Week 12

After a mad overnight rush, I think my work is finally ready to be submitted. Just burnt the website to a cd-r, need to print the cover sheet, and then I have just under three hours to add any more key details to this blog. Phew.

Production Schedule

After quite a lot of tedious HTML coding, here is my production schedule for this term.

Week	Plan
1	Finalise draft of proposal, start background research into data visualisation.
2	Figure out what questions need to be addressed during the planning stage of project, research review styles.
3	Decide which methodology to undertake. Focus on creative aspect of writing or more of a content analysis? Further research into style; which genres bear the most fruit creatively?
4	Decide on final layout structure for website, start designing and creating the basic template. Revise proposal.
5	Research further into music visualisation. Read more on Tufte's ideas on boundaries in data realisation.
6	Think about the significance of genre - compare drafts and see which types of reviews evoke the best imagery. Further develop web site for pilot.
7	Further research all fields - put ideas into theoretical context. How does the project sit within the subject? Continue with website development and experiment with images.
8	Revisit any further required Flash/Dreamweaver techniques. Start organising web site design for submission; make sure files are rooted correctly, folders sorted.
9	Continue working on images. Are recent reviews better, or is a certain genre worth visiting in depth for better results?
10	Clean up all images made to date, start implementing them into the web layout.
11	Clean up workbook/blog. Look in to how to submit the work, start preparing the website for the final piloted version.
12	Make sure everything works; double check blog images to make sure they display correctly, burn the pilot to disc for submission, add any more relevant theoretical work to the workbook. SUBMIT THE WORK!

Proposal

My project is set out to explore and critique the relationship between text and image, focussed specifically on music reviews and the visual image they often try to create. Is text or image even relevant or helpful? To achieve this, I aim to take a mixture of existing music reviews and pieces I have written and had published myself in order to determine whether or not the medium of the music review in its current, arguably limited state really serves the purpose it's set out to do. If this is not the case, how image can possibly develop and improve the output?

I will predominantly collect and modify images from the internet in order to create an image in Photoshop that corresponds with a particular review, in a visual translation not too aesthetically dissimilar to Neurath's Isotype, providing a recognisable corresponding image to accompany key points made within the text. These points will be determined by identifying the most significant visual imagery used in each review.

Does the mental imagery within the text serve its purpose when trying to define music? The project will not rely on skilled artistry, but rather the actual issue of whether or not the images I produce gain the same reaction that the text version sets out to achieve. A key aim in my approach is to highlight the difficulty in visualising a format with no physical entity, and to highlight how the images created largely reflect the style of music they are based on, or even the particular writer's skill in their work itself. Drawing upon theoretical influence from Tufte's idea that data presentation should not be limited by its original format, I aim to focus on the possibilities that Web can provide to break down the barrier that the journalism industry currently adopts.

Research Report: Bibliography

Books/analytical writing:

Chandler, D. (2002) Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge

Dürsteler, J. C. (2005) Visualising Music [Digital Version] (Retrieved from http://www.infovis.net/printMag.php?num=161&lang=2 23rd November 2011)

Hanna, S. (2008) 'Composers and animators - the creation of interpretative and collaborative vocabularies' - Taken from the Journal of Media Practice, Volume 9 Number 1 2008

Neurath, O. (2010) From hieroglyphics to Isotype: a visual autobiography. London: Hyphen Press.

Tufte, E. (1990) Envisioning Information Connecticut: Graphics Press

Websites:

Information Is Beautiful (http://www.informationisbeautiful.net) [Accessed throughout the duration of the course.]

Kill Pixie (http://www.killpixie.net) [Accessed in early November 2011]

Research Report: Production Planning

Thus far, my project has consisted of making collages sourced from images found on the web, specifically from Google Images searches. Almost everything I have used has required cleaning up, cropping, resizing or cutting in Adobe Photoshop. Obviously with the fact I am dealing with collage, I have arranged each image myself in order to correspond with the texts I have used, again in Photoshop. Throughout the term, I have been brushing up on my Adobe Flash skills, and have revisited motion paths, cursor behaviours and other basic skills learned over the duration of the course in order to perhaps implement them in future approaches to my project.

For the planning stages, I was beginning by sketching out images of how I wanted my website to look, and made data based accounts of my thought processes also. I have sourced the majority of my reviews which have been used for conversion from http://www.nme.com, but I am keen to use reviews I have written myself in the next stage of planning.

