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cchung_sound_project

Sound Project

I found DJ Spooky’s works very interesting. He composes piece of music that relates to an image or an idea he wants to express. I especially liked his work titled “Terra Nova” where he composed an acoustic piece that echoes the images and movement of the changing continent. The title “Terra Nova” comes from the name of a British ship that when to Antarctica to explore (and eventually colonize the land) but ended up in a tragic failure. This 70 minute performance  express the beauty of the nature and the political view on the climate change and destruction of the nature. His works usually involve his own composition pieces and some founded sound from scenery.

Bruce Odland’s works shows very different approach from DJ Spooky’s works. Odland works with found sounds and he incorporates the environments he is within to create his pieces. He says that the goal of his works is to feel the space around him and hear it as symphony. He is currently working an a project called “Save the Tank” which he is trying to preserve an abandoned water tank in Western Colorado which creates a magnificent ringing sound when music is played inside of it. This shows he’s idea of working with the space around him and the sounds of the space.

1.While I was seating in a quiet lounge on the top floor of my apartment, I heard:

• ambulance on the street
• sound from construction site next to out apartment
• sound of the heater
• ticking sound of my wrist watch
• my breathe
• sound of cars

2.20 things, events and sounds relate to my book:

1. place the book on a table
2. open the book
3. sound of the hard cover hitting the surface of the table
4. flip the pages
5. the sound that the joints of each page makes
6. open the box completely
7. find the figures inside of the box
8. spread the figures on the table
9. pick up a figure
10. try to think where would each figure go
11. place the figures on each page
12. reading “The Little Prince”
13. telling story
14. sound of wind in desert
15. children’s voice, laughing
16. sound of water
17. sound of turning on light
18. sound of wind going through rye
19. sound of sheep
20. sound made by footsteps on send

3. I like quiet places. I do not enjoy crowded places because I don’t like the sound of many people talking at the same time. I hate the sound of birds when there are too many of them. I also do not like sound of machines such as ringing sound of phone, sound that air microwaves make, or sound of car engines. I like sound of wind, especially when the wind brushes through trees. I also like the sound of rain, although I don’t like rainy days. I also like music, any kind except for the pop songs with auto-tuned voice.

Name of Artwork and artist:

Felix Gonzales Torres

Why were you drawn to this work?

First, I thought the fact that it was made of candies is very interesting. At first when I saw the work from faraway, I didn;t know what it was; I just saw large portion of the floor covered with something shiny. THe wrappers around each candies were creating different lights and shadows within them. And the interaction aspect of the piece was also very interesting.

How is TIME communicated?

Each candy represents a soldiers in the war. As the visitors consume the candies, it represents the soldiers who have fallen. And as the gallery add more candies to replace the consumed ones, it represents the new draftees who replace the dead ones.

How are the method, materials and approaches used reinforce the ideas the artist is conveying?

the missile like shape of the candy represent war.

Black color represents death.

700 pounds represent the dead soldiers.

3 questions?

is there any reason behind the choice of the flavor?

Who often are the candies get replaced?

Does the fact that the candies will always get replaced represent the fact that the wars in the world will never stop?

Name of Artwork and artist:

L’Echo by Su-Mei Tsu

Why were you drawn to this work?

At first I didn’t really get the concept of the work. At first I thought it was a video with almost no movement. Also, because the colors were so saturated, I thought the background wasn’t real and the person was just putted in front of that view with computer program. But after I read about the work, I understood the concept behind it.

How is TIME communicated?

The artist is playing the cello in front of a cliff, and the landscape itself creates echoing sound. After making some sound with her cello, the artist waits for few seconds, and the viewers can hear the echo of the music. In this work, TIME is communicated through the repetition of the sound and the act of waiting for the echo after playing the sound.It almost look like the man-made object (cello) and the nature is having a conversation in order to understand each other.

How are the method, materials and approaches used reinforce the ideas the artist is conveying?

The artist actually went to the scenery in order to get the environment that will create echo. The contrast between colors os the environment and the color of the artist’s dress separates the figure from the landscape.

3 questions?

I want to ask the artist how it felt like when she played cello front of that magnificent scenery.

Was it intentional to feel the room itself with the echoing sound of the cello instead of using headphones like the other works in the gallery did?

what was the reason of choosing cello instead of other instruments?

Among the artist books we saw at the library, the series of pop up books grabbed my attention. I loved the object like elements of it, and the fact that a book, which is mostly in 2D form, becomes 3D and comes alive.  I also liked the method of gate folding that I saw from the artist book called ‘Rape.’ The symbolism of the seal that was closing the book was also very interesting.

