aPpraise: Digital Media Sounds project - Preamble
You almost need a dictionary for all the acronyms flying around educational institutions and the music/sound department isn't short of them. This time its -'DMSP' short for Digital Media Studio Project - a module undertaken by the Postgraduate music and sound students collaboratively as small project groups. The basic idea was as a group to form an experimental sound and visual work for public exhibition/display where each group worked with a designated title which acted like a rough brief to explore within. More about the project briefs can be read here: Project Listings
"Being is still veiled in darkness"(i)
I had the fortunate chance to see and experience some of the project installations which were really varied and diverse. For me one aspect that was particularly interesting was being quite close to the set up and installation of one of the projects as it was being shown in a space within our studios. Process has always been a key interest of mine and seeing all the technical kit, inputs, outputs, plugs, sockets etc, it was almost like an artwork in itself. Generally these 'extraneous' almost 'discarded objects' are carefully packaged and hidden out of view - what you see, what you don't see. On the one hand, its this process of coming into being and becoming which is rather fascinating but on another is also quite swiftly tucked away.
Reflecting this within my own work, this aspect of the 'hidden process' has always been a bee in my bonnet. This mainly arose after my foundation show and seeing how the 'audience' interacted with my work and most finding it more interesting for me to talk through my process of thinking in my sketchbooks rather than the 'final' work in itself. How far one reveals and hides not only within the work but what constitutes the work itself is also something to be considered.
Following on from this, I always feel rather shortchanged with respect to me as the producer and also the audience as the consumer as I always get the sense that what is actually is conveyed will never be what I actually wanted to convey in its entirety. There is also the journey, time, labour, crossed out ideas that never get a look in and I often feel this is also important, thus an element of frustration can ensue.
Valèry talks about this notion of the creative process and the final object which results in relation to both the maker and receiver in the book of collected writings aptly called 'The Creative Process'.
"No eye is capable of observing both these functions at once; producer and consumer are two essentially separate systems. The work for one is the terminus, for the other the origin of developments which may be as foreign as you please to one another."
He continues to say "for works to have their effects, the producer and consumer must each be independent or ignorant of the other's thoughts and conditions'.
I have still yet to be convinced and will still continue to pursue some way of bringing to the foreground some elements of the becoming somehow!
(i) Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, p.25.