When creating the website, I have been using Adobe Dreamweaver, and made use of my competent HTML coding skills, as well as seeking out tutorials from websites such as W3Schools.org. The majority of the web layout was created as image files in Photoshop, and then image mapped in Dreamweaver. Currently, the website is very basic visually, but I thought it was important to get the coding done as a placeholder if I decide to make the layout more interesting.

(249 words)

Research Report: The Pilot

In my attempts to realise my idea for the pilot, I found that the images I have produced really echo the scale of creativity displayed in the original text. When converting M83's 'Hurry Up, We're Dreaming,' I found that just by genre and artistic definition alone, there was a lot more of a visual palette to use. A lot more imagery in the text to work with than there was when I tried experimenting with a Black Keys review. This has made me wonder about the approach in data visualisation. There must be a correlation between stronger data and better imagery in Tufte's work, for example, as there seems to be in my own.

I feel that my pilot deals with my core ideas and theories well, but I think to progress, I need to explore different types of information to display. Now that I have tried to visualise creativity, I think it would be interesting to progress by seeing what happens if I create a wordcloud or something similar, based off a review, and try to visually re-imagine that.

In the process of designing and creating the website and my images, I have learnt that there are so many approaches and processes I can take. The possibilities are near-on endless, which I think serves as evidence in my question of why music reviews seem so limited by the text format. For example, I haven't even considered the possibility of adding motion to my images, I have yet to create any form of data based research stemming from content in the reviews, and there are so many specific little details I could include even from these much broader topics. At the moment, I feel the website could vastly expand in regards to the approaches I take.

(296 words)

Research Report: Research

As a base for my project, I thought it was important to revisit my initial understanding of semiotics and intertextualisation. Initially I researched Daniel Chandler's thoughts on the boundaries imposed by audience understanding.

My main source of theoretical inspiration and research, in practice itself in regards to realising my project, was based around Edward Tufte's ideas of data visualisation. I am aware that Tufte is a renown practitioner of 'cognitive art' himself, but it is his reasoning and his theories that stand out to me. Tufte (1990: 9) believed that "To envision information (...) is to work at the intersection of image, word, number, art." Tufte's challenges of the boundaries and disregard for the limits are exactly what my research and the project itself is trying to highlight.

From this, I have tried looking into more music-based approaches and theories, and came across Juan C. Dürsteler's (2005) thoughts on music visualisation, which is a lot more based around literal visualisations of frequency spectrums and so forth. This was an interesting take on how to visualise music, as it takes away the sense of creativity in writing that I would be focussed on, and masks literal, matter of fact data in a visually pleasing way. Aside from this, there really does not seem to be much in the way of relating music and imagery. Hanna (2008) gives a brief insight into animated accompaniments to music over history, but aside from this there is a lot left to be desired.

In my design research, I looked into Otto Neurath's Isotype. I am yet to really develop the idea in the context of my own work, but the way Neurath tried reformatting written language into visuals using a "language-like technique" (2010) is something worth exploring, especially in a web based context. My current obstacle is how to go about illustrating each aspect of the data I retrieve, but I will look to further develop these ideas in the future.

To progress, I need to look more into music visualisation itself, and determine what the closest attempt to echo my idea has been so far, and from that, find out why. Tufte and websites like Information is Beautiful have brought up a lot of key points in my methodology, but relating it to music and researching the discourse around the link between music reviews as a text based format and music as audio is the next key area I need to research.

(408 words)

Research Report: Similar Work

In essence, websites such as 'Information is Beautiful' (http://www.information-is-beautiful.net) are trying to achieve what I am aiming for. To take something in its existing format, which in Information Is Beautiful's case is data collection, poll and survey results and so forth, and mine to take key elements of creative writing and present them in a way that is far more visual and arguably engaging for the viewer. This has influenced me in the way I am looking to approach my final piece, as I think it would be interesting to take some quantitative data from reviews and represent them in a different format, much in the way that Information Is Beautiful does.

I have searched extensively and have not found any websites who specialise in image-based music reviews, so a lot of the work that has inspired me has belonged to other fields which I can relate to my own. It is unclear to me whether this means that the idea is flawed, it may be seen as too gimmicky to actually work as a profit-drawing website, it may take too long to produce each review and cost too much, or anything else. Visually, in regards to the website, I was inspired by websites such as Los Angeles artist Mark Whalen (also known as Kill Pixie) who adopt a minimalist style. My interpretation was that I will let the images speak for themselves, and since my experiment is less about creating works of art, I am keen to avoid overshadowing the images with an overbearing website.

