As a final update, here is a general summation about the work I completed...

TECHNICAL:

This work uses three main stages of sound processing for its content:  ATS, SuperCollider, and Audacity.

In ATSH, I extracted several levels of frequency content and created both sound files and ATS files for further synthesis.  The ATS files gave me a listing of all the partial information which is valuable numerical representation of the components within my source material.  The two main levels of content are taken from the 6KHz - 15KHz frequency range, and the 20Hz - 180Hz range, and this came in the form of sound files.

In SuperCollider, I processed the sound files generated from ATSH using reverb, resonant filters, granulation, and sampling.  I also used the high range sound content as a trigger for dust impulses and tones.  In using the partial information, I was able to generate sine tones and use additive synthesis to create musical forms.

All of the content generated from SuperCollider was saved and stored for layering and editing in Audacity.  This allowed me GUI manipulation for fine tuning and transitions.

CONCEPTUAL:

My work started from the idea of a subjective, human account of time and the inaccuracies and thought-spaces that inform and interrupt.  I initially wanted to use three voices, a child, a young man, and an elderly man, to represent different periods in a life-span, but I soon narrowed this down to exploring a single voice for this work.  In the recording, I directed my voice actor to count to seven minutes without the aid of clock or metronome in order to get a more varied performance.  This was partly achieved when the recording of seven minutes took only six-minutes forty seconds.

PROCESS & CRITIQUE:

In the critique, I agreed with most of the feedback.  One point was to what extent I departed and returned to the counting voice.  This was a large compositional challenge - how do I transform and intervene on the voice, but still make sure it remains in the frame.  This is linked to my idea as well - as we count in our head or out loud, our mind wanders and our voice moves in and out of our range.  This needs to be examined more closely in my piece - the compositional potential of the push-pull space from the counting needs to be examined more closely.  The piece's duration needs to be rethought as well - we need enough time to experience time in a different way.

TIMELINE(evolving)

Starting Now: April 9 - June 6

WEEK 1: April 9 - April 16: Initial Efforts and Class Critique

Conceptual exercises
Poems and thoughts
Research past works
Philosophies of time

WEEK 2: April 16 - April 23: Pre-production and Narrowing design

Find voice talent
Continue readings on time
Create more specific design for piece
Begin tests with fft for transformations in piece

WEEK 3: April 30 - May 7: Structure and Story



WEEK 4: May 7 - May 14

WEEK 5: May 14 - May 21

WEEK 6: May 21 - May 28

WEEK 7: May 28 - June 4

A couple months ago, I caught a bus that was due to connect to another route I needed about 16 minutes from the time I got on. So during the ride, instead of watching my clock, I decided to count the minutes, one second at a time, until I got to the connecting busstop. As I counted, my mind wandered in its attention to the numbers I recited. My focus would return and depart, as the physical act of saying the numbers became mechanical and numb. I continued counting, but the passing digits dropped into periphery, my thoughts shifting from the regular pulse of the count, to clouds of shapeless memory with no measure. My body creating noises, with regular rhythms, using a language, taking a measurement. My body is imprecise, my thoughts are not sequential. The clock runs through my body and distorts, filtered through subjectivity and anatomy. I repeat the same seconds to arrive at different minutes. But those will repeat as well. Three eighteen in the afternoon today has no connection to three eighteen in the afternoon tomorrow. The numbers fade, my tongue and mouth and memory derail from the framework. There is no measure of the moment to moment, only a destination. And when this place is reached, the distance traveled seems to change. I can tell you that it took 15 minutes, but what does this mean to you and me? Is it an agreement? For the moment that we meet and speak about time, we both place our subjective amorphous time periods onto the agreed, gridded table in order to reach understanding. And we do, and the bus arrives, and the count finishes, and life resolves and fits.

I track, I measure, I check the ticks.

The clock, the numbers, the count persists.

My voice, my tongue, my brain, the beat.

My time becomes blurry the more I repeat.

A memory appears, and the clock slips away.

A place where a minute, expands to a day.

A place where I played when I was a child.

Then the ticks reappear after awhile.

One, two, thirty nine, forty.

Fifty one, fifty two, fifty three is before me.

Five, six, eleven, twelve.

Was I in the first minute? Second minute? I cannot tell.

A place where my mother, lifted me up.

A place where a that mean kid, once beat me up.

The clock comes back, reappears very loud.

As I dream of the future, a few days from now.

A see-saw, my mind wanders in, out of time.

Like chasing a hare through a dark twisted pine.

The world and it's time, a map leads the way.

But my minutes, and seconds, expand into days.