This short film is an advertisement for Japanese mobile phone company Docomo: a linear musical instrument designed by Drill Inc. is played by the descent of a wooden ball as it slowly rolls down track, sending xylophonic plinks and plonks out into the forest.

With thanks to blogspot

Ray Beckett, regular collaborator with Ken Loach and Oscar-winning Location Sound Mixer on The Hurt Locker, discusses his work with Larry Sider from the School of Sound, illustrated by film clips, including The Hurt Locker, Land and Freedom and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

Deconstructing the Soundtrack — A Seminar Series sponsored by the School of Sound in collaboration with the London Film School :: June 12-13, 2010 :: The London Film School, 24 Shelton Street, London.

Building on the success of Sound & Music Techniques for Narrative Filmmaking with Gustavo Costantini, the seminars are aimed at those working in screen-based media, and offer three further perspectives on the use of sound and music in filmmaking.

Experts Larry Sider, Annabelle Pangborn and Stephen Deutsch will each deliver a half-day seminar demonstrating the interrelationship between sound, music, image and story. The programme will include a discussion of strategies and concepts for working with sound and music, from pre- to post-production.

With particular relevance for directors, writers and producers as well as sound designers, editors and composers, the final session will be dedicated to discussing participants’ own projects.

Course Schedule

Saturday 12th June :: Prof. Stephen Deutsch: Putting Music in its Place
Setting a framework for the use of sound and music with image, Deutsch offers a new way of hearing music within the unified world of a film’s soundtrack. Stephen Deutsch is Head of Post-Production at Bournemouth Media School. He is also a composer for television, film and theatre and Editor of The Soundtrack Journal.

Larry Sider: Sound Changes the Image
Sider deconstructs the soundtrack showing how each component of sound expresses character, place and story. He describes how the practical application of these concepts positions the audience in relation to the screen and the narrative. Larry Sider is Director of the School of Sound, as well as an editor, sound designer and visiting lecturer at film schools in the UK and Europe. He was formerly Head of Post-Production at the National Film and Television School.

Sunday 13th June :: Annabelle Pangborn: Giving the Film Back to the Audience
In choosing whether to use music or sound, Pangborn analyses how music responds directly to a film’s narrative to create atmosphere, expression and mood. She shows how music connects the audience to a film’s subtext, confronting the audience with the reality of their feelings. Annabelle Pangborn is Head of Editing, Sound and Music at the National Film and Television School. She is also a composer and sound designer.

On the second afternoon, all three tutors will offer analysis and feedback on a selection of the participants’ own projects. The session will be an open discussion about the work between tutors and all participants. Tutors will answer questions about the use of sound and music in relation to the editing, narrative and overall style of the film while eliciting responses to the work from the audience.

Go to the LFS Workshops site for further details about the programme, tutors’ biographies and registration instructions.

Sawako Kato created one of the soundtracks for this animation. Other musicians are Flying Lotus, Ghislain Poirier, Ezekiel Honig, Roberto Carlos Lange, The One AM Radio, I am Robot And Proud, Marc Hellner and Shuta Hasunuma. Each musician created a soundtrack for the same video work, so, there are 9 different versions of music for the one animation.

[image: Anna Homler]

L.A. based spoken-word and intermedia artist Homler has worked with instrument builder and sound and visual artist Delia. Delia has worked with composer Margolis and video artist Liberovskaya. Now they will all work together. The adventure begins with toys, homemade instruments, live sampling, pre-recorded sound, voice, words and live video.

Anna Homler; Michael Delia; Al Margolis.

Composer and installation artist Peter Traub will premiere his new public sound work in the Ruffin Hall main lobby at the University of Virginia. Solera is an ongoing installation that will run for 24 hours a day, accumulating and playing back the sonic activities and characteristics of the installation space – people passing through, conversations, machines, and music. Over the two weeks of the installation, the incidental sounds of each day and the acoustic resonances of the space will be layered upon each other, creating an aural memory of the space that will grow and change over time. Multiple visits to the piece are suggested.