(256 words)

Research Report: Theoretical Context

My project examines the relationship between text and image, and what limitations there may be to that when trying to juxtapose the two beside each other, in an attempt to convey what is essentially the same message. The message I am trying to look into is whether or not visual imagery really works when trying to write about a non-visual thing - in my case, music reviews. In my understanding of the field, it seems to me that websites currently specialising in music reviews are not really making the most of what the medium of the web presents to them, and that is an unlimited palette for painting the visual picture they currently just present in written form, to accompany the music they are reviewing.

I am exploring themes such as intertextuality, semiotics and data visualisation, and am particularly interested in Edward Tufte's ideas that data should not be limited by its format. I feel personally that music reviews almost limit themselves by not at least exploring the idea of visual accompaniments, as so many writers seem to strive to make their interpretations a far more visual realisation. It usually comes down to the style of music and the skill of the writer when determining how well a review works as an image, so for that reason, Tufte's concepts become slightly alienated. It is not data in question here, it is a creative interpretation, and that provides problems. I feel that Tufte's theories can merely translate to a creative process, but his ideas articulate my own.

(256 words)

Week 11

This week has been pretty much all about tightening everything up; adding images to blog posts I hadn't had a chance to format/upload, working on the website and making sure everything works (even though it is a bit basic at the moment) and generally rushing around to add more bulk to everything. About to finalise my proposal now.

Week 10

I thought it would be interesting to cover an album by a band who don't really make music in the same vein as the other bands I have been covering with this project. The Black Keys are an American blues-driven garage rock band, who are much more straight and to the point than M83's dreamy soundscapes, for example. The difference in my image speaks for itself really, with the writer comparing The Black Keys to a lot of other artists rather than painting a visual picture of how the music sounds. This, comparatively with images like the M83 one, really highlight what it is I'm looking into here; how language and imagery relate, and whether or not it works in helping the audience to know what to expect. The following image was just kind of done on a whim, so it's far from finished, but already you can see that it's a lot more matter-of-fact, a lot more 'this is what happened when the record was made, this is who it sounds like' rather than being too visually descriptive.

7/10 It feels pretty strange to be typing these words, but of late The Black Keys have undoubtedly become something of a big deal. Their last album ‘Brothers’ scooped three Grammy awards (Best Alternative Album, Best Rock Performance and Best Recording Package, whatever that is) and sold over a million copies worldwide. They recently announced a second show at London’s 10,000-capacity Alexandra Palace after the first sold out in under a week.

How did these jobbing blues-rockers from Akron, Ohio, suddenly get so huge? One persuasive theory is that they’ve merely inherited 'The White Stripes’ fanbase, with Jack and Meg’s demise creating a vacuum in the world of rootsy guitar-and-drums duos that the nominally similar Black Keys have rushed in to fill. In fact, they’ve outlasted almost all of the other bands who rose to prominence during the garage rock revival a decade ago (whither now the likes of The Datsuns and The Von Bondies?) and simply by being the last men standing in the vicinity of a vintage Fender Twin, The Black Keys have cleaned up.

But that’s only half the story. Over the last few albums, with the aid of regular producer Danger Mouse, The Black Keys have been gradually evolving from bluesy bar-band scufflers into streamlined rock ravagers. ‘El Camino’ had to be a record that justified the band’s elevation to the arena circuit, and it comes up trumps with a fat-free set of thumping uptempo rockers and primitive soul stompers.

Whereas previously the pair would never discuss tactics before entering the studio to jam, here every song sounds purposeful and premeditated. Single and opener ‘Lonely Boy’ sets the tone with its rabble-rousing rockabilly rumble. Even for committed minimalists like The Black Keys, the song is brutally simple, with Dan Auerbach refusing to wait for a reciprocal glance before yanking his heart out and slapping it on the table (“I don’t mind bleeding” he sings, blithely). ‘Run Right Back’ borrows its sleazy strut from Queens Of The Stone Age’s ‘No One Knows’, succinctly sketching out another fatal attraction scenario (“Finest exterior/ She’s so superior/ But she won’t allow/And I’m wounded now”) to a rhythm that feels like a finger jabbing in your chest. ‘Little Black Submarines’ is more ambitious, starting out in Johnny Cash territory before exploding into a psycho-blues freakdown.

‘Sister’, with its insistent ’80s pulse, is simply the best out-and-out pop song they’ve ever written, while the brilliantly demented cowboy glam holler of ‘Gold On The Ceiling’ is boosted by the band’s new trio of female backing singers wailing for all they’re worth. It’s a lot of fun, although The Black Keys have (presumably unwittingly) just rewritten Super Furry Animals’ demented cowboy glam holler ‘Golden Retriever’. ‘Money Maker’ also sounds comfortingly familiar, with a primary riff that’s a ringer for The Hives’ ‘Main Offender’ (although that’s OK, because it’s not like The Hives are around to play it for themselves).

