PPP2 - Atmospheric Sound Design and VJ Aspirations

As of recently, I have created a Soundcloud account where I will post ambient music I've created as background tracks for animations. The only song I have for the time being is "Obsidian Sea" whose soul purpose was to serve as the background song for mine and Luca's Applied Animation animated documentary. As this is escalating to be my personal pursuit seeing as I have been working with music for 6+ years now, nothing has come close to this; I've always done rock or jazz in live performances, but never have I recorded anything of that sort. Thus, I believe as I will gain more free time during this summer I will thoroughly engage in making analog ambient music through the means of instruments (as this song's raw format is that) instead of using synthetic generation. Perhaps, this would tie into my VJ potential interest that I plan on pursuing alongside this during the summer. This raises a possibility of defining my extended practice next year as I am thoroughly interested in how the synthesis of sound and visuals in a "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" can have a sublime potential in narration. Many songs have an inherent story-like structure, with the lyrics refining this notion. In terms of performance, the amplitude-sensitive visual animations that can be manipulated through an MPC AKAI or any such simple analogous sampler triangulate between all the sensory conventions of narration in an epic-like manner. Thus, I started conducting research on how to execute this desire. Initially, knowing a peer that practices this (Oscar Barany), I talked to him so that he may give me the general details of this art form. By using Resolume (similar to After Effects in interface), one can set the thresholds of the intensity of any animation one can create so that the visuals fluctuate based on the dynamic of the sound. I did not know that it was this flexible of a practice. Moving along, I found a book that thoroughly expands upon the culture and art behind VJing (VJ: Audio-Visual Art and VJ Culture, by D-Fuse), using Kraftwerk's performances as one of the best known examples of this phantasmagoric aspect of performance. Need I say, I then proceeded onto watching recordings of Kraftwerk performances as well as dissecting the power behind their appeal through individual interpretation. I believe that I need to delve deeper into their art, which is why I have ordered the book Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop by Sean Albiez and David Pattie with the hopes of corroborating what it means to have an omnipotent control of a performance's visual appeal that makes full use of the world of multimedia.

Obsidian Sea - https://soundcloud.com/user-930204941/obsidian-sea