Archive for the 'Admin' Category

Workshops_UNSW Strike on Thursday ONLY!

Please check your student email on Wednesday to confirm if your teachers will be at the workshop on Thursday this week.
Your Lecturers will email you their plans,  and if they are not attending provide you with work to go on with, we do not have time to waste this session. Sketches & Ideas are still due.

At this stage

Mark Ward & Clare Andrealo’s sound class is on as usual! No change!
Brigid(Web)  will email you the work you will need to do in her absence.

Alyssa(Animation) see workshop section for power point with links to visit.

Keep an eye on your student email account, always:)

Lecture Week 3 Creating a Project Proposal

Don’t miss this one!

Top Ten Survivors

What was the most watched and mother of all realtiy television shows….

SURVIVOR!

1. Australian Survivor

2. Survivor: Fiji

3. Survivor

4. Survivor: Gabon

5. Survivor: China

6. Survivor: Cook Islands

7. Survivor: Panama

8. Survivors: All-Stars

9. Survivor: Micronesia

10. Survivors: Heroes vs Villains

The last one there is the upcoming season which brings all the people you loved and hated together for another chance at the title of SURVIVOR!


A Bank Statement.

Cool Ad – Straight to the point and very funny if you’ve ever had to prove your point with a bank.


No I am serious! Holidays are over!

I can’t believe it! It’s all over, the end of our summer and beginning of our winter of discontent…and essays galore. No offense to those who enjoy it, but I truly can’t be bothered sometimes – what with all the crapped up time to do assessments/have a social life/maintain said social life with monetary means…and then perhaps a little left over for candy is always a treat.

I have to say goodbye to some of my favourite things like…

1. Sleeping in
2. Sleeping late
3. Sleeping
4. Enjoying a book (unless I buy an iPad)
5. Yes there is such a thing as an iPad (telling people to wait for a couple of years to buy one)

And harro to some others:

1. Sleepless nights
2. Long days at uni
3. Stress
4. Late nights in the Webster Labs rolling around on wheely chairs
5. Blogging like so…

I hope you all have a wonderful session!

Peace.


Experience Me


Experience Me is my mdcm3002 Sound Installation

Experience Me

After a series of setbacks I have finally finished it.

Setbacks being; Stoopid Sophie-son deciding to do 5 subjects, amounting to a out of control workload. Dead external Hard Drive taking my entire project with it :( Dvd drives not burning any of my dvd’s specially printed for the project, but burning ones not printed. Printers being closed so that I can’t get the unprinted dvd’s printed. Working the entire day so I can’t get the dvd’s printed. Aka, Sophie-son has been farking screwed from the get go, she so lucky, finished and lucky.

So what the idea of my project was not to change the world, I know I can’t so I’m not going to try. I wanted to make a project where the user could sit down and take a peek inside my brain, the clutter and all. I found it rather difficult recording a lot of this stuff because whilst I may seem random and a bit of a wack, I am rather self-concious. Voicing a lot of these things was difficult- especially because I didn’t want it to sound scripted or rehearsed, or like I was trying to say something that it so deep and meaningful. The balance was hard… and I really hope I have achieved it and I don’t sound like a giant wank.

The idea of the project is to place a single lounge in an empty space, surround it with a surround sound dvd player, no need for the screen, just the sound, and play the surround scape. As it is only a short glimpse- 1minute, 32sec- the listener can choose to listen to the scape again or take control of the dvd remote and play around with the pace of the project pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding and honing into parts of the scape they may have missed the first time around.

There is no why to this project, rather its an opportunity to look inside my mind and maybe get the audience member to question their experience, and other people’s experiences of the world. Its a bit of fun, its a space where you can genuinly see how crazy I am. Enjoy, if you dare!

So this is the final sleeve of Experience Me which holds the dvds which were printed and don’t burn. Fantastic.

Experience Me Sleeve

The following is the teaser video of the project which I attached to the the Play Me dvd which introduced the project and outlined the instructions of the Use Me dvd. The Use Me dvd is designed to stage the production, all you need is the space, lounge, dvd surround set up and an audience.