Ultimately, when you’re working with such basic, well-worn materials, none of it is going to sound particularly original, but ‘El Camino’ is at least thrusting and urgent and very quickly to the point. Whatever Danger Mouse has done to galvanise The Black Keys – and thankfully he’s left his trademark soporific shuffling drums at home, the Keys’ Pat Carney being more of a bare-knuckle bludgeoner – he’s got the band operating at maximum efficiency.
The Black Keys will never really be able to boast the fizzing sexual tension and weirdo intrigue of The White Stripes, the dazzling dexterity of White Denim, nor the strutting showmanship of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Make-Up or The Hives. But for 37 rollicking minutes, they give it the full gun, meeting the challenge of being the biggest garage rock band in the world head-on.

Sam Richards

Week 9

I've spent some time cleaning up my blog last night and today; with each week that passed, I created a blank draft, ready for the entries, so I have been filling in where I'd missed, and actually publishing everything. I have written notes scribbled in my jotter, and wrote down key ideas before expanding, so I've been typing everything up. It's my birthday in two days and there are some problems at home that I need to go back and help with; family illness and so on, so I may not make it in next week, but obviously I will still be developing my ideas and looking into further reading.

Week 8

This week I have been conducting further theoretical and methodological research. In my initial discussions in the tutorials about placing my work into a theoretical context, a number of key figures were brought to my attention, and I had only just realised that I'd saved quite a few bookmarks on the UWE system. So without further adieu;



Otto Neurath. (1882-1945) An Austrian social scientist, political economist and philosopher.

Neurath designed Isotype, which is  the International System of Typographic Picture Education. Isotype is basically a system implemented to put data visualisation into practice. Isotype is simply a method of displaying information gathered from data in a text format. Neurath teamed up with Gerd Arntz in order to actually create the language. Antz designed upwards of 4000 images to correspond with Neurath's ideas, and focussed around industrial and political ideas when approaching the design. It was significant at the time of design, around 1935, because the majority of those working in the industry could not read or write, let alone deal with industry terminology, so the idea was to create a simple way of understanding.

Gerd Antz's website brings forth the idea that 'Another outspoken goal of this method of visual statistics was to overcome barriers of language and culture, and to be universally understood.' I believe this ties in well with my approach to the project, but at the same time, depending on the review, a certain amount of intertextual awareness and, I suppose, a sense of cultural capital will help the reader to understand the images easier. A lot of reviews feed off of the audience's awareness of similar-sounding artists and so on, which could be a barrier when perhaps more interesting ideas, in a similar vein to Isotype, is introduced.

It would be interesting for me to create my own form of Isotype specifically for my website. Since I am not particularly artistically gifted when it comes to hand drawing, it may be something to explore in the second half of the semester. If I get a chance, I will attempt to create something as an experiment though. But for now, it doesn't really work as a critique on whether or not text based reviews are successful, it merely collects the data in a more visually pleasing way.

Week 7

I've spent the morning session working on my web layout for presenting the work. When I discussed everything with Rod a few weeks ago, he suggested that the project doesn't necessarily need a website. As time has passed, I have kind of understood the point. Without making it a fully fledged reviews/music news website, it's difficult knowing what direction to go in. I have drawn inspiration from the minimalist web design style from artists such as Australian-born Los Angeles painter/sculptur Kill Pixie (http://www.killpixie.net/home.html - the intro page is a little more fancy, since it features some of his artwork) who I feel try to let the artwork do the talking.




Kill Pixie web layout (click thumbnail to enlarge)

As you can see, very basic indeed. Since my pieces don't really have much to say in the way of artistry, I thought it would be best to avoid as many distractions as possible. If the layout is too interesting, it may highlight how uninteresting some of the images are. This may work in cases where the reviews I have to work from aren't particularly visually strong, but from the M83 review, which is awashed with strong visual material, it would be a shame for the focus to be lost on pretty buttons or fancy hyperlinks etc. - anyway, here is a screengrab of how the site is looking;

Just came cross an interesting article by Suzie Hanna of the Norwich School of Art and Design, entitled 'Composers and animators – the creation of interpretative and collaborative vocabularies' which gives a bit of insight and background on the relationship between music and imagery. Hanna maintains that "There is some evidence to suggest that animators can perceive their own art as having musical parallels" - For music reviewers, a certain understanding of the recording process must be taken into account, but it seems less as if reviews are trying to mimmick the flow, the beat of the music in question and are more trying to visualise the mood it provokes.

