This project explores multimedia composition using bespoke digital tools. From a sound perspective, this project explores improvisation-driven composition. From a visual perspective our hexagonal physical instrument designs are catalyst for the exploration of generative and sound reactive computer generated imagery. This work revolves around DIY instruments and feedback/light-driven synthesis techniques to investigate audio-visual relationships between sound, image, and performance capture. The work resides in the research area of post-digital art where affordances of physical instruments, tactility, improvisational performance, and feedback control and interaction between instruments are explored, and seeks to push the boundaries of fixed-media and audiovisual composition where live performance practices are foregrounded as a primary method for composing audiovisually.
ERA Category
- Recorded/Rendered Creative Work - Film/Video
Eligible major research output?
Research Statement
Research Background
The research field is multimedia composition using bespoke digital tools. Key texts: 1) Louise Harris’s “Composing Audiovisually” and Andrew Knight-Hill’s “Sound and Image” both privilege digitally generated and fixed media composition; 2) Steve Gibson et al.’s “Live Visuals,” foregrounds popular musics/the relationship between electronic music and multimedia practice. This field offers opportunities to develop understandings of digital tools and associated musical/artistic practices. Our research question foregrounds physical interactions and asks: when sound and vision are considered equal in importance, how might a fixed-media video work balance digitally-generated image with performance capture?
Research Contribution
From a sound perspective, this project explores improvisation-driven composition. From a visual perspective our hexagonal physical instrument designs are catalyst for the exploration of generative and sound reactive computer generated imagery. This work revolves around DIY instruments and feedback/light-driven synthesis techniques to investigate audio-visual relationships between sound, image, and performance capture. The work resides in the research area of post-digital art where affordances of physical instruments, tactility, improvisational performance, and feedback control and interaction between instruments are explored, and seeks to push the boundaries of fixed-media and audiovisual composition where live performance practices are foregrounded as a primary method for composing audiovisually.
Research Significance
Hex on Math was peer reviewed by two international juries and selected/presented: 1) in an installation context at the South Bend Museum of Art in Indiana, USA for two months as part of the 2024 Performing Media Festival [PMF~2024], 2) in a cinema context at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, USA as part of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States 2024 National Conference.Publisher
Performing Media Festival [PMF~2024]Place of publication
South Bend Museum of Art in Indiana, USACopyright notes
© 2024 John Ferguson and Nicole Carroll