Coming into this subject, I honestly wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I thought the outline sounded interesting, and chose it because it was so different from previous studios I have participated in over the past few years. I liked the idea of broadening my creative outlook on the world, and still be able to explore different types of media and forms.

In this studio we will be looking at space, as the title of the subject suggests. As well as:

• Transforming the meaning while exploring new ways of looking at objects and space.
• Exploring different perspectives and throughly dissecting meanings
• Exploring the difference between public and private space.

The first element we discussed all together was soundscape. I’ve never really dived into this concept before to an extent. It’s always been a part of cinema (for example, something more specific) rather than in everyday life. Notes I gathered were:

• Soundscape is a context
• Sound locates us
• It gets carried along the whole body of the sound spectrum
• The human experience of sound

 

Watching Raymond Murray and John Cage. Two influences in exploring sound. Both different views and points. Exploring different meanings and feelings.

Murray suggests that the world is a huge musical composition and we are the composes – what we add is up to us. He spoke about a sound overkill, and being able to reduce the number of sounds in our life. The industrial revolution was also discussed, as the sounds that dominate our everyday life – loud machinery, the church bells are now muffled out. But is this because we choose to ignore them?

Cage explores the power of silence. His performance shows a sonic space being performative, and with the silence the body becomes activated. How do we listen? What is sound? Is sound still sound even if we can’t hear it?

 

Further questions raised and to think about:

• What do we pay attention to?
• What do we ignore?
• How do we control what we audit?