Other highlights in the piece include an introduction to Oskar Fischinger, who shared a similar idea to my own in realising music visually;

Even in the first half of the twentieth century American studios wererefining their use of music and sound to enhance the fantastic visualworlds they had created; there were animators who as artists in their ownright were already pursuing ideas about using animation to enhance the fantastic worlds of sound. One of the most innovative of these was Oskar Fischinger.

(Oskar Fischinger) loved music and wanted to imitate it, trying to steal itssecrets of harmony, melody and counterpoint and transfer them to the fieldof images.

In the early 30s Fischinger analysed his musical sources from phonographrecords, scratching on them and calculating the time between the soundsin relation to the diameter of the grooves at any given point. This was pio-neering practice, a visual artist could create his own system for decodingaudio information accurately (that was not already converted to frames infilm format).

Hanna, S. (2008) 'Composers and animators - the creation of interpretative and collaborative vocabularies' - Taken from the Journal of Media Practice, Volume 9 Number 1 2008

Week 6

I have been searching for articles and theorists' ideas on music visualisation, and there really is not much out there, it seems. I found an interesting Youtube video, which is one of the only, if not THE only video that describes its aim as 'visualising music.' So this isn't just an accompanying video, apparently. It's a visualisation. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's worth posting.



I also remembered about Wordle, which creates 'word clouds' if you submit some text or a URL, based on significance or frequency of use or something. I thought it would be interesting to try it with the M83 review I converted, and here is how it came out;

As you can see, it didn't really amount to much. Desert is quite large in the photo, which is a good sign considering I used the Joshua Tree as a background, but yeah. 'Album,' 'invisible' etc. don't really provide much in the way of imagery. Was just interesting to try though, I guess.

Week 5

This week, as well as catching up on my Flash skills (I'm having some problems uploading the .swf files of my practicing to the blog, will try to add later) I have been working on designs for the website. The Flash stuff we have covered has been fairly basic - making stickmen walk across a screen, making a little point and click game - useful stuff really, because I had completely forgot some elements - so it really helped. I don't feel like much of the practice will really benefit my project, but it's good to remember how to do certain things. I am thinking of trying to use stuff like moving grass or something in future review conversions. But anyway, on to the website...

I have decided I want it to be quite basic and minimalist to give more focus on the images that accompany each review. Here is a quick sketch of how I want it to look;


Click the thumbnail to enlarge

That's just for the home page, but obviously the content box would change on each page; the reviews page would display each review in the boxes, the news would have updates etc.

I think in the initial stages, I will just stick to my original idea of nothing fancy, just the images next to the text. At least in the pilot stage. After this, I may look into some other approaches, like doing artwork myself and focussing on more of a data collection process, like I mentioned before with looking at frequency of words used etc. - as well as looking to implement a rollover AP Div style word highlighting mechanism. So when the image is rolled over, the corresponding text in the review will become highlighted.

Week 4

This week I conducted my first experiment with the concept of my project, in order to put my theory into practice. I wanted to try and make the first image for my Pilot, and here is what I came up with;

My first experiment consisted of quickly checking NME.com for a review that I thought would be particularly interesting to cover. Being a fan of M83 myself already, I knew their music was often atmospheric, dreamy and usually consists of a vast soundscape to pick apart. Whilst I haven't yet heard the album this review covers, I felt the language was adequate enough to convert, so from the following review, I compiled this image:

Review taken from NME.com (http://www.nme.com/reviews/m83/12375);

A grandiose double-album paean to childhood dreaming that only occasionally needs the naughty step

7/10On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux(One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye). Not our words, but that of a clever fox in Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s profound children’s book. The book tells the story of a child-like alien who travels to other worlds. Visiting Earth, he meets a crash-landed aviator in a bleak desert.

While the stranded pilot is a weary grown-up, the prince is yet to be tainted by adulthood. If Anthony Gonzalez (M83) is like the aviator, having imagined this double album while in the Joshua Tree desert in California, ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming’ is itself the Little Prince: guileless and dreamy. Quite a bold statement to make, but this is an album of equal valour.

‘Intro’ really captures the spirit of the album, guest Zola Jesus’ voice both otherworldly and powerful. It’s a jaw-dropping start that fades into ‘Midnight City’, arguably one of the best tracks to be released this year. Its dancefloor-filling melody boasts the finest sax solo you’re likely to have heard in the past 20 years.

