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