APD Week 7 - Play and Sound

Theme: 

In response to the theme of Play and Sound, I tried an interactive work.

Context:

"Seeing things in the here and now: Exploring mindfulness and creativity with Viviana Capurso" sparked the notion. The term "beginner's mind," coined by meditation master Shunryu Suzuki, refers to the development of the mind's ability to see things as if for the first time, consciously putting aside judgments and opinions and opening oneself up to possibilities that might otherwise be neglected (Suzuki & Dixon, 2010). Dr. Capurso discovered that having a beginner's mind allows us to experience the world in new ways, a process that Stouffer and Russell (2004) characterize as "making the familiar unusual." This is an important phase in the creative process. Csikszentmihalyi makes similar differences between "recognition" and "perception," with perception acting as the foundation of creativity and being analogous to adopting a "beginner's mind." 

Many of the mindfulness philosophy comes from long-standing Eastern and South Asian spiritual traditions, particularly Buddhist thought. This ideology and its practices emphasize being present and letting go of humans' over-reliance on individualized identity (as a "thinker of thoughts") in favor of a sense of oneness and integration (Shonin et al, 2014). Dr. Capurso has succeeded in bridging the gap between long-standing Eastern Asian and South Asian cultural traditions and more Western concepts of creativity and creative thinking in this way.

Another concept arose from Zhuang Zhou's Butterfly Dream, an ancient Chinese fable. The well-known image of Zhuangzi debating whether he was a man who dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly who dreamed of being a man is so compelling that it has inspired the entire story. This concept of the real and the unreal is quite related to traditional Chinese art, which has a hazy beauty to it. The approach of using objects as metaphors, like these lyrics, is frequently very nuanced emotion (the English translation was taken from YouTube, which may not portray this properly).

The Nature of Code by Daniel Shiffman (2012) provided the inspiration. "Our hope is to create intuitive, rich, and more satisfying experiences by drawing from the perceptual memories of our users," says James Tu Fyanmic Bodies in the description is particularly memorable to me. I tried to combine sound and processing painting based on this concept. Using Chinese ink painting brushstrokes and music to create a dream-like atmosphere. What appears to be a familiar scene appears to be different. This brings a different type of sound visualization.

Method:

This work was mainly created by using Processing. The program code is based on what Thomas Diewald shared on Java Library. (http://thomasdiewald.com) And some other very useful tutorials. (https://processing.org/tutorials/overview) (https://processing.org/tutorials/) (https://www.cnblogs.com/mysunnytime/p/3423375.html) Early on in the tweaking process, I attempted to incorporate sound interaction, but this system was clashing with the mouse-following part of the pointer. But it also provided me the concept to finish the sound visualization with the drawing. 

The first section is about my personal character Audrey. Her design is influenced by Zhuang Zhou's butterfly dream as well as magical elements. Produces a dream-like scene that is both dreamy and magical.

The song for the next section is "Rolling up the beaded curtains" by Zhou Shen. (https://youtu.be/jlxQ59hDrvs) The song has a distinct Chinese style to it, with lyrics derived from old Chinese poetry that gently and eloquently tells a heartfelt and poignant love story. I also used Devins Lee's environment design created for Zhangjiajie, China. (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/B1XK3A) Due to the geographical layout, the scenes he sketched have a powerful ancient charm and can be sensed in classic wooden constructions of ancient China. A hazy sky, shimmering water, and flocks of birds flying in the sky, with three or two people sitting in boats. It conjures up an antique Chinese scene that has a timeless charm of simplicity and elegance. It's the perfect match for the scene of the song. 

Reflection:

To continue the part on interactive instruments, I originally chose Max Live at the outset of the project. And I'd already begun the production, which was almost complete. But I eventually abandoned the idea because I am completely inexperienced in the usage of instruments. Even if I could physically create this work, creating intriguing effects would be extremely challenging.

The latter is the case. I believe it is preferable not to be constrained by sound; that is why I try to experiment with a theme — The traditional Chinese style combine sound and paint.

In mediaeval Europe, painting was sometimes referred to as "monkey art." Before the twentieth century, the more realistic the imitation, the more accomplished the painting. But, following the twentieth century, with the introduction and development of photography, painting began to change towards conveying the painter's subjective self. Paintings can be naturalistic and figurative (for example, still life and landscape paintings), abstract, narrative, symbolic, emotive, or political.

Painting is, in my opinion, a very free thing. It is simply a technique of expressing, or recording, a moment, an emotion, or visualizing a notion. It can take numerous forms of expression, such as being drawn with a brush, set out with a block of color, stacked with shapes made of sand grains, or carving out figures with a carving knife, or even burned by fire. It can be artificial, inadvertent, or natural. It is all "painting."

Traditional painting techniques create static images, and many amazing artworks are static images that convey dynamic effects. However, I would like to be able to directly present dynamic effects. I can make the paint have a trajectory direction and speed based on the user's mouse movement, which is an effect that traditional painting cannot produce. This, like Chinese ink painting, gives a random beauty to the painting.

References:

Richardson, C., Henriksen, D., Mehta, R., & Mishra, P. (2022). Seeing things in the here and now: Exploring mindfulness and creativity with Viviana Capurso. TechTrends [online], Available at <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-022-00722-z> 

Suzuki, S., & Dixon, T. (2010). Zen mind, beginner’s mind. Shambhala. 

Stouffer, B., & Russell, J. (2004). Making the strange familiar: Crea- tivity and the future of engineering education. In 2004 Annual Conference (pp. 9–883)

Shiffma, D. (2012). The Nature of Code [online], Available at <https://wtf.tw/ref/shiffman.pdf>

Outcome: https://youtu.be/zSCXVtTEULA