CPS - Week 8 - Time

Theme

Time

Context

The weeks lecture talked about algorithmic time, referencing day & night cycles in games. It started me thinking about how the events we see within this "game time" unfold in real time for us, but occur unnaturally close together, suggesting a faster progression of time. The time of the world moves more quickly around as, as we progress in natural time through it. Real time within the context of algorithmic time.

When reflecting on my practice I realised that the use of sound was an important part of, or often basis, of my work so I decided to centre my research and experimentation around sound.

The video piece "Justin Boyd: Sound and Time" raised interesting ideas about loops in sound, and the textures of sound that work with our memory. The idea of a place in time, created through the unique weaving of it's sounds.

Method

I wanted to explore how manipulation of sound, specifically the frequency of audio "occurances" might distort our perception of an object, or event, existing in natural/real time.

I would record video of a motionless object in an environment. Record the sound of the context/environment around it. Cut up the recording and experiment with repetition of different sounds to see the impact on our perception of the objects time.

The music video for 'Star Guitar' provided a great reference for the effect I want to experiment with using sound.

Response

Justin Boyd in the "Sound and Time" video made use of audio recordings from his surroundings, environments, and personal past, experimenting with the temporality of those places and memories.

At one point I had the idea of doing something similar, and had an audio recording from a cafe in Osaka titled "Holly's", so I used this as the base track for the video. I recorded video of a glass of water at a different cafe, and then began layering sound that I would find and cut from a variety of different "cafe sound" sources.

I instinctively looked to add vague percussive elements repeat them rythmically, aiming more and more to create the "star guitar" effect. I don't know if I achieved this, but the process of layering and stitching together the sounds genuinely began to make me feel anxious and on edge. Almost in the same way a fever makes you feel - experiencing that are all at once too slow, but too fast. I guess this is something of an altering in our temporal perception of the glass of water.