24046602's blog

Author: Josh Knight

Categories
Aural cultures hand in

Tuning in: Listening as attention, feeling and survival

This week I have been developing my ideas for the audio paper thats due in next week and the more I think about it the more I realise how much tuning in is already part of my everyday life. Not just in a musical sense, like tuning an instrument, but tuning myself to environments. adjusting, filtering, absorbing, blocking out. It feels personal but also strangely universal, especially living in London where everyone seems to move through sound with their own kind of armour: headphones, playlist, podcasts or complete disengagement.

What Im interested in

I want my audio paper to explore the act of tuning in as both a conscious and unconscious behaviour. There are sounds that ground me like bird noise hidden out of sight, light bits of chatter drifting from somewhere I can’t see, doors opening softly, the gentle hum of a space that feels calm. These sounds make me feel present, almost held.

Then there are the sounds that overwhelm me like busy roads, sirens bouncing off concrete, overcrowded stations and that tight rush of bodies moving too fast. These sounds don’t just fill space, they take it. They change me physically like shorter breaths, quicker steps and a lesser awareness of myself. I tune out to cope.

I want to use these contracts as the structure of my audio paper. The sonic environments that open me up and the ones that shut me down.

Ideas from Quantum Listening

Reading Pauline Olivero’s Quantum Listening added a lot to this idea. The text talks about listening as something bigger than hearing something expanded, intentional and almost mediative. She suggests that listening alters the listener, that the act itself can reshape perception if you allow it. This really clicked with me. It made me think that tuning in isn’t just absorbing sound, it’s choosing how to meet it.

Quantum Listening also talks about the relationship between attention, awareness and imagination. That helped me realise my audio paper doesn’t need to just show recording. It needs to explore how my body and mind respond to sonic environments and how listening becomes a personal practice of navigating the world.

My audio paper aim

I want to create something that brings the listener into that relationship. The comfort of soft sounds and the tension of loud ones and the delicate shifts the body makes cope with both. A piece about environmental sound but also emotion sound. A piece presence, protection and sensitivity.

My Structure So Far

  • Part 1: Sounds that hold me, quiet environments, birds, light chatter, open sonic spaces
  • Part 2: Sounds that push me away. Crowds, traffic, mechanical noise
  • Part 3: What it means to intentionally tunes in or to tune out
  • Part 4: Reflection through Quantum Listening, how attention becomes practice

Reflection

Working on this idea had made me realise how much listening shapes my sense of self. Ive never thought of tuning in as an act of care before but now it feels like a way of paying attention to the world without letting it swallow me. Quantum Listening reminded me that perception isn’t fixed, its elastic, changeable and alive.

This project is pushing me to notice the small sonic details that I normally pass through and to recognise the emotional weight that certain environments carry. Tuning in, for me, is becoming a way of understanding not just the places I move through but the person I am inside.

Categories
Aural cultures hand in

Power, Politics and performance

In this session we began to explore how listening can reveal hidden structures of power, identity and experience within everyday environments. With my audio paper in Aural Cultures idea coming into fruition we looked today at expanding my ideas for my Tuning In audio paper. I plan to create an audio paper that investigates how environments speak, how they shape us and how we in turn shape them through acts of listening.

Lauren Rosati

We were introduced to a series of artists and theorists whose work examines how sound becomes political. Lauren Rosati’s question ‘What sounds have been left out of media history?’ felt especially relevant. It made me think about the environments I move through everyday and how certain sonic elements remain unheard simply because I’ve been trained not to listen. Christopher DeLaurenti’s work with Occupy Wall Street recordings also highlighted how sound can act as a direct documentation of collective resistance. I found his description of asynchronous chanting and driving rhythms fascinating proof that even disorderly sound can carry political meaning. The lecture also touched on acoustic justice, something I hadn’t properly considered before. The idea that listening practices can either reinforce or challenge inequality stuck with me. It reframed listening as something active and ethical rather than passive.

Activity

Sound walk, listen to noises that represent power. We were told by Mark to roam the LCC campus and tune into noises that could be associated with power.

