Final post for Aural Terrains - update and conclusion

Aural Terrains - Week 3

Week 3 of the aural terrains project started out quite interesting with a guest, Chris O Connor, coming in to teach us for the day. In the Chromakey Room we all sat around in a nice big circle and got taken through a number of activities relating to improvisation. One that I found particularly interesting was where the whole class had to sing a single note for a while. We did a few different activities based around that idea. With the lights off everyone simply had to just sing a note and continue with that until we were told to stop. Along the same lines, we then had to sing the note of our choice while listening to everyone else and picking a note that we heard and mimicking it. The effect of these were actually quite cool and you really need to experience it yourself to get the right idea of it. With the lights off especially you could really feel the vibration of everyone's voices which sounded and felt more like a sort of deep humming rather than singing. We then used the same sort of technique but had volunteers 'conduct' us. For example the conductor would simply use expressions and everyone else had to mimic their expression to get a certain sound. Again, it was really interesting to hear and feel the result.

After that we went back to our circle and played a game of clapping. It went like this: the first person would clap and say one, the second person would clap and say two, the third person and first person would clap and say one, the second person and the fourth person would clap and say two, and so it went around like that. It's amazing how quickly everyone starts. After doing that for a while it got more complicated and you had to try and switch between the one and two beats. We then continued with that in smaller groups, basically the people who were closest to us and practised doing it together as each group then had to perform it in front of the class. Not mentioning any names but there was someone in my group who didn't really seem to know what he was doing and even when I asked him he said he did but during the practice he kept screwing it up. I was kind of annoyed about that, but I got over it. I think that may have been all we did, I'm not sure now. All in all those activities were a lot more fun than I would have thought if I'd been told beforehand what we were going to be doing.

The rest of the week was then dedicated to coming up with, planning and practising for the much dreaded upcoming performance. I was working with Jess and Rebecca for that. We started coming up with ideas and had quite a few pretty quickly. One that I liked the idea of was using string or nylon or something similar to attach between the levels in the gallery(AUT St Paul's Street Gallery) and make it into a sort of giant harp using the glass it would be attached to to sort of help the sound resonate and become louder. It also meant that we would be able to be on separate levels and not seen as easily, which would have been great for Jess and me, as neither of us enjoy performing. However we didn't end up going with that idea and after more discussion and discarded ideas we decided to use water on glass to make different noises. We were going to use different tools/instruments as well as our hands/fingers to make what would hopefully be interesting noises.

Some tools we thought about using were, things like branches as well as a fly swat and things like a window wiper sort of thing which made a number of different interesting noises, as long as the window was dry. Once we were decided we went up to Rebecca's apartment to practise. We started in a deliberate way, each taking turns to use a sponge, which incidentally made an interesting noise itself, to wet the window (we had one each) and then basically went into improv and did what we each felt was right. The attempts we had went quite well and gave us something to work with.

I think it was after that that we each went home and recorded some sounds which we had to play for the class on Friday (or maybe it was before), I'm not sure now. Here are the sounds below:

Mine:



Jess':



Rebecca's:




The next Thursday was a sort of dress rehearsal where everyone had to give a short performance just to show what it sounded like and to also figure out how long it was going to take to set up.

So the next was of course performance day and I was certainly not looking foward to it. We ran into some technical speed bumps as we were setting up and had to change it quite a lot. Our original plan was to each have one of the big 3 glass panels and play off that but the glass was dirty and wasn't making much sound. Eventually we decided to each use the same bit of glass and play on the smaller space as best we could. Luckily Jess had an amp and a microphone and I had an extension cord which meant that we were able to set up the amp inside and have the microphone against the glass. That did make it kind of difficult to play around but we managed.

One of the worst moments was that even though we were supposed to go second probably less than five minutes before everything was supposed to start we got told: you guys are going first. AHHHHHHH!! So up we went, first, and basically just did as well as we could. It was quite difficult because of how much we'd had to change and also I really didn't know if people could hear it at all so I was really just willing it to be over. Jess and Rebecca both did really well and I'm just glad that I made it through the performance and then was able to just watch the others and know that ours was done. Hopefully it sounded reasonable. To be honest I don't know what it sounded like. I can't bring myself to listen to the recording of the performance, let alone watch the video. Maybe sometime next year I'll manage.

All in all, this project was actually a lot more enjoyable than I thought it was going to be at the beginning and I'm very glad that I managed to get through the performance, however badly I did.

Here is the recording of our performance: