I never learn. The sound for Trickster had to be finished today burned to CDs and mailed to the gallery at Stord. Of course I didn’t manage to finish earlier and stayed up all night finishing just in time to get a shower and set of to the airport in order to attend a two day seminar of the fellowship program.
Observing my own ways of working for the last 1 1/2 year has been surprising and revealing. When I first entered the fellowship program I imagined having more time for developing my projects working on each project for a much longer time spans than before. Instead a very different patern has emerged. First comes a period of research and this is generally much longer and thorough than before. During this phase I’m testing and developing new techniques reading thinking defining and redefining concepts working on large scale problems but only making brief and very loose sketches for what I’m actually going to do what material to use and how it’s going to sound.
The actual making of the work only really takes place during a short period as I get close to the deadline.
If I start working on the realisation to early I tend to loose faith in my own ideas or change focus along the way. Also if I spend to much time doing and redoing the material the material easily ends up being overworked loosing freshness and presence.
When doing sound for installations in collaborations with other artists a lot also depend on the space we’re using how we’re responding to it and how it’s shared and used between us. This is often impossible to know until we’re in the room preparing for the installation. For instance I have to see how the material work with the acoustics of the room. In the same way as a painter have to mount his works in the room the way it’s mounted being highly influential on how it is perceived I have to mount my sound and this is an act of physicly workin in the gallery space.
All of my research into FTM SDIF analysis resynthesis spatialisation and the building of pluggo instruments in the last months came into use for this project but I started later than ever making the actual sound. I’m planning to travel down to Stord in the coming weekend to see how the sound combines with the photos and how the CD-players and headphones work out and consider if adjustments need to be done.
