OUFA409 - Fine Art Practices 3

Fine Art Practices 3 was our chance to experiment and develop ideas in the studio on the back of our first terms of work. This was the first time we had worked in our given strand, in my case the drawing strand. To start of the project we where given strand specific tasks to complete, in drawing these mostly revolved around experimentations with observational drawing. The aim of these tasks was to make us think about new ways of viewing and portraying a space through a range of different media. While these task where helpful and offered an opportunity for new ideas and themes in my work to emerge they did not influence my work throughout the rest of the project very much and I soon moved on from the work I had made during the tasks. 

Outside of my art practice music had been a large part of my life for some time. I had written for music magazines and have recently started my own diy record label. I was encouraged to explore how I could look at music and sound within my art practice. This was my focus throughout this module. 

I began by making short rhythmic pieces of music using basic computer software such as garage band. I then used these clips to make drawings using a wide range of materials such as charcoal, pencil, paint and a putty rubber. While making these drawings I tended to focus on the basic rhythms within the audio, making very repetitive drawings. I also made drawings using established musicians who's work has a very rhythm lead base such as Parquet Courts and Future Islands.

Using paint and tape, as I have done before in my practice, I was able to create some of the most effective pieces of work of the project. Using the tape to create the sense of rhythm as I paint onto it I lost some control over the image but to good effect. These images created a really interesting sense of surface which is at first hard to pinpoint and leads the viewer in to explore the drawings in more detail. 

During this time I also looked at how artist have used music and sound within their practice over the last hundred years. I explored the work of Kandinsky who's paintings often acted as visualisations of musical compositions. I also looked at the way Martin Creed and John Cage compose music and sounds to really explore what it is that makes a sound piece art. I found that Cage's work really pushes the boundaries of noise music in a similar way to an abstract or minimalist painter pushes their medium to it's limits. However, Creed's work is essentially conventional pop music but perhaps with an artistic idea or theme at it's base. I have thought that perhaps the only reason Creed's music is seen as art is because he is seen as an artist first before being a musician. This idea of what makes music and sound an art is something I am very keen to explore further moving forward. 

Having explored sound as an art form I decided to see how I could make some different kinds of sound art. I had inductions into all of the audio recording equipment including the sound booths, handheld microphones and contact microphones. The first technique I used was the contact microphones which pick up vibrations in whichever surface you attach them to. I experimented by recording a range of sounds including charcoal drawing, painting and ripping up tape to see what I could achieve. I also explored using preconceived compositions in a similar way to John Cage's Water Walk.





More audio clips here: https://soundcloud.com/user-734146908/sets

After this I started to use the sound booth to record sound. I gathered a group of volunteers and asked them to make sounds that they believed correlated to the drawings I had made earlier in the project. This was a very successful and interesting experiment as I ended up with a very wide range of sounds, all of which had come from just a handful of drawings. These seemed like an interesting demonstration of how different people perceive images in very different ways. 

Over all I found that throughout the project I was encouraged to push my practice further and further. Through large amounts of experimentation I am now in a fantastic position to continue to develop this interesting strand of my practice moving into next year.