Traub will give a free gallery talk on the piece on Monday, November 2nd at 5pm in the main lobby of Ruffin Hall. As the talk will take place in the space of the installation, it will also become part of the piece.

Peter Traub is a composer, installation, and network artist currently completing his dissertation in the Composition Ph.D. program at UVA. He received his Master’s in Electro-Acoustic Music from Dartmouth College in 1999. He has composed numerous works of electronic music and several internet-based and physical sound installations. Between Dartmouth and UVA, Peter lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for five years working as a software engineer at various startups, and moonlighted as a visiting researcher/composer at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University. His dissertation is a series of performances and installations exploring sound in physical and imaginary space. His first piece in the dissertation series, the online installation ItSpace, was a commission of Networked_Music Review and featured on NPR’s “Day to Day” in 2008. In his spare time Peter also contributes interviews and posts to the Networked_Music_Review.

Expect unexpected sounds, exciting evenings where listening and hearing are the keywords. Even before we are born, we are affected by noise invading our safe and quiet space. We are surrounded by sounds that define the rhythm of our world. Artists and researchers will guide you through the labyrinth of sounds that constitute our daily lives.

French visual artist Guillaume Leblon creates a new performance where invisible sounds and words meet. A dialogue within the imagination of the audience. Jeph Jerman (US) will be searching the surroundings of Leuven for materials that can be used as instruments. Wood and rocks become part of an improvised work in which natural and daily noises transform into new and subtle music. Marc Van De Sijpe (BE) has studied the sonar navigation system of bats and made their mysterious world of sounds accessible for us to hear. The video Lost Sound by John Smith & Graeme Miller (UK) shows discarded audiotapes around London - strands clinging to a fence, trapped in the crevices of a tree trunk, intertwined with weeds. The sound track combines the voices and songs on the found audiotapes with ambient sounds recorded on location. Finally, David Watson (US) will be exploring the acoustic qualities and possibilities of the venue at STUK with his bagpipes.

Jérôme Noetinger :: Un Temps 1 :: 4′55″

Since 1987 different concepts have been carried out and performed in festivals, galleries, cinemas and contemporary art spaces, in France, Europe, Canada, USA. Since 1995 they have developed collaborations with other groups or artists like Nachtluft (Switzerland), Kinobits (France), Loophole Cinema (England), Le Cube (France), la Flibuste (France), Voice Crack (Switzerland). Read more >>

Metamkine will perform at Liquid Architecture, Australia’s premier sound-arts festival. “Liquid Architecture is a sense specific festival, as opposed to art form specific. Occurring annually since 2000, Liquid Architecture celebrates the diverse methods of sound making and sound theory. It is our belief that listening is a vital activity, and one that is often overlooked within the dominance of visual media in our environment.” The fesitival takes place in 3 cities, Sydney (June 28-30), Brisbane (July 6-7), and Melbourne (July 11-14).

The result of this fusion - Islands of Consciousness - is not a simple combination of the two concepts but a great advancement. Sound and Images enter a very close relationship in which the randomly arranged musical phrases are taking direct influence on the visual outcome. So when you look at this piece keep in mind that all the visuals are assembled in realtime using photos downloaded from Flickr.com. All the transitions and effects are entirely random and only happening on you screen. Other people will see a movie and hear a soundtrack that is totally different from yours.

The infinite soundtrack is built upon Oleg Marakov’s idea to run multiple mp3 players parallel in shuffle mode just like musicians playing different instruments. In this case the instruments are not only pianos or synths but also natural atmospheres and sound effects. Islands of Consciousness consists of four parallel layers: Layer one plays synth background pads, layer two is the piano track, layer three holds ambient atmospheres and layer four contains all kinds of different sounds and effects. Just like in a regular composition the sounds vary in length and in fidelity and a very important part is also the space in between the notes - the pauses of different duration. [posted by Luca on Ecopolis]

Related: N. and 90ºS by Andrea Polli (who is currently in Antarctica as well; ANTARKTIKA: a climatic time-travel by Frank Halbig.