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For my final project, I decided to stick to working with foley, but this time with a plot twist. After the mid-sem presentation and some consultations and discussions, here’s the project idea I’ve decided to work on:

Sweet and Savoury

Main goal: A sense of discovery in a surreal experience

  • Sound association: Creating sounds with objects and immediately associating them to each other respectively.
  • Surreal experience: The uncanny feeling when the sound first associated with an object is now being associated to an entirely different object/action.

Sound Research

There are many objects that can be used to make sounds similar to other objects/actions. However, I had to make sure the objects I chose can come together to create a logical scene (e.g: cooking, gardening, etc.), especially since I was planning to portray two different scenes in my installation.

Here are some references and examples I found for foley sounds:

What Was That? The Top 15 Foley SFX From Everyday Household Objects

 

Cracking bones; snapping celery/carrot

Flapping wings; waving leather gloves

Body punches; hitting a thick book

Fire crackling; cellophane, chips bag, steel wool

Stack of cash; deck of cards

metal blinds; measuring tape

Grass footsteps; shaking shredded newspaper in plastic bag

Egg cracking; breaking ice cream cone

Water showering; dropping rice

 

The foley sound effects I found were really interesting, but I was having trouble creating a scene where the items make sense together. It was easier in my mid-sem project, The Study Room, where the objects on the foley side did not need to make sense together and only needed to create sounds that resemble those in the study room side.

At this point, I found that food had a lot of potential to make interesting variety of foley sounds, so I decided to go with the theme of cooking. This is when I began listening to cooking ASMR videos. I would play them but only listen to the video, allowing my imagination to help me associate the sounds to different objects. I also started testing out sounds myself with different fruits and food items and found that they can be rather gore sounding. This is when I thought of the ‘Sweet and Savoury’ concept; one scene will be making an innocent, sweet snack, while the other will be the preparation of a savoury meal with a plot twist (for shock factor).

 

After researching and running several tests, these were the objects I decided to put together to form each scene:

{Sweet}

  • pomegranate (tearing apart and removing seeds = ripping fingers off hand)
  • grapefruit (tearing apart and juicing by hand = squishy meat/guts sounds)
  • chocolate bar/wafer (snapping in half = breaking thin finger bones)
  • pop rocks (fizzing and popping = sizzling of oil in pan when meat is added)

{Savoury}

  • (fake) human hand
  • minced meat/patty
  • oil in pan

 

Setup

Equipment:

  • Audio recorder
  • Speakers
  • Foley objects
  • Props for scenes
  • table
  • Cloth divider

 

Layout sketch:

 

Setup planning:

 

Preparation of actual setup:

Sweet (foley side).

 

Savoury (observation side).

 

Speakers and recorder setup (hidden inside the cloth divider).

 

Side view of speakers and recorder setup (the cloth at the side of the divider can part, allowing me to reach through to control the equipment inside).

 

Flow of events:

  • Participant is seated in front of the sweet setup (foley side) and briefed on the ‘cooking’ instructions
  • Once they are ready to begin ‘cooking’, the recording will start and will only end when they are done with the entire foley process.
  • Participants will then move over to sit in front of the savoury setup (observation side), where the recorded audio will be played back for them to hear as they observe the new setting before them.

Intended result:

  • Participants will follow the ‘cooking’ instructions given and create the foley sounds.
  • The sounds they make will be strongly associated to what they see as they go about the foley process.
  • Upon hearing the recording play back when they are seated at the savoury side, they will have a surreal experience as they start associating the sounds they once made to entirely different objects.
  • Through pairing the familiar audio with a new visual setup, the participant will be somewhat tricked into feel as though they were the one who made the gore scene before them, creating a surreal experience.

 

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Out of the four designs for the quotes, I chose the one from Harry Potter as the final one for the silkscreen printing. (“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”)

Here’s how it all went:

 

Quote Design

When coming up with a design for this quote, I tried finding keywords that could help me with finding relevant images to use. The words were, “swear”, “up”, “no”, “good”.

And so I started finding pictures that could best represent these words.

That’s where I made a mistake.

I was so focused on making sure that the design would convey the exact meaning of the quote that it turned out very, very, literal.

 

So literal.

But there’s only going up from here, so I got to designing a second one. This time, I tried focusing on what the words meant to me, rather than what they literally mean.

I kept the swearing-illuminati-hand part, but everything else was scraped.

To me, the intentions of the quote shows mischief, kinda like saying “anything that can go wrong will go wrong, because I’m going to make sure it happens.”

Also, “solemnly” means to be sincere about it. In this case, however, “sincere” isn’t exactly meant in a positive way. So, to show that, a halo is added around the swear hand, half black, half white. This shows how it’s meaning is a little “two-faced”.

As for the “up to no good” part, I saw it as making sure everything goes wrong, no exceptions. So on the bottom left corner, there are a bunch of icons that symbolise luck and fortune to show the positive things that happen in life. The icons then form lines leading to the middle, where the swear hand and halo are. This is where, through the mischievous promise made, everything is funnelled in and converted to bad things.

 

So now that it’s less literal, another thing I had to work on was the composition. Right then, it’s not exactly symmetrical, but it seems so because of how all the lines intersect in the middle of the design. This makes the composition a little boring. Also, the lucky icons, unlucky icons, swear hand, and halo are all about the same size compared to one another. This makes it hard to figure out which of them is the main focus.

To improve on the composition, the swear hand was scaled up, and immediately, we have a clear focus point. The lower black background was also scaled up to take up more of the composition. This created a stronger asymmetrical look. I also posterised the black portion to give it some texture.

And there we have it; the final design!

So, next up, transferring the design onto the silkscreen.

 

Silkscreen Process

This was really exciting because I’d only ever seen videos of silkscreen printing, and it was really interesting learning how to make one myself.

So first up, we had to apply a layer of this blue substance (I forgot what it’s called, so lets call it smurf-stance for now till I find out what it is).

 

Once the smurf-stance has dried, we moved on to transferring out designs onto the silkscreen. The transparencies with our designs were taped to the frame, and then placed into a machine that exposes it to light.

 

Once it’s out, the excess smurf-stance is washed off–

 

– revealing the design!

 

Time for the text print~

 

Aaand it was too wet. I think I was worried that there wasn’t going to be enough ink, so I put a little too much on there. The parts that weren’t soaking wet also bled a little. The outline of the swear line was also too thin, so it didn’t show up well.

 

But the bottom icons were quite clean, so I had that going for me.

 

After editing my design, like thickening the outline of the swear hand and what not, I went through the entire silkscreen process again. I did so more than once, unfortunately, because when I was washing off the excess smurf-stance, the parts that were supposed to stay in place got washed off. I’m guessing the water pressure was too high.

The line at the wrist got washed out of place 🙁

 

No matter, the process was fun anyways (though time consuming), so I just redid it again, and this time, made sure to stand a little further away when washing it.

And here’s the final design transferred.

 

It took a few tries, but after awhile, I got used to the speed and pressure needed to do the printing part. (But results were a little inconsistent.)

 

Printing

I previously messed up my first tote bag; it had the same problem of bleeding too much into the fabric like it did the newsprint.

But on the first try of the following week’s lesson, I managed to get it right!

 

Strangely enough, subsequent prints were worse than the first.

Nonetheless, the final print turned out well 🙂