Lecture: Visualisation of Sound

Our second project brief is on the focus of interpretation of sound. For the output, there are three different options:

• Notation
• Interpretation
• Experimentation

The brief summary was to respond to music each week, using a scope of processes and approaches, which allows us to create a broad amount of experimentation - this is a lot different for me as I'm used to working over a long time frame to create the best work possible, we were told that it was about experimentation and not perfection (we were meant to do one a week and then move on very quickly, which seemed like an odd thing for me to do)

Although this seems quite scary for me at first, it's something that I'm going to look forward to because it means I can produce a vast amount of work and not get to stuck on constantly going over the same piece and improving it as much as I can, I'd have to move on quickly and get the rest of the project work done.

Further on in this lecture, we explored different kinds of responses throughout different art forms as a means of inspiration, looking at logographic writing to name one, and using the word 'graphic score' throughout the lecture; which refers to any kind of musical response that uses pictures, symbols or illustrations - exactly what we would be exploring and looking at. A lot of the responses, I'd noticed, were based around drawing and art forms.

As soon as I'd heard the brief, I knew I wanted to approach this based around improving the skills of topics I wasn't particularly good at (drawing, animation and 3D work) so looking at different response provided a good mean of inspiration for me.

We also looked into graphic interpretation and animation, which were more about how the artist perceives the music and looking at the use of text/lyrics to create a piece. I was particularly drawn to this piece called 'Underworld', it looked extremely modern and the use of colours in the album cover were quite minimalistic.

I also learned throughout the lecture that I could create my own album cover, which was something very appealing to me - because this meant I was able to concentrate a lot of my Photoshop skills into one piece, which is what I was strongest at, it also meant I could balance out my growing animation work so that I could have different variations of work.

"Design is very much a conceptual process, not just a commerical one"