With my media producer hat on, I’ve recently been working with a local Teenage Pregnancy Unit to create a video which they can use as an information tool in schools. It’s been something of an epic project having originally begun last year, but is now finally finished.
One of the tricky issues which emerged during the project was that after initially agreeing, when it came to it, none of the client youth group actually wanted to appear on camera. Although this highlighted for us the social stigma that surrounds young parents, it didn’t help get the film made. Another solution had to be found, so we asked animator, Kim Noce to create a character that could lead the viewer through a narrative where the information we had from interviews with various Council departments would be delivered.
I created original sound and undertook video production and editing duties for the project. Like most of these projects, it could have used more time to develop the visual style and content, but I think the combination of live video and animation works really well.
As ever, progress on new music proceeds at a snails pace, but recent experiments have provided some material of interest.
I’ve had some electronic drones from Faria Records‘ Andrey Sadovnikov for the last couple of months, partly as his contribution to a potential future collaborative work. I’ve listened through them, searching for ways to interact with them, but there is something about the nature of drones generally that invites immersion in their stable continuum, but also makes interaction difficult. So, my search has partly been for imperfections or unstable events, from which to build some kind of dynamic.
They always suggest locations to me, so the combination of the drone track with some of my Studland Bay recordings from this Winter seemed to give the whole thing an interesting context.
I ended up doing several tracks of live processing on the source drone audio, then put them into Ableton Live and used my mixer controller to do a live mix.
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I’ve seen this a few times before, but after viewing my web statistics this morning, I’ve quite had enough, and I hope my reader will forgive me, but I am vexed!
So, The Pirate Bay have captured people’s imaginations recently with their high profile back-talking against the blundering oafs of the US Copyright lobby, and they certainly have the cool factor with them, but there comes a point when indiscriminant file sharing is counter productive for all of us.
Users of the torrenting scene popularly consider themselves glamourous digital buccaneers who are getting one over on The Man with their superior tech skills, because the top heavy Music Industry dinosaur has sucked us all dry for so long…and they make so much money they can afford it. Right?
Well, there may be an engrained business structure here which is certainly not entirely devised for the best interests of the artists, but that’s not the issue that I find today. Yes, I’m looking at you torrents.ru! and you laffi, varek2, and don’t think I can’t see you at the back, “banana ninja“!
Tanner Menard’s unique internet-enabled artist collaboration: the “Sommeil” sleep concert at the Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, seems to have generated a good buzz. Further events are apparently planned, an edited release of the performance due on Experimedia Records and future rebroadcast of the material via a couple of net radio stations.
I contributed some audio material and Tanner has kindly put up a news post about me on his blog, including the audio I sent over for the event. This was an edited version of my binaural recording on Studland Bay, Dorset, taken back in December, and a section of seriously heavy drone, which resulted from one of the trips in my ongoing project to record the vibrations running through the structures of electricity pylons.
My phone phreak-inspired track “Deserted Cities” features on a new CD compilation called “Euphony 2″, put together by the chaps from the Ambience radio show on station WWUH in Hartford, USA.
The disc is an exclusive fundraiser for the station, available only for people contributing to keeping the music on the air, and features tracks from US Space Music stalwarts such as, Steve Roach, Richard Bone and Forest Fang as well as myself, appearing under my CodeTripper guise.
I have to admit to initially having no idea where Hartford, CT might be, so it’s rather strange that a little Googling led me to discover that it is indeed a short distance South West of Windsor, the original UK namesake of which being where I currently reside. Only, this Windsor is in close proximity to US versions of Coventry , Manchester (Lord help us!) and Bristol. With a wider view, it’s all North East of New York, but you probably knew that anyway.
You can read all about the fundraiser and CD compilation on the WWUH page. Here’s a sample of my “Deserted cities” track.
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Sound from some of my recent recording projects is being used in an all night sleep concert by Tanner Mennard in New Orleans, USA on 11th April 2009. I don’t often do this, but the idea grabbed me, so I sent some contributions after seeing his call for submissions on the Hyperreal ambient list.
I went to an all night Sundanese Gamelan concert at the South Bank in London a few years ago, which was a truly magical experience. So, contributing to some magic happening elsewhere in the World is a privilege.
A mix of some of the binaural recordings I took on the beach at Studland Bay in January is being used as part of a project in the Pixel Palace programme at the Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne during March. The recordings will be played as part of a selection of work which uses a central staircase in the Cinema to arrange a kind of vertical stereo, with the left channel at the botttom and the right channel at the very top of the staircase.
Seems like a very imaginative project that uses the space of the building in a fun way, interesting season of events too. Anything that involves Peter Greenaway has to be worth a look.
Martin Franklin is a digital artist & musician, curator, online broadcaster and founder of the Sound:Space sound art symposium.
His current work combines sound with other media in the digital domain, often resulting in spatial installation pieces.
As solo artist and former leader of Ambient trio, TUU, his many recorded works have been released around the Globe. Performances and exhibitions have included Inpact Festival, Estonia, Pixelpops, WOMAD, Cybersonica, ICA London and Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast.
With my media producer hat on, I’ve recently been working with a local Teenage Pregnancy Unit to create a video which they can use as an information tool in schools. It’s been something of an epic project having originally begun last year, but is now finally finished.
