The Tichaon Report

Sound Ideas Part 3: Silence

tishawn — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:55:21 +0000

JOhn Cage has brought up an inters resting topic about looking at sound in a different view than the one everyone is already accustomed to. John Cage talks about the sound people normally don’t listen to including the sound of a kitchen or the sound of traffic on a busy highway and the different situation the sound goes through. Cage is attracted to the many levels the sound of traffic goes through and the opaqueness of traffic. He enjoys the traffic when it hits the high points but he also enjoys it when it hits the low points. The sound of traffic to him is like the sound of a symphony. This is where he brings up the topic of the music that is generally played by living person in the world. John Cage believes that music, specifically songs are just people talking about their feelings and talking about next to nothing that doesn’t affect him emotionally as the sound of traffic does. He believes that even Beethoven’s music, the greatest composer of known time though l don’t know anything about him, is somebody playing instruments and relates his music to the sound of traffic and the many rifts that sound goes through.

Posted in Blogged Investigations #1

A Style: Comic Strip

tishawn — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:16:42 +0000

Comic strips have become a commodity that we just can’t live without. They are there when we are at out most saddest and they are there when we are at our most joyful. For me l always want to know the history of every thing l experience or touch so, for this post l wanted to investigate the style known as comic strip.

The comic strip was first brought up in the American newspaper The Yellow Kid and this newspaper is credited, through many aruments, as being the first to pulish a comic strip. The comic strip was first published on Sundays only but it gradually got more popular and people began having an interest in the project so it got bigger and it has become what we know of them today.

The main point of comic strips are to tell a story using limited words and using black and white pictures. The stories can become a daily processs and they continue on until the segment is finished or they can be just a one-day newspaper thing. They originated from what somepeople would call the Egyptians, when they drew many of their people and told chronological stories about their lives in little oxes. The comic strip can also be meant for an escape for just those few seconds a person reads them or they can be used for satire or showing people feelings towards certain aspects of the social and political world.
Most popular comic strips include The Peanuts and Denace the Menace. There is also The Boondocks which has become a controversial television show.

Posted in Blogged Investigations #1

Sound From Environment

tishawn — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:44:30 +0000

Posted in Blog Investigations #2

Audio Editing Software

tishawn — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:47:54 +0000

Posted in Blog Investigations #2, Investigations

Between Our Legs

tishawn — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:52:09 +0000

“This is a test. This is only a test.”

“Between our legs, we hold the difference.”

At this moment when l was reading the opening lines in the piece, l begna to think of the regular test that come up during television shows. These test are usually done to make sure that in case of an emergency amber alert the people at home would be on high alert for the child missing. The announcer usually say behind the backdrop of a siren. ” This is only a test!!!! This is only a test!!! This is only a test!!!!!”. Well l thought the remote was between their legs and they had power to be ale to take away the annoying noise.

“How did it happen? We’re not really sure. How did what happen? We’re not really sure.”

This sentence began to pique my interest in the novel because there had seen something tragic or lie changing that happened. This is when l realised that this piece was not about a remote control and about symbolsim and paying attention to sentence structure. This sentence is like at the eginning of the movie when the narrator begins to explain what the story is about and the main theme which you should think about and it really foucuses a reader to the story.”

“We fluttered our french-manicured fingers. Iridescent polish, white tips – our nails shone like opals, even glowed in the dark. All of this from a box called a hit.”

This sentence made me, the reader, personality of these characters. The characters in this piece are very amateurish and are very young if they are using a Makeup Kit which says to do it yourselves. The characters are possibly teenagers and are very naive because everything they have done so far has been presented as trying to act as an adult while making all the wrong decisions in the process.

Keep off. Except for the flecks of gold glitter…..-came from a box that came from Glo’s mom.

These two statements were unusual because they represent something opposite of each other. The first statement is saying that wherever these two girls were going to go, they had a plan that all the people around them should keep off unless they are on the gold glitter lining. This is confusing because the gold glitter is EVERYWHERE, so they are basically saying they are open for touching. The second is the first time the reader gets to know any names in this piece and the question that pop in my head is why did the author chooses to name this character GLO.

From the doorway she’d spat, “Goddammit, Sisco. Goddamn you,”

The first dialogue in a movie or piece is always important because a good writer would try to put something that will grab you and something that will make people wonder about what and why would these characters say this. Before this dialogue was spat, there was a mention of the title of this book which would probably mean something important. “pressed between his shiny black-slacked legs and the wall”. When l read this l began to think about the title of this piece and then after that sentence there was the first dialogue. This is trying to show the power between the legs and the chaos it can cause. Godammit are not the first words people would not want to hear.

Posted in Blogged Investigations #1

Sound Idea Part 2: Stomp The Yard

tishawn — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 04:21:29 +0000

Step dance is a from of dance in which the perfomers body is used as an instrument to make elaborate rhythms and sounds through a blend of footsteps, loud meaningful words, and hand claps. Stepping is generally performed in groups. Stepping first originated from the SHouth African laborers who would perform these complex choregraphies in rubber Wellington work boots. You hit you heel, you hit your kneee, and then you hit your hands and it is all very complex, which requires using the whole ody. It was also originated because black university and college students weren’t able to join the fraternities and sororities because of their color and that most of the students at the school were white. As stepping later evolved it has now become an even more popular art form that is engaged throughout the world. Today it is now rooted in many schoolyard competition among fraternities and sororities. These fraternities and sororities use the African American Greek Alphabet to name their group and through this they become better people and learn the basic essentials of life.

