Monday 16 July 2007

MA Project

Dissertation

At this stage I am still unable to formulate a specific question.
I know the general area I want to explore.
This being the combination of music and imagery and it’s effect on a person.

Each form can trigger direct responses from our senses and minds and the combination of both delivers something that neither can on their own.

Does the combination trigger different responses in our brain.

‘Visual Music is an art form with a primary objective of intentionally activating the mind’s ability to fuse visuals and music into a “synaesthetic experience”.’

Is this an interaction in itself. Do our minds fuse the elements in the same way or do we each create our own experiences.

Does the combination of music and imagery allow more or less room for our minds to include our own imaginations.

I would like to consider two of what I believe to be examples of music and imagery having the strongest impact. These being film and television scores and VJ culture.
Within these examples, one form is supportive of the other. Although I would like to explore how each change an audience’s perception of the other.

Something else I have come across in my research is the combination of music and imagery as a form of psychotherapy, used to bring about a therapeutic change.
One organisations main approach is to play patients certain types of music in a relaxed state and ask them to describe any images that they experience in their mind.

I found this particularly interesting as this suggests that everyone has the ability to create images when listening to music. I would like to look in to this further.

Also I would like to look into possibilities for the future. Will there be a time when we will be able to see images created by a persons mind, are the images we see in our heads actual translatable images.

Practical project.

I am in a similar position with my practical project.
Yet to come up with a definitive idea.

I think so I far have been trying to combine too many ideas or functions in to one project.

User created visual music, emotive responses and the interaction between body and system are all the things I am trying to include and I am not sure if they will all work together. On reflection I think so far my ideas or too complicated and not instantly useable by an audience.

I have been experimenting with various technologies in the hope of giving my self some idea of possible interactions, spaces, sounds and visuals.
Most of these have been successful but in a way, haven’t helped because they have given me many more options and opened new avenues to explore.

Experimentation.
Using the ‘pod’ screens as back projection screens I used a webcam and ‘isadora’. I played around with many different effects and images and user created visuals. All were fun and visually appealing but didn’t really have any effect or create anything particularly immersive.

Over the weekend I managed to get more control and interactivity in to the Isadora visuals. I used Reactivision to input data from the webcam, then created a MAX/MSP patch that converts splits the data up into separate objects for multiple controls, scales the numbers then outputs the new numbers to a port on my network. Finally I set Isadora to input data from this port.

I now have the problem of using all of these elements to create something simple but effective.

Playing with the pods (low quality phone photo)





MAX/MSP Patch

Reactivision

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Tom,

I know exactly how you feel. I have spent ages trying to narrow the dissertation down to a simple title and question. I think I have that now. There are so many interesting threads to follow but so little time. I suspect that we should be able to nutshell the dissertation in a sentence or 2. Otherwise the subjects either too big or we don't really know what we'ew doing. good luck,

regards, Mike j