4D II Project 2 – Soundscape

Here’s the link to the sound cloud!

Artist Statement

This soundscape shows an imagined interior of a stomach. It describes a journey of a stomach processing a food. The sound starts off with a crowded food court and it coincides with a sound of a clock. From this point, the internal sound of the stomach kicks off. It is designed with a mixture of gears. The tempo of the sound is influenced by the energy from food. The sound of the factory is mixed with the sounds of squeaky machine. To make the sounds still within the body, layers of sounds of viscous boiling are interlaced with the sounds of the mechanical system. The soundscape ends back in reality with a sound of a burp.

Concept Development

I took a while to even start thinking of the concept. At first, I was thinking of bloodlust but it led me to craving for food that guides my way of life. It was hard to think of representing the sound of the internal organ. What inspired me was the body clock of me that always alerts the hunger. This led me to think of the stomach as a system that is fuelled by food. It was hard to produce the mechanical sounds myself which led me to use database of freesound. The recorded sounds that I used are the noise of the crowded food court and the ticking sound of the clock. From these sounds, I played around with the effects in audacity which transformed the atmosphere of the work as I overlaid changed squeaky sound of the elevator.

The system is slow and does not run smoothly without food. The food goes down the pipe echoing down and the system starts to operate and becomes excited. The speed of the gears turning increases. These sounds dominate the soundscape and there are numerous layers of atmospheric sounds. I tried to balance the background sounds of the factory and more soft sounds of stomach acid boiling.

It was challenging to imagine the soundscape without any example but I like to listen to the sounds inside human’s body by pressing my ear to the stomach. This inspired me to recreate my interpretation of the internal sounds.

Anyways this is the process that I took to create the soundscape! Enjoy!

Attribution

This sound piece uses these sounds from freesound: wetbelch4.wav by plingativator (www.freesound.org/people/plingativ…r/sounds/101182/), SH-6 001.aif by creebefu (www.freesound.org/people/creebefu/sounds/60125/), winding up an alarm clock.wav by ShotgunPicker (www.freesound.org/people/ShotgunPi…r/sounds/136521/), Analog Alarm Clock by bone666138 (www.freesound.org/people/bone66613…ne_rotation2.mp3 by Taira Komori (www.freesound.org/people/Taira%20K…i/sounds/213690/), Liquide by earlcash05 (www.freesound.org/people/earlcash05/sounds/319776/).

4D II Project 1 – Alter Ego

Alter Ego

Password: alterego

Character: Emily Prentiss from Criminal Minds

Storyline

The main message of the video is the existence of duality in terms of personality in me and how I want to embrace the two separate beings as one individual. The story starts off with two very different people. One character (Person 1) shows the personality of me when I’m at home or with very comfortable people. Another character (Person 2) shows the personality of me when I’m out and show to most of the people. Different habits, different environment, different tone and manner of speech characterizes these individuals. The crisis strikes when Person 1 accidentally knocks off the water bottle while multi-tasking (not paying attention). Person 2 quickly acts on the instinct and saves the computers from being doomed. Person 1 with quick reflex grabs the water bottle just as it fell flat on the table. This is the moment when the two individuals space/world exist in the same time. I tried to show that even though there exist two personalities that functions differently, they are still an individual and are capable of solving the crisis as a person.

Process

I started this project by profiling the two personalities. This is the first table that I came up with.

Person 2 1
Objects Laptop

Outer clothes

Tumbler

Mug with character

Headband

Inner wear

Actions/Habits Alert

Sits upright

Hands – not much movement

Focused on the screen

Fidgets with her hands

Comfortable posture

Rougher language

 

Expressions Straight faced

Talks to the person while not looking at the face

Cannot keep still

Holds more expressions

Then I focused on the artistic settings. I tried to show the characters’ personality clearly and vividly through the screen.

screen-shot-2017-02-05-at-8-45-34-pm

The left shows Person 1 and the setting on the right shows Person 2. I stacked a lot of objects as possible while I kept crisp clean on the other side.

Person 2 1
Personality OCD

Apathetic

Task-oriented

Smiles a lot

Thick Skin

Multi-Tasks

Items Laptop

Sketchbook

Pens

Formal clothes

Neat hair

Gaming mouse

Gaming keyboard

Earphones

Pajamas

Cat Headband

Environment Clean desk

Neatly arranged objects

Clean background

Messy desks

Trashes

Food

Stacked up stuff all over

Actions Concentrated on the screen

Rigid posture

Straight face

Crushing the paper

Spinning the pen

Babbling

Comfortable posture

Expresses emotions more freely

Picks on toe nails

photo_2017-02-05_20-49-59

This is the final story board that I came up with with bits and pieces of adjustments after.

At first, I was not sure how to include two characters in the same frame as both are acted by me but I realised that I could crop the screen.

screen-shot-2017-02-05-at-8-45-34-pm

screen-shot-2017-02-05-at-8-56-53-pm

I filmed different characters with fixed camera position and cropped each half of the footage and stacked them together.

The rest of the camera angles, I decided to keep them simple and constant with each portrayals of habits, talking, etc. to contrast one another,

Research

I looked at two footages from the start. I had a idea in mind to start off the video with two people playing a game and conversing at the same time.