For my second portfolio project I am focusing on my musical practice and recording an album over the course of the rest of the term. Minimalism, pitch alteration, sampling, dissonance, and texture are themes and techniques I am using to guide the creation of this collection of songs, however, each track will act more as a weekly artistic exercise than anything else. I plan on recording around 2 hours worth of music by April, and I hope to share the piece on cassette tapes and if I get the means I am planning on recording the majority of the tracks onto a 4 track tape recorder, emphasizing the lo-fi aesthetic of the simplicity of the music. So far I have recorded 5 tracks ranging from 1 minute to 7 minutes, using guitar, bass, and sampled drums with processing effects such as varispeed and tape saturation.

PROJECT 2: 

BRÜN

Project No. 2, currently titled ‘BRÜN’, is going to be an album that documents my weekly exploration surrounding minimal composition. I am focusing on the use of guitar – alongside recording techniques that I am not as familiar with, including sampling and pitch alteration. I am setting a limit on the number of mono tracks I can record and manipulate in Logic, hopefully switching to a 4 track cassette recorder by February 2025. Currently I have three recordings complete for this project, however, the final piece will be substantial in length and in recording techniques and devices used. 

I have recently been fascinated by recordings from Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, including albums such as blueblue (2022), Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar More Songs (2021), iiyo iiyo iiyo (2024), and Live on the Green (2019). The recordings combine the complex tonality of standard jazz quartets and trios with modern pitch shifting and arrangement, while simultaneously abstracting and ‘destroying’ the audio to a lo-fi pulp.  

This collection of tracks will be a minimization of previous albums I have made, eliminating decipherable vocal tracks, and limiting the scope of color available when arranging and recording the instrumentation of each track. 

Below is a sample track from the completed recordings:

I equate the abstraction of material to the process used in creating etchings and then pressing ink or aquatint (powder pressing technique) from the metal slap onto another material, canvas. The scrapping, or distortion of the metal reminds me of the processes of abstraction used by Viking Egeling and Hans Richter in their early experimental works of visual music and abstract film when they would cut out shapes and paint directly onto film stock, altering the material to present varied imagery to the audience. Ed Ruscha’s Blank Signs (2004) is a great example of the use of abstraction to convey thoughts associated to disassociation and ‘mind wandering’, two ideas closely associated to abstract art and studies on form. Gregory Minissale expands on this idea in his book Rhythm in Art, Psychology and New Materialism, stating ‘Mind Wandering is a form of abstraction involved in both the production and reception of abstract art. Mind wandering – involuntary non-logical thought – creates rhythmic connections between abstract art and abstract thought.’ (Minissale, 2021, pp. 12-13). Process and rhythmic thought associated to the creation of abstract artworks bridge the gap between representation, matter, and interaction.

Clear imagery presenting signage in what appears to be a desert environment allows for the audience to make associations to personal memories or attributes associated to the empty shapes, and it also allows for breath digesting the work of art. The subtraction and reduction that takes place in this work allows for me to analyze and digest it in my own psyche, not tethered to any preconceived notions about the definition of the environment or space represented in the context of these works from Ruscha.

My focus for this project is centered around abstraction as imagery, surrealism, and dadaism. The project will include a sculptural drone instrument based on the simplification of a hurdy gurdy, crank and rosined wheel along 4 to 7 piano or harp strings, as well as a super 8mm film that has been abstracted by scrapping the celluloid and forming animations over the frames. In developing the structure for this artwork I changed the direction of the construction of this device multiple times. After making a scale model of the original instrument design I felt a certain disconnect from the perspectives I held going into the process of creating drafts of this work. After researching Japanese philosophies on the interaction of wooden materials, woodcraft, I was drawn to the idea of the relationship between construction and nature. It appears to me that in recognizing the relationship between the natural world and the creation of human habitats and devices, I can relay the ideas around abstraction that I have towards constructing the device. The first major design difference that will relate to the ideas surrounding Japanese wood craft is the use of mitre joints along the top and bottom bases. I will also hopefully be able to use hand tools for this project, interacting and ‘distorting’ the wood to make a work that ties into the idea of abstraction. Similar to how I will interact with the film stock. Below is a collage of updated sketches I have done for the instrument.

Here is the final description of my interests around this topic as well as the project itself:

‘Perception is not a passive response to external stimuli, like a reflex, but actively parses and anticipates external events’ (Minissale, 2021). Gregory Minissale expands on ideas around movement, abstraction, and perception in his book Rhythm in Art, Psychology and New Materialism, relaying the connection between brain activity, natural form, and ‘mind wandering’ to artistic form. For my portfolio project I am striving to create two artworks that explore these ideas surrounding the image of abstraction. These artworks will work in parallel as an exploration into abstraction as an image, and how the subjectivity of perception can physically impact the resonance of a landscape, sound, or person. 

My interests around creating works relating to these topics stems from my fascination of natural landscapes and natural form in art, the comparison of lo-fi sound and low-resolution images to abstract paintings and artworks, and the absence of form in composition, leading to the creation of material that excites and surprises me. Awareness in producing material inspired by theory and research as well as personal experience and practice leads to links between stimuli and realization, as well as deeper rooted ideas around the meaning of my work on a personal level. 

PROJECT 1: 

Sculpture for Music – Music from Sculpture – Music for Film – Film for Music 

Project No. 1, currently titled ‘sculpture for music – music from sculpture – music for film – film for music’, is going to include the realization and construction of a primitive instrument that will then be used in the composition of a film score for a distorted two-to-three-minute film of a landscape, shot on Super 8 celluloid. This concept is meant to explore abstraction as image, as well as links between abstract art, perception, and the natural environment. I am projecting both the abstraction of material and perception of the natural environment by shooting a landscape on filmstock, and then distorting the leader by scrapping over the leader, implementing my own presence in the process of capturing footage of a natural landscape as well as the ephemeral nature of medium in art. This is drawn from my own research into Dadaism, focusing on artists such as Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling, The instrument will be synonymous with the film piece, constructed solely for the realization of the image of nature. In deciding how to approach the construction of the instrument I am relying on traditional Japanese woodcraft and joinery techniques. Philosophy surrounding Japanese design promotes the importance of balance and harmony within habitat and nature. Pulling from these perspectives promoted by carpenters, designers and artists such as Makoto Fukada and Kenya Hara, I hope to also develop my own role in the link between the natural and constructed world. The instrument is a simplified and primitive hurdy gurdy, that will use a bridge structure similar to the construction found on a zither harp, producing continuous drones from a wheel on a rod with a hand crank protruding from the ‘front’ of the structure. 

This project expands on previous works of visual music I have created, as well as abstract audio – painting works including my submission for the Sonic Doing and Thinking module from year 1 titled ‘Portrait of A Mind’. The artwork was a painting I had done alongside a sonic movie illustrating a space representative of my mind at the time. I believe this work is an expansion of my earlier perspectives on abstract imagery and interpretation, as well as my current practice which I would relate to visual music, the reinterpretation of classic musical form, improvisation and psychedelic wooziness, and experimental sound for film.