Front reception

  • The beep of student cards at the barrier
  • Security talking
  • The heavy opening and closing of gates
  • The hum of the front desk
  • Footsteps of lost students not sure where to go
  • Quiet conversations
  • Bags rustling

Power indications

  • Security barriers acting as a literal threshold of permission
  • Signs on the barriers saying that you can’t enter this way or another way
  • Staff positioned behind a desk as a symbolic statement of control

Cafe

  • Coffee machines hissing and steaming in loud bursts
  • Dense layers of conversation
  • Music played overhead

The lecture then shifted into a more practical territory and how to generate research questions and how to structure an argument through sound. I noted down some useful tips. begin with with a clear introduction outlining aims then break the paper into one or two main sections, draw from sources and constantly ask why.

Reflections

This session helped me clarify what direction my audio paper might take. Im interested in exploring how everyday environmental sounds reveal subtle power dynamics. Sounds we ignore or don’t pay attention to might quietly effect our behaviour. My aim will be to tune into the unnoticed layers of an environment and examine what they say about about control. I want to create something that not only presents recordings but asks the listener to rethink how they navigate the space around them.

Categories
Element 1 hand in for exhibiting

Final mix – Bringing everything together

This week had been completely centred around building the final mix for my film. It’s the first time everything I’ve recorded, designed and composed has come together in one place and it’s been strongly satisfying hearing the project finally take shape. A lot of the work had been focused on the foley I recorded earlier in the process. I bought all of those sounds into my Ableton session and spent time shaping them with EQ to make sure the perspective felt believable. That part was surprisingly delicate, small changes completely shift the sense of distance or direction.

Foley

Getting the foley to sit correctly also made me realise how much of sound design is invisible. If you’ve done it right, no one notices. They just accept the world is real. So I took my time placing footsteps, clothing rustles and environmental textures, making sure they didn’t overpower anything but still carried enough presence to bring life into the scene.

Music

For the music, I composed the core track first, then layered a soft synth across the whole piece. It was something I felt the film needed some sort of tonal glue that smoothed everything out and created a consistent emotional bed beneath the images. The synth sits low, not seeking attention but allowing a pulse for the film to come together. Once it was in place, the atmosphere felt complete. It’s amazing how one subtle element can hold everything in place without drawing focus.

Syncing all the audio with the visuals was the final stage and honestly it longer than I expected. Timing is so sensitive, even being a fraction of a second off can change the emotional intention of a moment. I went through my timeline slowly making sure the music supported the rhythm of the visuals and the foley grounded the physicality of the scene. When everything finally aligned it felt like the film was breathing properly for the first time.

Reflection

Working on this final mix had made me appreciate how much much sound shapes the emotional landscape of a film. Seeing my project come together through sound rather than picture has been a reminder of how much I’m drawn to the invisible, atmospheric parts of filmmaking. I realised how much control I have through EQ, volume and space and how these small decisions can change everything about the way the viewer experiences the film.

Even though the mix was challenging at points, especially balancing clarity with mood, I feel like this strange connected the whole project back to why I love working with sound in the first place. It’s the moment where the technical choices become emotional ones. Where foley becomes movement. Where music becomes feeling and where the film finally feels alive.

Categories
Element 1 hand in for exhibiting

Foley room session

This week our main focus as a group was to start getting our final mix to speed. We talked about how where progressing within our group. I talked about my final mix, and how I was slowing working towards the deadline. Jessica mentioned to me about how panning and or playing my mix in 5:1. This made me think more critically about spacial audio and how different decisions can completely change the mood or focus within a scene. After our discussion, I decided to head into the Foley studio to start recorded my sounds for my chosen.

Foley Room

Below are the photos of mine and my friend Gil (see image right) trying our luck in the foley studio to record some audio for a film by Margret Tait called Aerial. I had started last session by adding a time code onto the screen as you can see in the first image. This enabled me to precisely record the foley into perfected timestamps which is important to get that crisp Foley Audio! Having that visual marker made the process feel more organise and definitely improved the quality of the recordings.