It’s this pomp that makes the album work, and on ‘Reunion’, The Breakfast Clubsoundtracked by Toto, the fantasy is properly realised. Gonzalez has said that each track on the album is an interpretation of people’s dreams. But there’s another theme that runs through both sides of this epic: childhood innocence. At times this works well (‘Splendor’), but the Dora The Explorer-like voiceover on ‘Raconte-Moi Une Histoire’ is a mega peeve. There’s a lot to take out of ‘Hurry Up…’ but moments like this, and the synth interlude of ‘Klaus I Love You’, detract from the overall vision.

But, if you can look past that and use your heart, you might rediscover your own absentminded childhood and an album full of hidden pleasures.

Jamie Crossan

Research: 1

Edward Tufte


I have recently been exploring the work of Edward Tufte, as recommended to me by Rod. My initial thoughts are that whilst Tufte's ideas on the relationship between data and visuals is fascinating, and has some scope in the ideas I have on this project myself, his actual practises in creating visuals of data are far too niche, far too focussed on scientific ideals. 


In Beautiful Evidence, Tufte touches upon some of his own methods of data visualisation, such as the Sparkline, which has been made popular in visualising rises and falls in the stock market, or temperature activity, and I feel it doesn't really have much to do with visualising the imagery a reviewer uses. A lot of Tufte's methods are about compressing as much data into as smaller an image as possible, just for the sake of efficiency and whatnot. With reviews, if I conclude something to be a key element, it's not about being dense, sparse and cutthroat with the way I display it. Taking creative data and re-imagining it creatively does not really call for the same kind of methods in order to preserve time or page space.


Again, as I briefly mentioned before, it would be great to show which words show dominance in each review with a method like these; whether or not the word 'chorus' fluctuates more and more with one certain reviewer's work, for example, but to simply convert text to an image seems a lot more of a creative process than an analytical one.


In my initial search, I also came across Tufte's Beautiful Evidence lecture, from Intelligence Squared in London, Wednesday 19th May. Here is a brief highlights video;

The full version is available to view for members only on the Information Squared website. In this lecture, Tufte explains the reasoning for some of his arguments, gives some examples of his work and generally tries to put his ideas into context. Here are some quotes I found particularly interesting:

"Evidence that bears on questions of any complexity typically involves multiple forms of discourse. In modern scientific research, for example, about 25% of published materials are graphs, tables, diagrams and images, and the other 75% are words. The spirit of real science in publication is whatever it takes to explain something."

I realise Tufte's ideas are a lot more scientifically orientated, but the message I want to explore is largely the same. I think in regards to my experiment and music reviews, the format is irrelevant. There are ideas, emotions and feelings that the reviewer tries to evoke with his writing, but I don't think the writing aspect is essential in that. This is why I want to see if it really works on a visual level as well. 


By default, music reviews take one idea and almost transcode it to a completely disconnected and unrelated format. I don't think it is data that they are dealing with at all; data collection on music would just be a much more sterile, emotionless take - what kind of guitars were used, how was it mic'd up, how many strums of each chord pattern and so on. That would be a more Tufte-like approach to exploring creative writing dealing with music.

"Evidence is evidence, whether words, numbers, images, diagrams, still or moving. The information doesn't care what it is. The content doesn't care what it is. It is all information. For readers and viewers, the intellectual tasks remain constant regardless of the particular mode of evidence. To understand and to reason about the materials at hand and to appraise their quality, relevance and integrity."


This quote is perhaps more key in understanding what it is I'm trying to achieve. Obviously there are questions about how I approach this creatively, but what I am looking to do is to make a visual representation of existing texts. There will be certain things I can't really incorporate into a collage, such as specific words that make up sentences; the "ands," the "buts" the "the's". But it is more so the message that I am trying to visualise. "The content doesn't care what it is." For the experiment to work, I need to draw my own conclusions as to which medium does the job it is set out to do in a better ability, but that aside, analytically, all I really want to know is if the user gains the same, or draws the same conclusions regardless of whether they've experienced each review visually or textually.

"We shouldn't deny ourselves the uses of every possible mode, and we shouldn't segregate the information by the modes of production."


Again, Tufte's ideas play into how I want to look at the relevance of text as a format. Either way, sound is difficult to visualise, and all music reviews seem to do is create a mental image of how music sounds. It's quite complex, but Tufte definitely takes a similar approach with his presentation of data as I intend my project to.

Week 3

This week I have been thinking of how to put my project into practice. After initial discussions with Rod, it seems that my approach is worth perhaps expanding and experimenting with. I have been told to look into Edward Tufte's writing - covering Data Visualisation and different ways of producing data. Whilst, again, I wouldn't really say my focus is on data collection as such, an initial Google search proved interesting.

