Category: Second Year

Censor

I watched Censor, a 2021 British psychological horror film directed by Prano Bailey-Bond. It received the Méliès d’Or for Best European Fantastic Film.

In my opinion, it is one of the best thriller-horror movies that has come out in the past couple years and this is why:

Most horror movies are over-amplified and over-stimulated. What I mean is that they try to overwhelm your senses with big flashing lights and intense sound imagery. Moreover in terms of sound, many horror movies tend to overuse transients, meaning that they use sound with an envelope that has a strong attack. It’s intended to play with the audience’s senses through disorientation. I normally find this really annoying and too in your face, too obvious. So, with Censor, I felt that its use of sound was far more guiding and psychological, helping to create more of an ambience and it better complements the story. I hope to see more of this used in horror movies because its a much better use of horror. I feel like the genre of horror is progressing.

Michael Snow

Modulation of light and colour

Playing with the illusion of time

Real places become abstracted

Depth joins the objects

Artists Live Events Second Year

SQUAREPUSHER

Friday 29 October, RoundHouse, Chalk Farm Road

I saw legendary musician, Squarepusher, play live at the Roundhouse and it was amazing. As a massive Warp Records fan, it’s always a treat to see these icons in person. The performance included mind-altering visuals which were probably made on Hydra, and it was interesting to see visuals on stage of which the process of making I was familiar with.

Squarepusher also performed some classics and some newer un-released songs. His insane bass playing kept me hypnotised throughout the night. The opening DJ sets by Paranoid London was also good, not to mention its decent sound system.

Artists Second Year Visual Art

Stan Brakhage

Stan Brakhage was an American filmmaker, mostly known for his experimental work.

He explored different techniques, painting onto celluloid, scratching, multiple exposures, collage.

Usually accompanied by music and poetry.

His work is extremely influential in the way I see film, Brakhage explores the boundaries of what is film and how its done.

Artists Second Year

Alvin Lucifer

A tribute to the recently passed pioneer sound artist.

Artists Second Year Synthesis

Trevor Wishart

Trevor Wishart is an English composer and sound artist.

I found his book ‘Audible Design’, i’ve been finding it extremely interesting , really admire his view and philosophy on sound.

His exploration on granular synthesis is unlike anything ive seen. Using his own voice as his only sound source, and finding all the nuances by exploring the grains. In his talk ‘composing the real’, he elaborates what syllables and sounds can be used as different elements in his music. Really inspiring guy!

Exploration Second Year

Deep Listening

Deep Listening, as developed by Pauline Oliveros, explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature of listening.

I fell really ill a couple weeks ago and was bedridden. For the whole day, I felt extremely overwhelmed by music or TV. – but I needed a source of distraction, so I decided to open the window and lose myself to the sounds of the environment – it was both meditative and entertaining and I felt like I could find many nuances to the sounds but none of the sounds I was listening to were intrusive to my thoughts. I felt like they just came and went. I felt connected to the practice of Pauline Oliveros which I studied last year.

Films Second Year

Dream Work

Tscherkassky’s films are as much about light and darkness in their purest physical forms as they are about any of the action one sees on screen. Rather, it’s light and darkness that interferes and intrudes into the lives of the characters on screen.

Tscherkassky looked to find a new direction for the Surrealist film tradition, by returning to Freud’s theories of The Interpretation of Dreams and the aesthetic principles laid down by André Breton in his original manifesto. Specifically, Dream Work (the final CinemaScope film) adheres to Breton’s conceived exploration of “Psychic automatism in its pure state”, investigating “the actual functioning of thought”.

Dream Work’s footage was copied by hand, frame by frame, on to unexposed film stock. It opens with a woman falling asleep.

Creative Coding Generative / Procedural Art Second Year Visual Art

TouchDesigner

TouchDesigner is a coding language, intended for multimedia and realtime visual art.

I enjoy using this program because of the user interface, it works in a similar way to a modular synthesizer. It also allows me easy use with Ableton.

Artists Second Year

Alva Noto

Carsten Nicolai also known as Alva Noto is a sound artists and designer from Germany.

His work for his label Raster-Noton has been exploring minimalism in sound art for the past 20 years. This label was influenced by Bauhaus.

They were trying to find the most pure and minimal form of electronic music, only using the two most basic waveforms: sine waves and noise.

Nicolai’s work explores high frequencies. I particularly find interesting his audio-visual work, he started of by connecting a CD player into the video input of a TV, and managed to make the TV respond to his music. By using plucky high frequencies and interesting rhythms he got the TV dancing kaleidoscopically to his music.

This idea has expanded into his recent work, now in a bigger scale.