Reflection

Working in the Foley room was a lot more challenging than I expected. It’s one thing to watch a short film and imagine what sounds need to be implemented, but it’s another thing entirely to actually produce them in a controlled and believable way. Personally a struggle for me was the small movements. Things like footsteps, rustling clothing, or even the subtle ambience of an object took multiple takes to get right. This overall process really made me appreciate how much detail goes into sound design and how often you have to change material to get the organic sound you are looking for. Also, how the perfect sound can contribute to the overall atmosphere.

Another big lesson for me and probably more for Gil (as he was in charge of finding the material) was the importance of experimentation. Gil and I tried different materials, surfaces and mic placements. I had some prior knowledge about how difficult it could be to create Foley, however, it really opened to how creative Foley work can be.

Another thing I noticed was about workflow. Setting up the timecode ahead of time really saved me from a lot of guesswork during editing. if I hadn’t prepared that, syncing everything later would have been a nightmare. Preparation before recording is just as important as the recording itself.

Overall, spending time in the Foley room made me much more confident about the studio space and the audio side of my creative project. It also gave me a clearer understanding of how Foley contributes to a films emotional impact. As I move closer to the final mix, I feel more aware of the choices I’m making, not just placing sounds, but shaping how those sounds are experienced by the audience.

Categories
Aural cultures hand in

Place, composition and subjectivity

Place, composition and subjectivity

What makes these things important?

  • Place
  • Presents
  • Voice

This week session is the consideration of space and our place within it. For example we see some woods as a particular place but what do we recognise in the spaces? The awareness of the space changes with ones intentionality.

The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World by Murray Schafer (1977)

  • In the book Schafer brings light into the importance of paying attention to the visual and sonic environment around us
  • He notes that modernisation has changed our sonic landscapes, cars, machines and amplified technologies have flooded our everyday life
  • He talks about a major concern in the noise pollution and the loss of subtle sounds
  • Its a great insight too look into how the world around can be digested sonically

Questions to think about when listening audio

  • What makes a place sound good?
  • How does sound create a sense of place?
  • How are you involved in the production of place?
  • What makes you feel out of place?
  • How to record a sense of place?
  • How do you effect place?

Recording in a space changes the mindset of how its listened, its important to look into this.

Reflection

This session made me think differently about how I move through and listen to places. Ive never really questioned how much of place is something I actively help produce rather than something that just exists around me. The idea that my awareness shifts depending on my intention really stood out once I started listening more carefully, the space changes.

Schaefer’s ideas helped me understand why this matters. His concerns about noise pollution and the loss subtle sounds feel even more relevant today. We’re so used to constant mechanical noise that we barely notice it anymore, yet it’s shaping how we experience the world. It makes me realise that recording a place isn’t just about capturing what’s there, its about acknowledging what has been masker or erased by modern sound.

Overall this session helped me see sonic environments as something active relational and subjective. It reminds me that listening is a form of engagement and that understanding a place through sound requires patience, curiosity and a willingness to notice things that normally disappear.

Categories
Element 1 hand in for exhibiting Sound For Screen

NOWISWHENWEARE BFI

NOWISWHENWEARE

NOWISWHENWEARE is an exhibition that was shown in October to accompany the BFI film festival. I was introduced to this exhibition by my lecturer Jessica Marlowe and wanted to check it out. The artist is Andrew Schneider who is know in the film industry for his works on The Sopranos (1999) and Northern Exposure (1990) as a producer. However, this installation shows a totally different side to his creative practice, one that is far more intimate and experimental.

What it’s about

NOWISWHENWEARE is a new interactive theatrical installation that pushes this idea to its literal extreme. An unseen narrator guides each participant through an individualized journey into a precisely programmed matrix of light – and the cosmos of themselves. Part meditation, part exploration, the stars draws visitors into a hyper-focus of the present. The stars traces every decision that you have ever made as a contributing factor to being ‘here’ and being ‘now’.

Andrew Schneider

Andrew Schneider is mostly interested in the story telling of humans, lots of his work and art look at this idea of that when people tell stories to one another, something universal opens up, we recognise ourselves in the experiences of others. I was first introduced into his work from his most recent exhibition NOWISWHENWEARE. “Andrew’s work uses new and old, high and low tech—from Wave Field Synthesis arrays and Volumetric Lighting displays to literal smoke and mirrors. He is interested in the edges of human perception, using science as a blueprint for staging, and above all, the question of—how does it make you feel?” IMDB. As he puts it, he is interested in the edges of human perception and in how art makes you feel before you even understand it.

