Category: LookingOutwards-11

Sophia Kim – Looking Outwards 11 – Sec C

I am taking the option of using my Looking Outwards 04, focusing on the sound design of the project. “Apparatum” was created by two different teams. The “Symphony – electronic music” was composed by Boguslaw Schaeffer, and the produced analogue sounds were created by the panGenerator team.

Compared to regular music, which is prerecorded and planned, sound art uses various beats that gives texture to art, specifically installations,  conceptual art, and exhibits. Like I said in Looking Outwards 04, I really liked how they fused communication, product, and sound design all together. With the sound design, the aesthetic design of the entire project is very well done. The designers of this project used various linear tape samplers as primary mediums. Also, to obtain noise and basic tones, spinning discs with graphic patterns were used, which are installed in the radio.

I really admire how different sound designs can be fused together by the user. Also, I admire how user customization is a big part of this project. The sound patterns the user picks are recorded, played out loud, and then printed on a receipt to document the patterns.

Emily Zhou – Looking Outwards – 11

Orbiter is an interactive sound environment designed by FIELD studio. It is an installation that invites visitors to lie down and observe a representation of stars from below. By pointing upward, visitors can insert new stars into orbit with unique visual and sound qualities.


Orbiter: Interactive Sound Environment / Documentation

The music is played on a scale of concentric circles. The bigger you let a star grow before you pull back your hand to insert it into orbit, the louder it plays. In terms of computation, the software is based on computer vision technology. The software used incorporates real-time analysis of a camera image of the player as well as generating 6-channel-audio and video signals. I admire the interactive quality of both sound and visuals in the work. I imagine it to be an immersive experience for the viewer.

Alice Fang – Looking Outwards – 11

A demonstration of Weather Thingy

Weather Thingy is a climate sound controller which can affect how a musician performs music in real time based on current weather conditions. Created by Adrien Kaeser, using Arduino, weather sensors and C++, Weather Thingy allows “listerners to feel the impact of the climate on the composition.” Consisting of two parts, a weather station and a controller, the sound that is produced varies based on wind speed, rain and precipitation levels, wind direction, and UV level. The four weather variables in turn affect the pan, chorus, LFO (flow frequency oscillation), and delay. The controller converts data from the climate into midi data that can be interpreted by the instruments.

I think this project is interesting because it encapsulates some of the forces in nature to effect how music is performed. Instead of having purely electronic synthesizers, there’s this weird, beautiful combination of utilizing technology to have something beyond our control to create music. I also think the real-time capabilities of this is super cool; imagine if this project was scaled up and a whole orchestra was affected.

Sarah Yae – Looking Outwards 11 – Section B

“Cy-Ens”(2018)  is a computer music project, produced by two Montreal-based composers and sound artists, MP (Max Pazhutan) and vH+ (Honey Pazhutan). “Aryabhatiya – Trigonometric Meditations” is a part of their project. This music can be listened through the embedded link. There are of course, other works that make up this project. This “Cy-Ens” project is themed around logical art that inspires learning and personal development, as well as to create art with it. The music is based off on an analogy, or a conceptual metaphor that works with mathematical material. This is suggested by the title of “Aryabhatiya – Trigonometric Meditations,” where patterns of musical structure are based off of mathematical equations. The sounds are then synthesized through open source audio programming languages. I admire this project because although I usually listen to music that is just pleasing to my ear, listening to computational music, although not the most pleasing to my ear, made me think about the production of sound and how music is structured.

The rest of the project could be listened on: https://soundcloud.com/cy-ens