Saturday, 24 January 2015

experimental sound production - research



the persistence of memory (Spain 1931)

by Salvador Dali

from Wikipedia

"Description
The well-known surrealist piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomizes Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Ades wrote, "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order". This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was in fact the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert cheese melting in the sun.Although fundamentally part of Dalí's Freudian phase, the imagery precedes his transition to his scientific phase by fourteen years, which occurred after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.The orange clock at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants. Dalí often used ants in his paintings as a symbol of decay.It is possible to recognize a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" that Dalí used in several contemporary pieces to represent himself – the abstract form becoming something of a self-portrait, reappearing frequently in his work. The figure can be read as a "fading" creature, one that often appears in dreams where the dreamer cannot pinpoint the creature's exact form and composition. One can observe that the creature has one closed eye with several eyelashes, suggesting that the creature is also in a dream state. The iconography may refer to a dream that Dalí himself had experienced, and the clocks may symbolize the passing of time as one experiences it in sleep or the persistence of time in the eyes of the dreamer.
The Persistence of Memory employs "the exactitude of realist painting techniques" to depict imagery more likely to be found in dreams than in waking consciousness."
from legomenon.com
  •  the melting and distorted clocks symbolize the erratic passage of time that we experience while dreaming.
  • Salvador Dali illustrates how useless, irrelevant, and arbitrary our normal concept of time is inside the dream state.


initial ideas

  • time
  • ethereal
  • traditional Spanish folk music
  • synth
the rythme should follow a tick- tock rythme

researched tracks for creative ideas 

https://soundcloud.com/surreal_sound/dimensions
https://soundcloud.com/kamil-braszka/03experimental-sound-paper-transform
https://soundcloud.com/sam-zeanah-music/acts
https://soundcloud.com/crystal_beach/i-was-told-by-apple-care-i

sounds i would like to use is the sound of


  • A clock
  • voice
  • bass guitar
  • the sounds of water
  • some percussion
i want to make a literal sound of what the audience see's in the picture however using filters and effects to create ethereal tones and using the voice and bass to create the idea of memory's.

settings for the music peice
- 48khz
- 16 bit 


to be continued....







1 comment:

  1. Hi Steven, I am glad you have started thinking about your experimental sound piece. This is a good starting point but I suggest you don't stop at a literal reproduction of what is in the picture. The images are completely illogical and dreamlike so why not have a go at creating a mind map writing down every sound that comes into your mind when looking at the picture even if they are bonkers. Remember the Surrealists were very interested in the subconscious mind and liked to shock their audiences so have a think about ways you might move out of the expected into the weird!!

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