How it made me feel

I do think about this exhibition still now after its been almost a month since I’ve seen. I think for him it really has this human element to it that draws you into the now. When you first go in you have to give you’re eyes times to adjust to the room as to super dark. You are met with this huge cube that is emitting light that you can walk between. The audio was what hit home for me on this piece, is was so meditative. Depending on where you’re standing you can hear a reflective story from a narrator talking about the what ifs in life. This was so enjoyable for me as I like to use these types of reflective audio clips in my own work. It bings you out go your own head, it makes you reflect and look inwards. It was really inspiring for me to listen to these stories, I like the way it changed my mind set and took me out of the usual motions of life.

The voice

Going to this exhibition really shone a light into how much power the human voice can carry. I like think about the voice in my piece and how much power the human voice can carry. This exhibition really shone a light on to how stories of peoples can brings the feeling of mortality. I think my looking further into the voice might bring me to a idea of what I want to use in my films.

Jane Cardiff the “Forty Part Motet”

This is a great example of how the voice shapes a space or evokes a feeling. Jane Cardiffs 2001 exhibition drives homes the power of multiple voices. She had 40 speakers and dream, and that dream came true Jane Cardiff well done!

Seeing Schneider’s work made me think of Cardiff instantly. Both installations use the voice to create an emotional environment, one that you walk inside rather than simply listen to.

Overall, NOWISWHENWEARE really opened up something in me about how we experience time, light and sound — but more than that, how we experience ourselves. It really felty like being part of a living story when I was there, I couldn’t quite explain in afterwards but it was surreal. This experience really made reflect on my practice as an artist. I think moving forward the voice might play a part in my project. I like the way it can displace and remove you from everyday life as its a very useful tool

As I reflect on my own practice, I’ve realised that I want to explore the voice intentionally, whether thats through narration, motifs or fragmented reflections. The voice has ability to pull someone out of their everyday thinking and suspend them in a new emotional space. Thats exactly what happened to me in the exhibition, and I think its something I want to bring into my own film.

Categories
Element 1 hand in for exhibiting Sound For Screen

Emotional narratives and subjectivity, filming through sound

Paul Davis

  • Paul Davis is a sound designer and he is great at articulating what sort of practice is necessary within sound design. He has this ability to explain why sound design in a really compelling way. He has this ability to explain why sound is not just an accessory to film, but a psychological force. Listening to him speak, you realise just how delicate the balance is between noises silence and music.
  • The anti form of narrative or noise still has a emotional response. Sound design is crucial to evoke a feeling or creating the psychological response in the POV of the character

Why use music on film?

My response to this was multifaceted. I think it has several uses, one might be too evoke a feeling where it is needed. We are able to do this in several ways, like to have a sad song played at a sad part of a film. However, directors like David Lynch would play a really harmonic and happy song when sometimes something quite horrific is going on visually. Another great use of music could be to add narrative when the visual doesn’t. A characters motif is used in story telling a lot, the motif can change over time thus showing the development of this character sonically. Music can also help build the film up and to change the pace.

Walter Murch

Walter Murch has a bit of a different view when it comes to using silence in a film. He has worked on films like The Godfather and explains his reasoning into why silence is a powerful tool in film making. He explains the reasoning behind using silence in powerful scenes and because it can have the opposite effect if you add music where sometimes its not needed. Music is a powerful tool but you need to know when to use it. I think it’s important to know this and to be aware of music and be conscious about it.

  • Subtext is very important with music. The music is in there at the correct place. however you as the filmmaker seem fit
  • Rhythm of the film also applies to music, music has the ability to change the direction pace and feeling off the film
  • Non-diagetic and diabetic sound are mixed together to show the POV of the character on screen
  • When a film is visually main a statement there is no reason to for the music to follow

Reflection

Thinking about the ideas of David and Murch together has shifted my understanding of how I want to approach my own films sound. They both speak from experience, but they meet in one place: sound is emotional architecture. It holds the firm upright. It carries what the character cannot say. It shapes how we breathe with the images.

