MEDI 323: Surrealism + Dali

My 'Dreamscapes' project has a very heavy influence of surrealism and one can't mention it without thinking of Dali.

I remember being in my early teens and seeing 'The Persistance of Memory' its one of those moments when you stop and just look and get completely lost in the image. I looked at it for so long I was late for class and came back to look again at break. It moved me deeply, I find this way to look at things delicious!

Maybe it appeals to my escapist, fantasy loving nature or maybe it appeals because it is so close to reality.

Surreal Definition: 
sur·re·al 

adj.

1. Having qualities attributed to or associated with surrealism: "Even with most facilities shut down ... a few mavericks managed to slip into the park to sample the almost surreal emptiness before the shutdown ended." (Peter H. King).

2. Having an oddly dreamlike quality.

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As a style it is said to be "a style in which fantastical visual imagery from the subconscious mind is used with no intention of making the work logically comprehensible.

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Max Ernst is another notable surrealist. I really love 'Ubu Imperator' I like this one in particular because I feel it has an incredible humor to it. The great thing about it is that the viewer can see familiar aspects and shapes and almost make sense of it. To me the almost other worldly animal qualities it displays are delightful! (I see a bird type creature)

The Movement:
Surrealism was a 20th century art movement which focused on depicting the very bizarre and strange things which one would never encounter in real life, focusing on dreams and hallucinations rather than nature.
Surrealism is generally considered to have started with the play Les Mamelles de Tiresias by Giullaume Apollinaire and Dali's paintings are among the most famous works characteristic of the surrealistic style.

Anouther Picure that I really like is one by Christian Bouqueret:

I love how freakish it is. I believe this is almost Gothic Surrealism of which I am a huge fan.

MEDI 255 Consumption and Media

I have been thinking about making these image manipulation adverts for this project and I had a thought back to a joke shared between me and a few friends in college about a person we knew.

He was very into his heavy metal and bikes and leather but his most striking feature was his long, flowing brown hair.

This prompted me to make (what I considered) a funny joke about him using high class hair care products because he was 'worth it'

One of my friends at that time corrected me with "No he is a metaller he uses Pantera Pro-V!"
Its one of those things I have ALWAYS imaged of some kind of rock and roll Pantene bottle. I would like to make an advert for this product as it is just something I have wanted to do.

Pantera was an American metal band formed by the Abbott Brothers in 1918. 'Dimebag' Darrell Abbott was a huge name in the alternative music industry before his tragic death in 2004. He is considered one of the most influental stylists in modern metal and is sorely missed by fans. Even thought the band split before Darrell's death they still have an offical site and a large fanbase.   

I have collated some choice images that I can use in the final series of adds:  

I like how these two things seemingly clash but I do think they fit well together.

Also this could serve to challenge peoples ideas of stereotypes.

MEDI 264: Interactive Sound and Vision - Critical Evaluation For the Draft Project

The prototype for my project actually works extremely well, it functions as a tone matrix even if it can sometimes be a little erratic, however more often than not it is very tonal and the sounds it makes are of a pleasing yet raw quality, there are instances when it does sound fuzzy and the beeps are a bit off tone to what we humans think is melodic. I need to investigate this and further play around with it. Overall the project has huge potential for scope. I could take it in the direction of a ‘one on one’ sound mixer, which would be a neat little toy using different sounds for each point on the matrix that could be interfaced with via a computer, or I could take it down the road I really wanted to which is to link to some kind of motion sensitive mat and then have it as either a motion controlled tone matrix or have it doing something similar to the sound mixer but with the motion sensor that can then be part of an immersive environment or create a new layer within an environment. I have researched very extensively into motion capture, as it was my original intent to produce a project heavily involving that and I do draw a lot of my inspiration for the project from modern games and gadgets. I like the fun interactivity aspect and would ideally like to be able to create a space that children and adults could play in and have the sound controlled by where they were. With this idea in mind the bigger the space and the more people in the space would affect the overall sound being produced. This kind of thing as an installation would work better the more people that did interact with it.

I was intending to source the sounds from freesound.org and have only very short sound clips that looped. The sample size for sound would be huge so lots of different sounds could be selected either fitting a specific theme or having no cohesion at all. I would love to experiment with this as there is the potential to then have a tone matrix for every season, every mood, different locations etc. It really could literally be limitless. I could also experiment with sourcing my own sounds and then using a single sound with altered pitch for one matrix.

I worked very hard on the tone matrix, having very little knowledge of the software and basically having to teach myself as I went. It was a very challenging but incredibly rewarding experience. I have really learned what I am doing in Max5 now as far as the matrix is concerned and I like the software a lot. I do want to continue this project on since I really care a lot about it and it such a massive scope for expansion. I may in further versions put back in the tone control feature I removed but I would like it to have a much more intuitive interface than just a number box as although you can get some really cool sounds you can also get noises that are horrific and very hard on the ears. I would have to do further research into scales and have to work a lot more with Max5 so that I had the technical skills possible to achieve my aims. I also could do more research into this to see if my idea has ever been produced before and if so see how it was handled so that I had a solid grounding in the technical issues and details of the project.

I feel that although my tone matrix is not as good as the one that gave me the original idea it does exactly what it is supposed to. They also work on very different software so each may have flaws or high points that the other doesn’t. I am overall very happy with my tone matrix but would like to develop it further.

MEDI 264: Interactive Sound and Vision - Max Patch for Tone Matrix

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