sound, and gave us a little exercise to do just to get our minds focused on how sounds and ambiences work. For this exercise, we were to note all the sounds in the lecture room for 2-3 minutes. Here is my ambience description below:
The air-conditioner machines fill the room with a light blowing sound. People around me are also doing this mini-assignment and I can hear them speedily typing up their observations. Some are pulling out papers and pens behind me. The room ambience is overall quite peaceful at the moment – if you exclude that sniffle I just heard. The sound of feet brushing against the floor can be heard as people readjust themselves on their seats. I can hear someone placing their water bottle onto their table, accidentally also swiping it against a plastic bag. The echoes of coughs and faint voices are travelling across the lecture hall – this kind of silence makes me feel as if I were in the library right now, quietly studying and focusing on my own work. The noise level in this room is so low, I can actually hear the sound of my fingers brushing against each other – the sound of my hands closing into a fist. It seems something just broke the silence. It sounds as if someone just opened a ziploc bag and tried pulling something out, but it seems to have gotten stuck. They are still trying to pull it out. Meanwhile, I am also hearing jackets rustling and chairs being pushed in or pulled out, screeching against the concrete floor.
This mini-assignment actually makes us realize that even in the quietest of places, there will still be sound. In fact, I feel that the quieter a location is, the more little bits of sound there are to make the soundscape more complex, much more than if I were to sit in a crowded and noisy area as all the sounds would blend in together and things would be harder to distinguish. I believe that quieter more relaxed ambiences are more interesting to listen to because you truly get to focus on every bit of sound information within the soundscape. Even without voice overs, you get a sense of what kind of location the field recording took place at.
Beginning to learn about the final subject of this school year, I did a bit of my own research on sound walks and their purposes and realized how many stories can be created from one specific site. Depending on the perspective on how we look at things, a single location can hold very different meanings for everyone. Continue reading ‘Introduction to Sound Walks’
Today, we were able to test out our intuition and time management skills by going out to record our walk and other sounds for a while, and then extract files from our devices and transfer them into the computer to create a soundtrack on the spot. Of course, this requires a lot of creativity and we must learn to accommodate even if the project does not sound 100% like the way we imagined it to. This exercise allowed us to understand our whole perception and story idea for this last project. As well, now that we have a quick ‘storyboard’ overview of what our initial idea sounds like, we can make appropriate changes to the storyline and/or recorded sounds since we have a general base to work up from.
Below is my Sound Walk creation done in Audacity:
Below is Amy Yang’s Sound Walk creation done in Sound Booth:
Below is Justin Zhou’s Sound Walk creation done in Final Cut Express:
———–
My group members are:
Amy Yang: BLOG
Justin Zhou: BLOG
Today, we were introduced to the new subject matter we will be covering for the rest of the year in this course: sound and site. For our final project, we are to focus on the exploration of sound in various locations and learn to work with recording equipment and how we can manipulate and present sound in non-conventional ways to depict and narrate stories.
After a short tutorial on the sound editing program, Audacity, we were told to walk around the York Keele Campus and search for interesting places, take photographs, and research historical information about the specific locations. From this little journey, my group members and I began to brainstorm a possible narrative for our sound walk project.
My group members are:
Amy Yang: BLOG
Justin Zhou: BLOG
Due to the recent increase in architectural mapping projection projects, I was thinking a device that would aid artists in the process of executing these kinds of projects would be quite interesting. Thus, I imagine that in the future, engineers will work on a new device that would help artists execute their works in a simpler manner. Introducing the all new ArchiMapper, a device with built in cameras for panoramic stitching and reading, duo projectors, as well as a detachable touch-screen remote control which is made of a solar-power panel used for recharging the device. This easy-to-learn machine makes the art of architectural mapping projections possible for artists new to the practice.
How the ArchiMappier works:
Architectural Mapping Projecting is a new method of integrating the traditions of visual arts with our modern day usage of technology. Artists take measurements of a certain object they wish to project a composition onto and create moving image files that are to be illuminated onto said surface. An increasingly popular activity, artists have been using this technique to create large-scale installations on exteriors of public buildings. Once the initial measurements and video details have been calculated, the videos that are projected are to fit perfectly around the edges of the buildings. Evidently, although the results of these projects are quite spectacular, they are nonetheless very time-consuming as well.
Thus, the new ArchiMapper device was invented. Once powered up, the double doors on the front, which act as cover protection, automatically slide open to reveal three cameras and two projector heads. The cameras will take a photograph of the location set before it and stitch them together to create a semi-panoramic view. Users are able to control the angle the cameras take the image at, its focus, and will be given automatic calculations and outline tracings of objects with clear contours. From
there, users will select which outlined objects they wish to have the projectors shine videos onto, and can either insert their own USB devices into the machine and select files they wish to project or choose predefined patterns that come with the machine (the same procedure is done for sound).
When all the settings have been dealt with, the machine will send signals to the pair of heads which would begin projecting visuals. The projector heads are attached to flexible wire tubes that can bend, and thus, create more interesting and dynamic projections.
The projector, measuring around 3.0’L x 2.3’W x 7.5”H, has a long battery life of 10 hours so artists are able to use the device for long intervals before having to recharge it. The touch-screen control on the back of the machine is detachable for easier usage and is also made of a solar panel that charges the device when attached. Although the pair of projector heads seem to be quite small, they work on 9600 lumens, meaning users are still able to clearly cast projections onto buildings a block away.
——–
Here is a link to the poster indicating the specs of the device including diagrams, close-up images, 360 angles of the device, and images of the working machine in context: Archimapper
Furthermore, I have designed a manual for using the remote control attached to the back of the device. To stick with a consistent design following the turquoise colour scheme, and for marketing purposes as well, I have included instructions in four different languages: English, French, Japanese, and Korean. Here is a link to the instructions manual: Manual
——–
Below is an animation of the device with rotations and full 360 degree views. This video will show the device closed and open, with captions and labels of its functions and sizes. As well, viewers will be able to see the device in action projecting onto the exterior of a building and an example of the sort of distances the projector is able handle:
After doing much brainstorming, I decided on creating a device that would make the art of ‘Architectural Mapping Projections’ possible for artists just getting into this type of projection art.
Below are scans of my initial brainstorming sketches, further developments, research on how projector lenses work, projector lightbulb specifications and requirements, as well as remote control information architecture.
As I was doing research for my Embodiment device, I came across a really neat news article about an actual 3D image projector invented in Japan!
Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has developed a projector that makes 3D images through laser lights which is shone through a lens at points in space above the actual device. It then uses plasma emissions in the air in order to ‘position itself’ in space and create the illusion that it is floating in mid-air.
This invention was actually built in 2007 but the Japanese companies are still currently working on this project, trying to improve and perfect it. Perhaps in the near future, we really will be able to create holograms of people.
FACS 2930 