C-25 // I'm still here!!

Hi everyone! Yep – I'm still here. Thanks for the various concerned queries... Nothing terribly exciting to report, it's just been a busy time and I've been distracted by lots of things...

Anyway, there's lots to catch up on, so here goes...

1) Currently listening to...

I am geeking out at the moment listening to SOMA fm - my favourite online radio station. I usually listen to their 'dronezone' channel, but they are currently broadcasting 'MissionControl' - a blend of ambient music with a live audio stream from NASA who currently have a shuttle in orbit docked to the International Space Station. It's fascinating listening in to the radio communications between the astronauts and the ground crew. The other day I listened as they approached the station and then went through the whole docking procedure - quite thrilling! There's not much happening currently as the astronauts are all sleeping, but they are scheduled to wake up shortly and begin preparing for the first space walk of the mission. I'm also watching the live video feed from Nasa TV - it's currently just a live view of the shuttle from a camera on the station, lookin past the shuttle to the earth below. You can see the earth turning as they race around it at 17,000 mph. So intense and yet so serene...

Ha! They just woke up to 'Beautiful Day' by U2. :-)

Speaking of intense and serene, I've also recently been enjoying this podcast from sound recordist Chris Watson, who I met late last year while he was in Wellington. He is currently in Antarctica, making a new nature documentary with David Attenborough. There are some amazing images on the podcast page too, as well as some astounding soundscapes.

2) Study

This year is panning out to be an interesting one. I spent some time January doing some planning, but already some of those plans are being turned on their head as new opportunities and challenges present themselves. For instance, I had decided in January that I would do a couple of art and design papers at Massey this year, but after making some enquires I discovered that I was approximately 4 months late in enrolling! Yep - the deadline for 2010 was Oct 09, so that was a bit disappointing. I've looked around at various other options – there are quite a few – but I think I'm going to do some self-directed study instead, at least for the first semester. There are so many things I want to learn, it's hard to know where to begin.

One option is 'Processing':

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.

 

Processing can be used to do things like this...

Solar rework from flight404 on Vimeo.

Co-incidentally, the audio used for this test film is taken from another podcast I really enjoy - RadioLab.

3) Upcoming Gigs - JediNites, The Waitings

I thought the first part of this year would be fairly quiet for gigs, mostly because That 80's Band is out of action for the time being, but I've actually ended up being quite busy with JediNites which is a 3-piece covers band comprising myself, Matt Parlane on bass and Chris Jones on keys/vocals. It's good fun - interesting and diverse repertoire and good players all round. I'm learning this song for tonight's gig at The Occidental. Hilarious! (although the spoken intro on this video is lame compared to the original recording...)

I've also got a rehearsal tomorrow for a gig with The Waitings (Karel Van Helden and friends...). This band comprises some of my most favourite musicians to play with, including Phil Hornblow and Nick Tipping. The gig is on Friday 26th Feb in Nelson.

4) Recording projects

Not much happening on this front at the moment, although I do have some drum sessions coming up soon with Andrew London of the Cattlestops and Hot Club Sandwich, plus a couple of other possible projects on the horizon. Towards the end of last year I played a bunch of drum tracks on Janina Nicoll's upcoming album. It was great fun and I was more satisfied with my drumming contribution than I've ever been on any project before. Not sure of release date yet.

5) Tessellations

Here are a couple of patterns I came up with over summer... The first inspired by a coffee table I was sitting at in Mt Maunganui one day, and the second by some fabric I saw in a second hand clothing shop... 

6) Design work

Just finished a new series of 5 titles for UCA, plus there were 2 last year that I never posted - 'Rainforest Baby' and 'Water Baby'.

I've also been doing some more casual work at Wellington City Council - Publication & Design, with more on the horizon. Also, I have a freelance job on at the moment designing the graphics and packaging for a 12 disc cd set for a client which is proving to be an interesting and challenging task.

7) Reaktor

Over the last couple of years I have been delving fairly deeply into Native Instrument's Reaktor. In particular I developed some customised sampler instruments for Stevie Starr's live show. I have had some requests recently to post a some tutorials on basic Reaktor building, so that's something else I'll be working on over the next while. Stay tuned! 

In the meantime, the Reaktor User's Forum is a good place to start.

Recording nature sounds

Yesterday I had the great experience of attending a workshop in the afternoon, and then a performance in the evening both delivered by Chris Watson from the UK.

Chris is a very experienced and successful nature sound recordist. He has worked in many media - radio, television, film, games - as well as 'diffusing' his recordings live and releasing collages of them on cd. He worked with David Attenborough on 'The Life of Birds' (for which he won a Bafta for best factual sound) and 'The Life of Mammals' and continues to be highly sought after in his field.

There were about 40 people at the workshop (mostly university students I think) and then about 80 people at the live performance which was held at the Adam Art Gallery located on the Victoria University campus.

During the workshop Chris described his working method and equipment. He then went on to explain the various sound components a typical environmental/nature recording is comprised of and how he goes about capturing the different elements. He had many examples of his recordings to share with us – some were truly astonishing, some were quite humorous and some were just plain weird. He shared some beautiful atmos recordings of various jungles and forests, some raw unedited audio of David Attenborough narrating in the field, a recording he made of a thunderstorm where he was almost struck by lightning, and innumerous recordings of creatures of all kinds including a recording made in Kenya of vultures devouring a zebra carcass - with the microphones securely cable-tied to the ribs inside the zebra... He also described his interest in multi-channel recording and using alternative transducers such as hydrophones and geophones - again with examples.

The live performance was also very interesting and quite inspirational. It lasted about 30 minutes where he took the audience on a sonic journey beginning in the sea off the west coast of Iceland, towards land, along the Snaesfellsnes peninsular, and up a particular mountain to "the edge of the very crater described by Jules Verne in Journey to the Centre of the Earth". Up until this point the journey had been entirely created from factual sound recordings - no fabricated sounds - but we then descended into the crater and took an imaginary journey to the very centre of the earth. The whole thing was presented in surround, in near darkness and it was very loud - a totally immersive experience. Wonderful!

I should also add that the performance was supported by a 20-strong group who also presented an audio-visual collaborative piece entitled 'Red Rocks Sound Map'. It ran for perhaps an hour and consisted of a each performer presenting "an idea that translated the sounds and sights of Red Rocks from the wild into the gallery." Everyone was performing at the same time in various parts of the gallery. It was a bit of a cacophony in some ways, but I enjoyed the way I could wander around and find a spot that had a nice 'mix' of elements and acoustics. I particularly enjoyed some of the video work that was presented.