LITTLE COMETS

Despite being a disgusting emanating ball of germs, I went to see the Little Comets play at XOYO. I shot digital for the first time in a while. It was nice to use my old 14-45 lens and not the pancake as per usual. Photographing gigs gives me such pleasure.

STUCK (now with SOUND!)

I am currently working on Paulus' rhythm brief. I chose this brief because I have been desperate to do more work revolving around music. I decided to utilize this project as an opportunity to sneak some more of my poetry into my work. My first task was writing 3 different poems to 3 different genres/eras of music. I selected some 80s power tunes (Journey), mid 90s indie-rock (Jets to Brazil), and lastly some current pop (She & Him). Then I examined the differences.

























I used an educational module for analyzing poetry that I found somewhere on the interweb.
They were divided into 5 categories:



























I recorded my findings and highlighted the similarities in green and variants in red
















































Next I began to examine further patterns in the poems and investigated the parts of speech that appear. Just to remind myself what they are exactly...


























I then calculated how many of each speech component appeared per poem and then averaged them. Once I had become familliarized with the drum kit, I scanned for drum tabs from the bands I had listened to or alternately watched live videos to discern which pieces of the kit they used most - least often. I allocated the most frequent unit of speech to the most used drum piece and the last to the last, and so on. Then I transcribed the poem to drum music.


























This is the result of the first poem















and the second:











lastly













I didn't really understand what these would sound like (not having access to a drum kit and all..) but my brother has a studio in his basement, so I sent him the first tab (Jets to Brazil) to see what he could make of it. He mentioned that it was missing the time notation. Due to lack of time (and having 2 little ones) he recorded the first 6 notes and repeated them just to give me an idea.



I later explained to him what my project aim was, so he graciously agreed to play one of the odd composures. I love you Sammy!
Here's what the Journey tab sounds like.




I used to play the drums and have always been interested in matching sound to lyrics but unable to. I think I have been trying to fit that into this brief.

So I thought maybe I could simulate the coordination of playing the drums by making my own extremely simple drum kit.... out of paper.





















I colour coordinated the poem with the corresponding drum/cymbal to hit. It was quite a fun activity and I started to get the hang of it. The markers made pretty efficient drum sticks. I wish I could submit this.




















I started wondering what the poem would look like if it were only notations.


























Then I used tracing paper and removed the bars..


























I changed the format from vertical poetry lines to horizontal tablature




















Then tried it using the words in the tablature format







































Where is this all going? This is a question I can't answer. Despite the crit being tomorrow, my head is going around in circles with no hope for a revelation.

UPDATE: Paulus gave me positive feedback for this project. He said it was an interesting project and to keep going using the transcribing system I created, applying it to well known pieces of writing - like something from Shakespeare. I'm in the process of doing that now, as well as looking at other mundane written matter (VISA statements, etc).

DOCUMENTING LIVE MUSIC

Emilia and I went out to do 'research' at a few gigs. I wanted to test out my old 35mm compact camera from when I was a kid. It's the only film camera I own with a flash.
So here's Maps & Atlases and Three Trapped Tigers at XOYO.

(not so) MANIC?

I completed the booklets after burning the midnight oil, I'm a bit worried that I am getting used to these late nights and feel completely off kilter during the day now. I had one of the nights where since I was cramming everything in, I didn't plan for production. I didn't have enough paper. My printer kept eating the back-up paper, so I had to use Emilia's to print.




















The concept was two opposing booklets to aid people in understanding what a manic and depressive episode are like. For the content, I borrowed two excerpts from a blog kept by a woman who suffers from bipolar disorder. As the text goes on inside, it sinks lower and lower on the page, until the last where it is cut off, but still legible.

Here is the depressive booklet cover with the paper I wanted to use.






































This is the final version using the back-up paper







































The page below, the detail didn't show up as well as it did on a white version, which didn't translate onto image.
























Maybe you can see it better in the photograph below?


























































The manic booklet I initially wanted to produce on a much larger scale, but I thought it wouldn't comparitively work. I had this pretty rad/intense paper I brought back from Canada that I wanted to use. This was the first cover/paper colour trial.























After consulting my design respirator, she noted it might be a good idea if the covers for both booklets are correlated. Below is the second version of the cover. Emilia preferred the unchopped format also. But I wanted to keep the sizes consistent.






















Chopped version on the paper colour of choice.




















The idea was that the text would get a bit faster/harder to read as you progressed through the booklet. It was much shorter, in order to correspond to the racing thoughs/overactiveness experienced during a manic episode.

The criticism I received from Paulus was that the manic booklet was too constrained. He suggested I go for a giant sized version. Although he did say he liked something about it. I regret not asking him what exactly.

The group mentioned that it didn't really give them a sense of being in either of the aforementioned episodes. Although, I was striving for more of a somewhat subtle indication, focusing more on experimenting with the typography, as Rathna proposed during our group tutorial where we discussed our self-directed project proposals.

When I mentioned that baking a cake was a part of my process, he suggested I impart that in this project and make a depressive and manic cake. I liked that he asked how I visualized the cakes, because I had a pretty clear image in my head that it would be one cake with two layers. Anyway I will certainly give this a go because I will use any excuse to bake! Funny that I was joking around with Andreas about submitting a cake when I was fumbling for ideas.

Last night Emilia and I went to a gig on a whim. Three Trapped Tigers opened for Maps & Atlases at XOYO. It was stellar! If ever I saw manic, it would have been the drummer for TTT! He was bloody mesmorizing! Photos to follow, but here is someone's video of them playing at Hoxton Sq. Bar + Kitchen last year.