Perspective can mean a way of viewing or understanding a situation and/or relationship between things, whether physical, cultural or environmental. We can use shifting viewpoints, angles and directions to alter, augment or force a perspective, to change the way we understand a narrative or theme.
Perspective, then, is a way of observing, capturing, recording and representing (and re-presenting) people, places and things, perhaps tracing a series of lines through the city in sound and image, which are translated into audio-visual stories of journey, motion/movement and narrative.
How can digital media be used to offer and reveal fresh perspectives on the city through audio-visual projection, performance, prose, patterns? What kinds of media, practices and locations might you use?
What does each of these things ask in terms of different kinds of disciplinary skills of interpretation, translation, representation and expression? What can creative technologies and add or afford in terms of visuals and sound, incorporating hybrid physical and digital components and modalities in extended ways, weaving in people, places and things.
What assumptions do we carry about perspective and place, whether public or private? What is the relationship between observing, capturing and presenting narratives of the city through sound and image? How does it differ for the creators and an audience. Do any of these take primacy over the other and in what situations? How could that be accentuated, subverted or combined?
If we were to cease thinking about sound as sound and image as image and devise work that was genuinely audio-visual how would we dissolve the disciplinary boundaries of those involved and what would we gain, expressively, aesthetically and conceptually by learning to talk and act as an audio-visual collaborative.
This project aims to push its participants to seriously explore and experiment with perspective as a research based and research led practice, to investigate the creative and expressive potential of different forms of media applied to diverse subject matter and motivations, and to learn about issues relating to perspective.
One way to approach this is through found spatial sound, field recording, and still and moving images using acoustic, electronic, physical and digital sources.
Where do we go from here?
What you will learn on this project:
- To work collaboratively to produce a digital media perspectives
- To examine the experimental potential of digital media in performative ways
- To develop integrated audio-visual media and practices for public presentation
- To develop ways to think critically about issues relating to perspective
Suggested submission forms and formats:
- a carefully planned series of short audio-visual studies prepared by the group
- a set of new ‘perspectives’ whether physical, digital, sonic or visual
- a longer performance or installation that integrates a range of media and practices
- a documentary of a performance or installation and its development
Suggested reading, resources and examples:
- A Night Walk for Edinburgh – Janet Cardiff and George Bures-Miller
- Kits Beach Soundwalk – Hildergaard Westerkamp (and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg96nU6ltLk)
- Kolber D. Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk: shifting perspectives in real world music. Organised Sound. 2002;7(1):41-43. doi:10.1017/S1355771802001061
- Inside the Circle of Fire – Chris Watson
- Rich, J. S. (2017) – Sounding out the pastoral landscape in Chris Watson’s Inside the Circle of Fire: A Sheffield Sound Map. Cultural geographies. [Online] 24 (3), 403–419
- Findlay-Walsh, I. (2019) Hearing How It Feels to Listen: Perception, embodiment and first-person field recording. Organised sound : an international journal of music technology. [Online] 24 (1), 30–40.