African American Greek Alphabet:

http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/glie/images/greek_alphabet.gif

Stepping is an sound form because the noise that is produced is sound. How can you put this aspect of sound to a writing? In good writing pieces there is a certain beat to it and you read the piece in a a certain rhythm. Stepping has rhythm and a beat to it, so this can be applied to a writing piece. A story or piece can have a beat to it and the reader can feel like they are reading something that is flowing properly and moving in a certain rhythm.

Posted in Blog Investigations #2

Sound Idea Part 1: Sound Poetry

tishawn — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:37:39 +0000

Allen Ginsberg, a prominent sound poet.

How do you make a poem or a story more tha just words? How do you make a poem or story turn into a performance, which the reader doesn’t even know he is reciting? How do you make a poem or story reflect true emotions while reading? These are the answers Sound POetry tends to answer and tries to justify within its writing.

Sten Hanson has described sound poetry as a combination of the exactness of literature and the time manipulation of music.
Sound Poetry is a form of literary or musical composition in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are established in the story in order to replace the more conventional semantic and syntactic value. This is where the performance aspect of sound poetry comes in because you are now adding that feeling and emotion to texts.

Examples include:

1. Smoke & Steam, broken glass & beer cans,
Auto exhaust.

( The repeated s and t sounds used in a pattern to show feeling. )

2.Sated upon the stillness of the bride.

For future stories in my writers’ craft class l would like to add more sound poetry because it elevates the emotions in the paper. Sound poetry sort of makes the story that much more real and open and l would like to have my readers be engaged in the story and have my readers know that they are reading something with a meaning and a sound behind it. The reader doesn’t have to know the sound behind it but at least the writer, me, will know there is hidden treasure beneath all those words. I am very movie oriented so getting emotions, pictures, and sound in a story is very satisfying because that is what makes a great pice or a a masterpiece.

Posted in Blog Investigations #2

Melisma

tishawn — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:57:34 +0000

Posted in Blog Investigations #2

Sound Artist Part 3: Brenda Hutchinson

tishawn — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 06:38:01 +0000

Probably my favorite sound artist to research. OK Maybe a tie with Francisco Lopez. Here’s a sample

“Collaborating with strangers”

“Brenda Hutchinson has been singing the National Anthem into a 9 1/2 foot tube ever since the first so-called election of George Bush. Singing into a long tube makes this kind of vocal feedback.

Brenda Hutchinson was born in Trenton, New Jersey. Hutchinson encourages her participants to experiment with sound, share stories, and make music. She often bases her electroacoustic compositions on recordings of these individual collaborative experiences, creating “sonic portraits” or “aural pictures” of people and situations

“My artform is sound and performance.
Much of my work is centered on creating large-scale experiments in socially based improvisations. I work with sound, stories and performance in order to engage people directly and to ask them to focus on themselves and their own experiences as ways to begin to connect with others. I am deeply committed to understanding people and to bridging gaps among strangers. Through my work I try to find common ground among groups of people or to create situations and occasions for people to find their own.
Sound is my medium. Performance and collaboration are the means I use to engage with others. It is through sound that I explore, navigate and understand my relationships with people and to the physical and social world. I believe in the transformative power of paying attention to sound. Listening without judgment to sound itself is something I learned from music, and I try to transfer that quality of attention to all aspects of my work.”

She is a very engaging artist and she tries to get the whole world (if she can) involved in her project and experiments. She focuses on basic instruments and from her resume she is the most “safe” of the sound artists because she is not venturing into undetermined territory and she just uses what is around her, like her Tuba. Compared to the other artists, she is more of an old timers artists and not yet using the technology in the advanced way most other artists have been using. She is still though my second favorite only behind Francisco Lopez, of the artist l investigated.

Brenda Hutchinson Bell Project

Posted in Blog Investigations #2

Sound Artist Part 2: Don Simmons

tishawn — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 05:45:04 +0000

Originally from Nova Scotia, Don Simmons is a conceptual sound artist who is now based in Toronto, Ontario. His work mainly focuses itself as having elements of robotics, electronics, audio, and performance. Whenever he begins a new project or experiment he always has in mind the probability of failure.Simmon’s describes his work as bringing up problematic concepts encouraging debate, discussion and chaos. Simmon’s mostly concerns himself with the psychological effects of the stimulated process and he treats the body as a machine or robot. The body to him is something that is made for collecting data and information through his performances. Simmons also creates situations for ‘false’ emotional states to occur in the audience, in turn questioning the reality of simulated emotions.

Part of The Aural Cultures exhibition at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre in Alberta.

Researching all these different types of sound artists, Don Simmon’s is similar to the rest of the artists because he is now using the new technology and using the computer programs to his advantage just like his peers have been doing. He is also very interested with his immediate environment and his work can consist of outside influences. He differs from the other artists in that he is very much n the future and thinks of everything around him in a very robotic way. His vision of the human body being a machine and he thinks everything is all about technology and that where he differs from other sound artists because they are more with the emotional feelings of a performance.

http://www.donsimmons.net/gradualdisappearance.mp3

http://www.donsimmons.net

Posted in Blog Investigations #2