<3 Pebble Power

Media Production Festival - Great Prizes!

PNAN Youth Arts Festival is on the lookout for the hottest
young and emerging talent (aged 16-25 in NSW) across
the fields of short film, graphic design and creative writing.
PNAN has always been about giving young creative’s the
opportunity to showcase their work and we have
assembled a prize pool with all the tools you need to make
it in the industry of your choice. PNAN is pleased to
announce the prizes for the 2009 PNAN Youth Arts
Festival competition:
Short Film Category:
• 1st place: $3,000 cash + Final Cut Pro Studio +
Screen Hub Membership + Industry Placement
• 2nd place: $1,500 cash + Metro Screen Voucher
($250.00) + Screen Hub Membership
Graphic Design Category:
• 1st place: $2,000 cash + Adobe CS3 Design
Premium + Industry Placement
• 2nd place: $1,000 cash + Metro Screen Voucher
($250.00)
Creative Writing:
• 1st place: $2,000 cash + Apple Mac Book Pro +
Industry Placement
• 2nd place: $1,000 cash + Metro Screen Voucher
($250.00)
There will also be a $500 cash prize for best integration of our signature item as judged
by NSW Health, one of our presenting partners.
Entries close 31st July. For more details visit www.pnan.com.au

Ableton Live & Pro Tools


Ableton Live

vs

Pro Tools

These are the two tools that I’m using in order to complete my sound project. It seems that both have their pros and cons in relation to what I need them to do.

Ableton is a fantastic sequencer which allows me to interface with PD fairly simply by use of a MIDI yoke. Basically MIDI yoke is a virtual MIDI driver for Windows that lets you route MIDI between applications. I was thinking of using this to pass sound that I’ve sequenced in Ableton directly through to PD when the contact mics pick up a signal.

Pro Tools is a great multitrack sound editor which allows me to create my surround ambient soundscape as well as touch up some of the recordings that I’ve done. Annoyingly Pro Tools is restricted to having an M-Box attached to the computer (which is annoying and expensive, though I suppose it’s one way to stop piracy) and also I’m not entirely sure if Pro Tools can be passed through to PD or not (I’ll have to investigate this further).

The next thing that I’m still having issues with is getting multiple inputs into a computer, since the computer generally has only 1 mic input with two channels. I’ve been researching a bit online and it seems that I would need to get a portable multitrack mixer of sorts to be able to grab four or more inputs into a device (or buy a very expensive M-Box 2 Pro that allows me up to 6 mic inputs) and some sort of DAC to input the mixer into a computer. Talking to Mat, he said that I should be able to borrow these rather than buy them (is is preferable), so I’ll look into that this coming week or so.

Lost Flash Book in Labs

I left a Flash Actionscript 3 book in the labs last week. It is by author Colin Moock. If anyone found it can they please return it to the EMPA school office. This good deed will earn you lots of good Karma believe me :)

Thanks, Brigid

Proof of Concept Critique


I think this picture sums up what Mat really thinks of our sound projects :

Mat Disappointed

Just kidding. =P

Though on a more serious note he did mention that I should take a look at what my project is trying to achieve and not making it too obvious for the participants otherwise they’ll figure out what it does, get bored,  and walk off. He did suggest randomisation of both sound and lighting to make it a really cool and trippy experience, but there is a fine line between making it a cool installation and making it too abstract for most people to comprehend. I shall take this recommendation into consideration when I start recording, compiling and mixing my sound files together.

I’ve also seemed to fix (for the most part) the distortion issue with my PD volume control attempt in the previous post by reducing the levels to a more sensible number. Here’s the PD flowchart for it :

PD-test volume control

All I’ve done is add another multiplication function which reduces the rms level from the mic input by 95%, which makes it a much more sensible number when you use it to boost the volume of the output. This has made the distortion far more managable and less annoying to the end user.