But among them, the boxes that where containing the artist books caught my eyes. They where sealed with strings and buttons, and it became a cross shape when it was all open. Since the book I was planing to make for my memory project had to contain small figures of characters init, I thought that it would be a good idea to use that box method in my book.

My idea for my artist book is to relate the story of the Little Prince, which was and still is one of my favorite books, into the sceneries of the Boston area that I am living right now to connect my childhood memory from Korea to the life I have now in the US. each pages will be containing a picture I took around the city, and I will have small characters that the viewers can place on the pages. I will have to be careful with the perspective and scale of the figures so they can be placed on anywhere in the page and still doesn’t look odd.  When the viewers are done playing, they can store the figures in the middle of the book, and close up the box.

While researching about the artist books, there was one book that really caught my attention. It was a book called ‘Change of Air’ by Jan Voss. The book kind of reminded me of little doodles I did on the corner of my notebooks when I was little. As I flip the pages really fast, the little doodles on the corner became animated. Jan Voss’s book used same method. As a reader flips the page really fast, the drawing of a fan becomes animated and start spinning. But Jan Voss took it one step further from just a little animated image. As the pages flip and the fan becomes animated, the flipping pages blows little wind to the reader’s face, just like a fan would when it is turned on. I thought that bringing out the animated image into real life like that is so interesting.

I want to incorporate drawings in my artist book as well, because I enjoy drawing more than anything. I also want to make the viewers get involved in my book like Jan Voss did with his book, but I am not sure how to do that yet. I want to work with my childhood memory which I remember that since I was very little, The Little Prince was, and still is my favorite book. So I am thinking about drawing a little figure of the little that the readers can place on each page where ever they want, but I am not sure how to put each pages together yet.

We started on our Memory Project. We started from taking 50 photographs that is about a childhood memory from out past. It could be narrative, and show each steps of the story within the memory of one’s choice, and it also could be non-narrative and focus more on the feel, objects, and symbols that relates to the memory. First I wasn’t sure how to begin my project; I moved to the United States seven years ago, and most of my childhood was spent in Korea. Because the culture, feel of the scenery, and many things are different from here and Korea, I was very frustrated to choose which memory I should choose, and how to capture my memory in the frame. So in the end, I chose a memory tat takes place in a mall, because malls in Korea and USA are somewhat similar. When I was little, I used to go to malls with my mom. We always went to cosmetic stores first because they were on the first floor. I remember loving the cosmetic section even though I had no idea what they where. I just really loved the colorfulness in that floor and the sweet smell of perfumes. So when my mom was looking at the products that she wants, I wondered around, looking at all the pretty colors, wondering what they are made for. After the cosmetic stores, we went to the second floor, which was filled with clothing stores. Unlike the cosmetic stores, in some reason I really hated the second floor. It was always really crowed and stuffy. I think I was just too bored while my mom was looking at the clothes in the store. I barely remember what I did there. I only remember standing next to my mom, looking at my feet, and sometimes glancing around a bit. Soon my mom realized that I am becoming very bored, so after that, as a reward for being so patient, she took me to the candy stores and toy stores. We barely bought any toys there, but just looking at them made me so happy.

While I was working on this project, I decided to focus on colors; I remember that when i was little, everything in the mall looked to colorful. And I also remember touching everything I see and looking really up close on everything, so I decided to take the photos very up close too. So when I was walking around the mall I tried to look for colorful settings and things that I would have looked up close when I was little. To represent my frustration at the clothing shops, I took some photos that are blurry and out of focus at some of the clothing stores at the mall.

Book:Time Exposed

Many of Sugimoto’s works shows many different examples of framing in photographs. His Theater Photograph series shows how he frames one or more frames into a frame (frame within a frame). These photos have very balanced  feeling and stability created by repeated shapes and symmetry. His Wax Museum series creates an illusion of the artist was actually present at the scene of the event by framing the wax figures and the background very carefully in his camera. Although the title of the series indicates the fact that the photographs are taken at wax museums, the pictures does not show any tourists, bars that prevents people from getting too close to the figures, or any elements that would show the audiences that the pictures were taken at wax museums.

The photo I chose is a picture from Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Night Seascape series. He’s seascape photos are very interesting; the photos are very simple, yet it is very obvious of its subject. The horizontal line in the middle of the frame is the only distinguishable element in the frame. The picture does not show s beach, a boat on the water, nor a island beyond the horizontal line,  yet the subtle texture of wave on the water and fog clearly indicates that these are seascapes. Sugimoto frames only a small part of the sea, but he was successful at framing the identity of the sea in his picture.