Visit to the British Library

I took a trip to the British Library today and hopefully got everything I needed. I recorded some of the sounds around the building and took plenty of photographs.

Although while I was there, I felt myself more attracted to the architecture of the place rather than the books. The recordings also seem to be noisier than I had expected although that might be because I am studying this perceived "silence". Subsequently the (fuzzy) image that I had in my head about what this project might look like has disappeared.

I also paid particular attention to the gift shop given that the focus of this project is now to use silence as a commodity and specific environments as a sign of quality to create a marketable product. More on that all later once I've had time to digest and post the material that I collected today. Plus the train journey helped me get on top of my reading while I managed to attack a chunk of the report too. On reflection, it wasn't a bad day at all.

(The above image, by the way, is today's checklist.)

Toulon books

Another short, quick experiment which looks at the potential to use the colours from library book spines as markers for noise. There would be a requirement for the assignment of a colour to particular tones [perhaps with more or less vibrant hues representing the pitch of the sound] and then editing it to the audio track: maybe producing something that is choppier and far less gradual than the above trial. The inspiration for this visualization was disco lights.

Chris Cunningham

I'm currently working on something else where I may get to interview director Chris Cunningham. Who is one of my idols and a truly modern visionary. Ahead of that, I'm revisiting the Directors Label DVD that collected together some of his work back in 2003 and its booklet contains some words from him about trying to provide visuals for music.

On his video debut making Autechre's 'Second Bad Vilbel':

"...I was obsessed with the idea of making things move in time with music. I was trying to build this chunk of non-specific industrial machinery that would come apart in time to the music. So I built this model in my back garden and got all these pieces of machinery and stuff and ended up filming them. Then I tried to make a video out of the footage. I remember the band being really disappointed and me realising that the bottom line is... how do you turn a visually abstract idea into a piece of film. Even now I think that most of the stuff that I think up whilst listening to music is impossible to achieve..."

While Cunningham sees this project as something of a failure, it was the first in a series of works that married sound and vision - albeit while developing a relationship that is uniquely Chris Cunningham. How some of these ideas were triggered by a particular record is really interesting [in the case of Aphex Twin's 'Windowlicker', as one example, he felt that the track itself verged on the pornographic while he also wanted to create something that subverted the imagery that we are used to seeing in rap videos].

Anyway, this presents a good enough reason to embed some of his work here for future reference. The last, his own 'Rubber Johnny' film project, is a pretty disturbing masterpiece.


Autechre - 'Second Bad Vilbel'


Bjork - 'All is Full of Love'


Aphex Twin - 'Windowlicker'


Aphex Twin - 'Come To Daddy'


Portishead - 'Only You'


The Horrors - 'Sheena is a Parasite'


Chris Cunningham - 'Rubber Johnny' [music by Aphex Twin]

By the way, this isn't the first time I've posted something Aphex Twin-related. Previously I added his spectrogram. Interestingly, he also claims to suffer from synaesthesia which is very much related to the report part of this study.

"What Is Noise?"

Taken from Noisemap: http://www.noisemap.com/

Noise is often defined as ‘sound which is undesired by the recipient’. A sound which one person finds enjoyable, such as some music perhaps, could be very annoying to another person who doesn’t want to hear it. Since it is quite probable that whatever the noise, there will be someone who doesn’t like it, there is a common presumption that all sound is bad. This presumption is even the basis of some legislation, which often seeks to limit sound levels on the basis that any sound could be annoying to someone.

However, this presumption is by no means always true. Individual sensitivity to noise varies greatly and some people are not bothered by noise that would be intolerable to others. Moreover, there are many situations where noise is appropriate: for example a football match conducted in silence would be unnatural and hardly enjoyable for fans.

In English law, it is illegal to create noise which amounts to a nuisance, but in Common Law, the test is whether an ordinary person, taking account of the circumstances, would find the noise to interfere with the ‘enjoyment’ of their land to a material degree. Statute Law has changed the situation in recent years, and objective noise tests are becoming more important.

It is relatively easy to devise measurement units that can measure sound level, but because noise perception is subjective (ie it depends on the listener), acousticians have not been able to find a perfect unit or index for measuring noise.

This means that acousticians use a variety of measurement units that describe sound levels in a variety of ways. Using these as a guide to the impact of noise on people requires careful interpretation by skilled practitioners.

However, increasing regulation, both national and European, is changing the situation, so that assessments are now more likely to depend on taking noise measurements in accordance with a defined procedure and for the result to be compared with objective guidelines.

Noisia - 'Machine Gun' video

Holland's Noisia - an act known for their ability to shift from drum & bass to electro - have employed Henk Loorbach to provide a video for the grinding title track from their new 'Machine Gun EP'. The band state that it's “an abstract story of mankind and its self-destructiveness, loosely based on the tale of Frankenstein’s monster”.

It possibly has very little to do with my current project although I do like the use of the collaged footage within the video. [Even though it gets a bit gory towards the end.] Anyway, just as a general influence, I thought that it was worth documenting.

Meantime, I also booked my ticket to go to London to carry out my British Library work.

Paul Octavious - The Book Collection

More here: Paul Octavious - The Book Collection.

Tenori-On

tenori-on from M I C H E L on Vimeo.

The last video reminded me to post something on the Tenori-On. Probably most visible via Little Boots' performances, this sequencer is an instrument that also provides a visualization of the music as it plays. I've seen it used a few times (including as part of Little Boots' stage show) and it's hypnotic.