Friday, 25 November 2011
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.
Sunday, 20 November 2011
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.
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.
Friday, 11 November 2011
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
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;
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
Friday, 4 November 2011
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.
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.
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