As I build the sound world for my film, the atmospheres and the music and Foley. I’m realising the responsibility of choosing what to include and what to leave out. I’m drawn to the idea that silence is not absence and that noise is not always presence. Sometimes the most powerful thing is restraint. Other times, it’s leaning into instability or contradiction like Lynch does.

Ultimately, I want the sound for my project to feel lived in, something that doesn’t just accompany the imagery but reveals it. My goal is to craft a sonic experience that reflects not only what is happening on screen but what is happening internally, psychologically and emotionally.

Categories
Aural cultures hand in

Fiction, poets and voice

Week 6 reminder of class crits for the audio paper

What fiction do I know?

A lot of the fiction that I digest is through books, I read a lot as it calms my mind before going to sleep. I love to get lost in these stories and tap into a fictional world so far from my own. Not only books but when I listen to music, music allows me to tap into fiction from what the music is doing or going and puts me into another headspace.

It’s also good to note sounds ability to trick and deceive us and make us question our own reality. Sound is sometimes misleading, as a piece of bacon can sound like falling rain when listened to quietly, foley allows that effect too take place within film.

Foley

On previous blog post I’ve talked about foley and the creative expression that comes with the art. It’s created in a studio outside the actual shoot, we talked about how a lot of the nature documentary’s don’t take audio from the actual shoot as animal can be dangerous and hard to get close to with a mic. This is a great example of why foley is sometimes deceiving and it can flip the perception of someone watching, it shows how we are constantly mislead sonically.

Listening exercise

We listened to a piece of audio with our any visual context and we had to figure out what is what. The audio without context was strange because I could hear humans talking but not in a language I understand. What I wrote down in my notebook: “Feels like a big room and from the point if view from a fly or insect flying around the walls”. The word the popped into my head at the time surveillance.

Turns out the audio was from this little fella. A type of mimicking bird that is near human civilisations that copies their voices. I was wasn’t far off!

Do I use voice in my practice?

In the past I have really used voice as the forefront for a lot of my university projects. The last hand in for year one was a piece that works around a narrator of some old flats that got demolished. I like the voice in my work as it is a power driver.

How can voice change you?

The voice can carry so much with it. I think the voice as a medium is what grips us to the art work, I find it to be a useful tune to create art with. I like the memory and reflection you can add with voice.

Categories
Element 1 hand in for exhibiting Sound For Screen

Margret Tait Aerial (1974)

This four minute poet film by Margret Tait touches natural elemental feeling like water, air and fire. It doesn’t follow a narrative sonically and is more structured for a musical score than a narrative driven film. Instead of us pushing through a plot, Tait constructs a world of rhythms, textures and emotional pulses.

Taits films and life

“One of avant-garde film’s best kept secrets, Margaret Tait was a fearless independent artist working across film, art and poetry. With 1992’s Blue Black Permanent, she was the first Scottish woman to direct a feature film, yet her work was scarcely seen in Britain during her lifetime – even as she developed a small but dedicated following among the international artists’-film community.”

Margret Tait was remarkably independent filmmaker, poet and artist. Her work existed on the edges of the British film world during her lifetime, yet she quietly built a dedicated following internationally. She made Blue Black Permanent in 1992, becoming the first Scottish woman to direct a feature film, but long before that she had already carved out her path creatively.

Tait when talking about her films used to call them film-poems, her films where designed to function like poems, short, lyrical and anchored in the rhythms of everyday life. She often worked in short musical and lyric driven narratives. Her approach to natural movements of life (a garden or a dead bird) so that the ordinary becomes insightful to the watcher. Aerial is a great example of her approach, her consideration for an emotional response, almost like the world itself is speaking. The emotional response comes from the simplicity of the images and the trust Tait places in the audiences imagination.

watching her work and reading about her process has pushed me to think more deeply about how sound can respond to visuals. Im especially inspired by how she listens to the world, not to create it literally but to shape it and reflect its energy. In thinking about my own sound design, I keep coming back to her elemental approach and how I might echo that sensibility in my film.

