Medium Specificty

A Link to the Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/david-hawkes-7/this-god-of-sound

The process involved in creating this audio piece was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had in art. My interest for sound design has been increased significantly, and the more that I examined the medium, the more sacred and significant it appeared to me. I decided to pick the medium of sound design because of my great love of narrative radio, such as Radiolab, This American Life, and Serial. I am also impressed with Beck, particularly in his earlier works, where he uses sound much as Pollack uses paint, testing its limits and textures. My love for sound was then informed heavily by Scott McCloud’s ‘Understanding Comics’. I love the idea of a piece of art describing itself, and I thought I would try it with sound design too. As McCloud did in his book, I began to examine what sound design really was, and what it’s capabilities were. I was quickly struck with how much sound design resembles the way that I believe God lives, and this became the theme of my final product.

I find it fascinating that God is heard, and generally not seen, though like sound, he is also felt. As I went about recording conversations and sound effects, I became surprised at how shocking the absence of noise can be. When you are editing sound together, it becomes immediately apparent that any break in the track will stick out like a sore thumb. For me, this has also been my experience with Deity. I do not think that he plays a large role in my life, until suddenly, he is noticeably gone, and the experience is empty and unforgettable. The comparisons between heaven and sound are nearly endless, such as sound designers ability to remove barriers of space and time, and also to present their subjects as personalities, without having us judge them by their physical appearance.

I feel that this project acted like a lens, returning the focus to me and my experiences. Much like the piano player who sits and plays nothing, allowing the audience to be the product of the art, I feel as though I was the end product of my own art piece. By focusing only on the medium, the artist is forced to truly examine how they will be interacting with their art. I believe that it is at this level of modern art where true personality and value shines through. My respect for interpretive artists has grown immensely.

The project has also really familiarized me with the medium of sound design. Though there were many places in the process where my inexperience shone through clearly, overall I think the end product turned out nicely. I am sure that I will work with the medium again, not just because I believe it is a great storytelling device, but I feel that I have now come to an understanding of sound’s importance to me spiritually. It is a medium that I simply cannot leave.

Historical Story

Writing the historical piece was a great lesson in teamwork, and also an interesting new way to receive story ideas. The initial idea for ‘Fighting the Tiger’ came from a small article that Ian located in an historical newspaper in the BYU Special Collections. The newspapers were from a small town called Candelaria in Nevada, which does not exist anymore, and had a lot of fascinating information. The first piece we used was an advertisement for a saloon, that proudly advertised that there was an ‘Elegant club room...attached where patrons can fight the tiger at all seasonable hours.’ This information was teamed up with a separate newspaper from the same town, which had an article about a huge project they were putting on to build a town well. With those two articles in hand, plus a little research on Rensselear Institute(the first civil engineering school in the country)we were ready to go. Unfortunately the newspapers have not been processed yet, and so cannot be referenced, and the engineering information came from Rensellear Institute’s own webpage.

It was amazing to us how quickly the story came together once the basic research was in place. The articles gave us the backbone for the entire plot, and over that we were able to insert characters who we thought were interesting. Like the animated short in class about the King of Norway, we decided it would be fun to make the accuracy of the story questionable. Though our research informed the setting, conflict, and also the motivation for the characters, we took a lot of creative liberty with the characters themselves and certainly embellished a lot of details. It was enjoyable to think about how a grandpa might tell this story to their children, and it helped us to examine the importance of stories in our own lives.

In addition to the research process, it was interesting trying to write a story collaboratively. In so many classes previous, students are assigned to work on essays and papers and scripts alone, and trying to lend efforts to this story without overpowering it was definitely the biggest challenge. On one hand, one doesn’t want to force too much work on their partner, and on the other, you don’t want to monopolize the story or come across as pushy either. We came to an agreement that worked pretty well. As it was Ian’s story, he wrote a quick outline for the plot, while Ethan wrote the first full script, with both dialogue and scene direction, printed out the copies, and brought it to class. Then, Ian took one last good look at the story, made revisions and fixed issues as he saw fit, and the final product was produced.

It was definitely beneficial to get some experience writing collaboratively. Especially in TV and Film, more often than not scripts and screenplays are the product of a handful of people, not one individual with complete power. There are going to be differences in creative process, even mildly, and there were things that were cut or changed by one person that the other may have not agreed with, and vice versa. That doesn’t mean we were disrespectful towards one another’s interpretation of the story at all! We’re both adults, largely, and were able to compromise without anything even approaching argument. It’s important to be able to take and give criticism, especially when working on something like this. That’s just the process, and it works well.

Follow this Link to our PDF: https://drive.google.com/#folders/0Bz1eG58sdC3ISUxPMUZJTmJiUWM

I am not sure if this URL will work, if not, shoot me and email, and I will be happy to send you the PDF: ihawkesbot@gmail.com

Process Piece: The Band Practice

For our process piece, we decided to film Ian’s band, “Riveter’s Son”, during one of their practices as they worked on new material.  Filming a band writing a new song was an interesting experience.  There were so many different elements that were involved in the process.  Every member of the band contributed something essential to the process, whether it was setting up equipment, commenting on how the song should be played, or simply playing their instrument.    Listening to our audio recordings reminded me of the video “scriptures” by Dean Duncan.  In the video, even without looking at the video, you understand who is talking and you can picture all of the processes in your head simply by listening to the audio.  You can turn off the visual element to the video and still understand exactly what is going on.  We strove to do the same thing for our project.  We wanted the process to be presented unambiguously.  It wasn’t necessary to see the band members warming up or talking or playing their instruments because the sounds told the story.  By focusing on the audio elements of the songwriting process, we were able to create an image of a band at work solely through audio storytelling.

Editing the video together was exciting and introduced me to a new type of media I was unfamiliar with but enjoyed immensely. The advantage of audio editing, is that there is a great deal of freedom with how the clips are arranged, as the listener cannot notice discrepancies within the timeframe. This allows the audio editor to completely tell the story, often doubling up tracks or adding in pauses for emphasis, and I discovered in our case that one could actually make the audio more ‘realistic’ by editing. An actual two minute segment of the practice would not have portrayed the practice well, but a two minute piece constructed of many small elements from the whole two hours gave the full picture. It reminded me of my childhood, listening to Prairie Home Companion, especially the ‘Guy Noir’ line, and being enthralled with stories that are just words, music, and sounds. Other shows, like ‘This American Life’ and ‘Radiolab’ have absolutely brilliant editing, and epitomize audial storytelling at its greatest.

Ian Hawkes
Steven Olson

https://soundcloud.com/riveters-son/apartment-practice-january-29th-2015