hausaufgabe: Energie

tying visual loops and sound loops to the same timeframe.

a 3D environment and sample mixing system.

I want to produce a piece of integrated software that allows me to play with virtual cameras, light and objects in space with a connected audio synthesis engine. mixing is tied to the space via a 3D audio render system. sound emanates from objects in space with distance attenuation. the space has reverb qualities. each object can be interacted with, opening a menu for sample manipulation.

I have a process in touchdesigner for arranging objects, cameras, and lights and compositing with a background. I can move a camera around in first person to find the best angles and position a more static camera to be my capture frame. I can move objects around independently with toggleable controls. it is very straightforward in touchdesigner to make a 3D sound rendering.

I am still working with tape material I created over several months last year in New York. These are intricate improvised sound collages recorded to audio cassette of samples from earlier recordings I'd made of acoustic instruments and live samples of some records and synth modules in my studio at Phase Space in Brooklyn. in all I'd produced between 20 and 25 tapes or roughly 27 hours of material.

I tried to mix it down to a 90 minute tape of around 60 tracks, which mix I have uploaded to bandcamp and my website, but I am still not satisfied to let the material rest. I think many of the recordings work better as longer explorations than the 1 - 2 minutes I allow them on the tape release. I also think they would be enhanced by a video accompaniment, which has inspired the idea of producing sound and video simultaneously and additionally led me to try making a video for one recording for this homework.

Recently, I've become convinced that energy gives rise to form. or maybe I've been convinced of the depth of this insight. When reading 'die Blaue Reiter' I came across a reference from Kandinsky to El Greco. I learned that he gives his attention first to color when he begins a piece as he believes that color has primacy over form, a very abstract concept for a renaissance painter. I've also felt this way since I was young since I was always imagining colors and form emanating from the sounds of music. I figured that the way something sounds and looks was directly related to the way it moves and interacts in its environment and it's design whether human or natural (arguably an irrelevant distinction), was in response to a need for something to sound and appear that way. Which is to say that it looks and sounds the way it does because of a need to exist in this environment. The properties of matter are all subject to a framework of energy and some force of will and the things that energy has arranged to be must dance and sing in accordance to what caused them to be.

so I guess I'm interested in modeling a small system with rules that are set and objects that can be changed and have behaviours purely for the organic spectacle of what natural interactions happen when different actors and objects are introduced.