Category: Portfolio Element 2

Last week we’ve had the opportunity to exhibit our work in progress at a little exhibition inside LCC. This has been a very helpful experience as I have been able to test the performance of my project in a real exhibition environment as well as book and install some of the equipment that I will be using for the final stage of the Portfolio unit and the Grad Show which will take place in June. Let’s see now some pictures of the event and I will then explain a little bit more about this event and the outcome perceived from it.

The installation on the work was quite straightforward, receiving a quite bigger screen that I expected but this helped the work to get more presence in the space, as this is an initial version of the work and not all the element of the final project are included yet. I had really good feedback from staff, peers and visitors; finding people very interested and engaged with the work specially during Thursday. People asked me about the functionality of the plant within the sound and the techniques employed in the graphics, receiving feedback from visitors was very constructive.

The setup performed well overall, however I found that the system uses get “frozen” after long periods of inactivity, but it worked well during the show when the audience was interacting with the work constantly. This made me think about the computational limitations of the Raspberry Pi, and I found that this devices are great for experimentation but they might not be completely situated for more professional projects specially involving graphics as well as sound.

There was a small event on Thursday evening where I was able to also watch the rest of the projects of my classmates, and also we were offered some drinks to enjoy together. It was a good time in general and I think that the experience will have a positive impact on my project, here are some videos where hear and see the installation.

Independent study/personal creative practice

Think about the different stages of your project so far and the processes of research involved in each. Reflect on what you have discovered in your own work at the intersection of creative practice and contextual research: what knowledge has been created in your practice itself, and how has contextual research opened up new directions for your practice? Post your notes to your blog.

The main goal of this portfolio project was to approach the coding and electronics techniques that I have learnt during the course to the world of nature and sustainability in the form of an interactive sound installation. I can say now that I’ve found a substantial amount of interesting information and theories in relation with these subjects, but I’m particularly interested in new areas that I have discovered like, biophilic art, acoustic ecology and expanded soundscape studies among others.

Finding the relationships between nature and technology from a sonic point of view is my main interest in this project, and I have left in the background the technical aspects of an interactive sound installation, like the computer programming and electronics, having explored these more in depth in my dissertation.

I think that I’m researching really interesting theories and theorists like Roy Ascott and Cybernetics or R. Murray Schafer and Soundscape Studies, and I also found amazing interactive artists like Liz Phillips or Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. I’m definitely directing my practice into a more organic approach, having sustainability and nature fields always closer in my creations, and being keen to work with materials like wood or plants and experimenting with field recordings and nature sounds more often.