Forum – Week 10 – Semester 2, 2008: “Honours Student Presentations”
Animation of a blue elephant...old school!The delicate and subtle set of introspective animated short films presented by Poppi and Yisheng Qian (Betty) was quite engaging. It’s refreshing to witness a presentation of work that the artist has truly immersed themselves in for their own reasons. Too often we are presented with student projects that are products of course criteria, rather than inspired creation (I include my own efforts in this observation). I’ve towed the line thus far with the “this is what I did with Max/MSP, SC, Audio Arts etc” course directed approach. When I see presentations like this one however, where the person has gone against that model and decided to showcase something they really care about, it makes me wonder if I should have done the same. I mean, I found this presentation very entertaining, and I struggle to imagine anyone having the same reaction to one of my Max, Collider or Concrete pieces, which have felt like more of an afterthought to the process of learning how to program, than works of sonic art. Perhaps the criteria for student presentations could be opened up to a free for all “show us what you like to do with sound” model, rather than “show us what you did for this course last semester, with the painfully limited amount of time you had to work with.”
Reference:
Whittington, Stephen. “Forum – Week 10 – Semester 2, 2008: Honours Student Presentations.” Workshop presented at EMU space, level 5 Schultz building,
Labels: Forum IIIB
posted by David J Dowling @ 7:57 PM
4 Comments:
A comment on M. Victory's project, who I had not the word count to indulge in the main post:
This seems a particularly elaborate and clever way to capture random data. I feel some more focus should rest on how that data is used for synthesis of sound. Does it really need to be generated/dictated by values from the packet data alone? I ask because the output struck me as a novelty once its source and means of existence was established. I just feel that at this stage it's in that "too random" and sonically unremarkable camp of Technology driven music that is often the product of a new process...
DJD.
QUOTE: "I’ve towed the line thus far with the “this is what I did with Max/MSP, SC, Audio Arts etc” course directed approach. When I see presentations like this one however, where the person has gone against that model and decided to showcase something they really care about, it makes me wonder if I should have done the same."
I think it is still a good idea that we present materials from our own assessment projects, as it provides other students and lecturers with insight into what avenues could be explored, or what can be expected, within the context of an undergrad music technology degree.
While the presentation of extra-curricular materials (or any work that one has had time to devote attention and refine) would be of greater interest to many of us, perhaps this is best left to the domain of post-grad study for the reasons mentioned.
I probably wouldn't mind so much if we all presented course material. It just seems that people can choose not to and there is no effort (as far as I'm aware) on the part of the powers that be to discourage anyone from doing so. It just frustrates me when I wonder why I should spend time making a coherent presentation out of a piece of incidental music that does little for me, when others indulge in presenting work from their main area of interest - often when it has little or nothing to do with work produced specifically for the degree program.
Fair point :-)
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