I have been recommended books such as Tufte's Envisioning Information (2001) as a starting point to add more theoretical context to my idea, and this paired with websites such as Information is Beautiful have really helped me to pinpoint what it is I'm trying to do. I'm not really trying to make a picture of the music as such, I'm trying to convert what the reviewer is trying to say the music looks like. Whether or not the images are particularly striking is not really the point of focus; if anything, if the image lacks visually it says more about whether or not music reviews serve their purpose in the written form than anything else really. It's more difficult to use visuals to describe audio than it is to use audio to describe visuals.

It has been suggested that I should look at work such as Tufte's and try out a similar approach. For this to really work, I think I would need a lot more skill with freehand drawing and photoshop than I currently do. It would be a lot more time consuming and perhaps too artwork based if I were to take this approach. I think the whole point of this is to take key ideas and splice them together, rather than create an epic visual landscape. If I were to look into the idea of drawing everything myself, I don't think it would be before the Pilot version is created. I think for this idea of data visualisation to work in the context of my idea, I would need to focus on the fact-based element far more - for example, observing the amount of times a certain word is used, and then creating a visual chart to correspond. For example, if 'guitar' is used frequently in one review, I could make a visual tally with images of guitars I have created myself. This idea may be worth looking into, but it doesn't really fit into the framework of my approach.

Tufte's work seems largely based on facts, figures, graphs and charts; scientific experiments being visualised rather than artwork made for the sake of art, although in Envisioning Data, Tufte seems to see himself as an artist with no active audience, at least in the field of art itself. His ideas and actual theories on why visualisation is important seems a good starting point for my own. I will post a blog about my reaction to his theories and ideas shortly.

Aside from this, I have been revisiting ideas of intertextuality. Within my images, even from initial searches on music review websites, I have found that the texts are often laced with references to other bands, other places, other images. In Semiotics: The Basics (2002) Daniel Chandler writes

Although Saussure stressed the importance of the relationship of signs to each other, one of the weaknesses of structuralist semiotics is the tendency to treat individual texts as discrete, closed-off entities and to focus exclusively on internal structures. Even where texts are studied as a 'corpus' (a unified collection), the overall generic structures tend themselves to be treated as strictly bounded. The structuralist's first analytical task is often described as being to delimit the boundaries of the system (what is to be included and what excluded), which is logistically understandable but ontologically problematic.

So he backs up my ongoing argument that music reviews, in text format, do impose a sense of a strictly bound and limited system. The idea of internal structures is interesting to me, as the text written in a review is self-contained really. Illustration doesn't seem to come into contention, and a world of its own, a visual landscape is created within the writing, and it's the (apparent lack of) consideration or focus on that I am interested in.

Music in its raw format is obviously audio, so text doesn't often translate as concisely as may be required. The same goes for food critics. Obviously if you have already tasted something, you can relate to the ideas, as my O'Toole quote last week highlighted. But to try and describe something, there are often derivative references. This music sounds like this, this food tastes like this. I think it is incredibly difficult to describe a taste to someone who has no idea. With the web as a tool, is it worth expanding on the limits? After quite a deep search, I haven't found any music review websites so far that take the same kind of approach I am experimenting with, but almost all text based review websites feature writing that evokes some kind of mental picture. A picture speaks for itself, it's all of the intertextuality and derision in music writing that takes away from its creativity. It seems like it isn't language itself which presents a problem when trying to convert to an aesthetically pleasing imagination of it. It's the writing style. Is it simply the traditional formatting in publishing as text that is limiting the potential? I'm not so sure.

Chandler, D. (2002) Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge

Week 2

This week, we in the web department established that we could do with some refresher lessons in Adobe Flash. I am intending on using some elements to possibly highlight text in the reviews I work on when scrolled over, using AP Divs, and it's tricky remembering how to do this. Should be very useful.

Also, whilst discussing everything with Phil, my attention was drawn to http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ - a website which kind of specialises in data visualisation, superbly.

The above image is one of the latest posts on Information is Beautiful. I thought it was quite interesting as this particular piece was sort of a competition for the website's audience. They were simply asked to sketch what they thought their soul looked like. Obviously this is interesting to me, because in a sense I am trying to figure out whatever the reviewer of a piece I am studying thinks the music they are listening to looks like, so the creative aspect spoke out to me, I suppose. The thing about this website is the creative aspect, in theory rather than design, is slightly limited. Obviously the way each piece of data is presented takes a lot of creativity, but the fact my subject matter is really just creative writing in the first place, as opposed to Information is Beautiful's data research, means there is more room for manoeuvre in my project. 