My sound pallet

  • Ambience/ Field recording– Wind going through the heather, water lapping at the bay. Feint village and town hum like a quiet road.
  • Foley/ Close mic sounds – footsteps on a layer of snow, (boots on fabric). Pebbles on concrete, crackling fire the compressed layer of snow compressed by footsteps.
  • Musical elements– Short guitar, short notes played sparsely. I want to keep the notes resonated out recorded in a large room or added reverb. Also I would like to add drones, a small hiss or bass hum from a synth
  • Found/ Processed sound -Lightly distorted bird hum, the crackle of a radio or the hum of an engine. I want to reprocess these noises into a different direction

Editorial strategy

Start -I want to introduce a clear motif or elemental noise (wind or a single guitar note) to set the films elemental tone.

Middle -I want to start to alternate between captured sound like water lapping and intimate foley. Let the musical elements begin to intertwine with the natural ones, building a subtle without becoming overly narrative.

End -Start to let the piece drown out naturally into white noise or distorted sound and start to cut out musical element, make sure its controlled and organic, almost like an exhale.

Film-poems

What draws me to Tait’s idea of film-poems is the way she places meaning in rhythm, breath and image rather than in explanation. When I first read about her, I was struck by her devotion to seeing things ‘freshly’. Her short works can carry this belief: that the small things in life, the movement of clouds or a flicker of light are enough to build an entire emotional universe.

Thinking about including my own poem in my work feels like a natural extension of this. Not as narration, but as an undercurrent or a guide to the rhythm of the piece. Like Tait’s films I want my own work to be like poetry that doesn’t need to literal.

Visual notes

The films consists of images of nature: Clouds, birds, light reflections, water sky and movement of air. I really like the way she has pieced all these things together, the imagery is rhythmic and cynical which brings on this feeling of reflection, which falls into Tait’s idea of seeing things freshly “as though one had been born into it”.

Reflection

Engaging with Tait’s work has shifted they way I approach sound for film. Instead of seeing sound purely as a tool for realism or continuity. Im starting to think of it as emotional and elemental, something that carries meaning in a way that visuals can’t. Tait’s film-poetic approach encourages me to slow down, to notice the textures of the world and to trust simplicity. I want the soundtrack to feel alive, to breathe with the images and carry its own quiet poetry. Ultimately, my goal is to create a sonic landscape that doesn’t just accompany the film but deepens the viewers connection to it.

Categories
Uncategorised

Extended studio practice week three

This week we looked into making a drum machine, we used the same equipment and added a button for the input for the kick and snare. Its quite simple loop but it was fun to see our work actually coming into fruit to create these drum loops and oscillators. This week I did struggle a little bit with the coding as I got confused on what object needed to be bought into the code, but after Milo shoved me in the right direction I was dandy.

Bastl Instruments

Milo asked us to take a look as some of the modular and bit rate oscillators and synths that are affordable. I had a look on Youtube at some of these synths in action.

The Kastel mini synth

  • Super affordable and had the expressive freedom of a high quality synth
  • You line in parameters just like you do on a modular synth
  • Good start point for someone like me who is new to modular synthesis

Elta Solar 42F Synth

  • This synth is great for atmosphere
  • It a all round bigger and more complex piece of kid but the sound you are able to shape is extraordinary
  • More expensive but great for someone like me who is interested in cinematic and atmospheric music

Practical

The start of the lesson was to look at how we are supposed to line in our bread boards to our Bella. Inside the button we add to our breadboards there is two pieces of metal that are connected to each leg of the button. When the button is not pressed the metal is not touching so the circuit is open. When pressed the two pieces of metal are contact thus giving us two states on the button, Open and Closed or Connected and Open. Knowing this and after we have added a resistor we are able to start to look at the code.

The code we startup by insisting the pins we will be using for our hardware, in this case its pin 17 and 18 for the button to work. We then read the button into the code and work from there. I didn’t actually manage to get it working at uni, it wasn’t until I came home and gave it a proper go thats I was able to figure it out.