I know, in essence, it seems like this is similar to what I'm aiming for with the reviews, but I think it's important to highlight that what I'm taking from the reviews is not really 'data' - it's more imagery, visions, language. There is a danger that what I'm extracting from the reviews could be too specific and personal to the reviewer who wrote the review, but at the same time, I think it's more just a way of displaying a form of media rather than collected data. I'm trying to explore the relationship between language and what the user really gains from it; whether or not my images really correspond with whatever the audience is encouraged to visualise.

In order to really engage with what it is I am trying to dissect, I have been reading into the relationship between image and text. I came across a book by Michael O'Toole (1994:4), called The Languague of Displayed Art, which argues that

semiotics – the study of sign systems- can assist us in a search for a language through which our perceptions of a work of art can be shared. I believe that we should start with the impact the particular work has on us in the gallery, or even in a book of reproductions, but this semiotic approach will also allow us to relate the nature of this impact to the scene portrayed

So in this, my perception of even 'language' itself has been challenged. O'Toole emphasises that recognition and awareness of a context plays a large part on how we perceive whatever it is we're observing; in his case a work of art. I think in order to find the answers I am looking for, i.e. whether image can evoke the same response as text in music reviews, it's arguably not even language I am more focussed on, it's the audience's understanding of semiotics, and their recognition of culture. The image can't really say much if you don't recognise some of the more iconic imagery I will be trying to include. There is a lot to think about.

O’Toole, M. (1994) The Language of Displayed Art. London: Leicester University Press.

Week 1

After a number of discussions with friends, family and coursemates, I decided over the summer that I wanted to take my own personal aspirations for what I want to get out of this course, and challenge the boundaries. I came to UWE with the intention of aiding my aspirations to become a music journalist, so this year I have been trying to gear my work in that direction. 


Tom told me about an interesting art installation he had seen in which wine critics tried to make a visual representation of the blurbs on the back of bottles of wine, or something similar. The details escape me. But from that, I thought it would be interesting to look at music reviews and really dissect them, highlight what they actually are, what they hope to achieve, and then mess with the conventions to expose them. 


Does the language in music reviews really help us to imagine what music sounds like? Or does it simply paint a picture or a storyboard for how an accompanying music video may look? I'm not sure that flowery poetry about how a guitar 'soars' really helps the audience to understand what to expect. Anyway, I wrote a vague proposal to try and summarise what it is I'm looking to do;


For this year's project, I intend to examine magazine style reviews, and explore whether or not the language they use is successful in really describing what to expect of whatever product or event it is they are featuring. Due to my personal interests and intentions as a journalist and academic analyst, I am more interested in music reviews in particular. Obviously what music reviews are trying to achieve is to not really paint a visual picture, but to paint an audio prediction. Through this, though, they often use colourful imagery and whether they intend to or not, inadvertently achieve a much more visually rich description. Does the audience actually know what to expect musically?

I aim to take a number of existing reviews, or possibly use some reviews I have written myself for Guide2Bristol.com and try to convert them into visual translations. I aim to take any of the more particularly rich imagery and make collages depicting what it is the review is really trying to say. To make the whole experience more coherent, I will include the original text in which the image is based on, and perhaps use AP Divs to highlight particular phrases when certain parts of the images are rolled over. I will present my work on a reviews website I have created myself, loosely based on the sort of design that features on websites such as NME.com.


To put this into context, I was thinking of creating a reviews website, not too aesthetically dissimilar to websites such as the NME's, and just having links to each including the original text and then the image displayed with it. The user will engage by trying to dissect which part of the image corresponds with each key concept, idea or imagery touched upon in the reviews. I need to start working out a basic website structure, but I think initially it won't be too fancy. The images will do the talking; I just need the bare bones to work.


Also this week, myself and Amy teamed up with Tom (the usual sort of grouping) in the tutorial workshops for the mini practical projects we've been assigned with. Myself and Amy are doing a couple of Web-based pieces - the User Unfriendly website being an obvious choice so far, and Tom is working on a couple of bits of video. Screenshots etc. coming up.

Introduction

Hello.

My name is Adam Patmore, I am a third year Journalism and Media & Cultural Studies student at the University of the West of England in Bristol, United Kingdom.

Here, I will be sharing my intentions, thoughts, plans and overall progress in my Web Media based Independent Production module.

Soon, I will post my proposal.