Tag: collab

Initially, this collaboration unit intimidated me. To find a collaborator, I felt like I would have to do so in an inorganic way by finding somebody online without having any prior sense of them as a person or artist, as well as the demands of the other assessment and my entertaining multiple ideas indecisviely I was quite sure that I would reach the deadline without any work to show. However, working on this project has been a privilege, and I feel that I have learned a great deal about the potential of allowing another person into your creative space and the possibilities that open up when everyone involved is willing to take the same risk and share the same stake in what is happening. It is easy to doubt your own creative intuition and sense of what your work is and its true quality, but in collaboration, the process of submitting to what a piece of work wants to be is mirrored in your collaborators, and this can be incredibly affirming and exciting. I feel that this collaboration will serve as an important point of reference moving forward in my practice and a testament to faith, uncertainty, and risk-taking within it.

The video has been finished, and we have decided to name the song Holy Motor instead of its original name, Seedless Core. There was no real motive behind the naming other than it sounded cool and carried a weight that felt appropriate to the song’s feeling. The video to me has the perfect balance of being raw, reckless, and still full of intention and care. The editing process occurred much like composing the song, which was fast, intuitive, and spontaneous. This is definitely one of the pieces of work I have been most excited by in recent years, and is one of those times where you can’t really believe you were involved in the work that you created. I am not sure what will happen with the video or song now that it has been completed, but I am sure the answer will reveal itself the same way the process of making it did.

Editing has been an altogether smooth process, with my collaborator handling the bulk of the editing, as he has significantly more experience. However, we have worked together in the same room, making decisions. Editing did not require any complicated techniques and was a simple process of finding the right time to cut between shots, allowing the video to flow seamlessly as one continuous cut. This was usually done by finding the pocket in a scene where the lights are blacked out while they are strobing and stitching it with the beginning of another scene where it is equally as dark or the camera is obscured by something. We also decided to use lower-framerate clips with a lower opacity over certain shots in the video to make it more disorienting and give a subtle nod to Wong Kar Wai’s style of filmmaking techniques.

Clips of the footage while editing

The process of filming ended up equally as exciting and immediate as the composition of the track, which feels fitting and, to me, further emphasizes how special this piece really is. The most notable part of filming was just how similar it was to performing, actually almost identical. We established the space in the same way we would for a show, using lights connected with a direct DMX connection to our laptops and with only a couple hours of time in the space, we shot without any real plan and did not pause to reflect on what we were doingDespite there being virtually no audience, the feelings that would come up and the nearly transcendental manic headspace I would fall into were the same as when playing shows. Despite ippaida’s lack of experience filming live video, the footage left us in shock at just how visceral it looked. It was exciting to have the cameraman feel like a performer as well, as I would watch them duck and leap across the room and even roll around the floor. This seemed to give the footage a feeling of being a pov experience, attending one of our performances.

Footage of the space after installing the lighting and sound.

The idea for the video is simple. We will both perform in the space exactly how we would perform in our shows, but together and only for the camera. As we both have experience doing lighting for our own shows, we have created a lighting patch that we will install in the space and have enlisted our friend ippaida storage, who does vj work and 3D graphics for music events and other experimental artworks. Our two biggest references that we have discussed are the beach invasion scene from Saving Private Ryan, which serves as a reference for the level of chaos we aim to capture through its cinematography.

Our other main point of reference for the colors and editing is Wong Kar Wai’s use of low framerate and overlayed images in many of his films, like In the Mood for Love. We talked about this, adding an additional level of disorientation to the image as well as a sense of liminality, seeing bodies in motion overlayed each other to become this mutant and dynamic image.

While we don’t have much of a plan beyond that I believe that might add to this video, as I would like the performance within it to be as raw and vulnerable as possible.

Collaboration within music often feels high-stakes and extremely vulnerable. There is a select roster of artists I have been fortunate enough to have met and discovered, with whom we share similar values regarding music and how we should think, act, and create, so that our work can serve as statements on where we believe culture should move next. There is always an anxiety and risk associated with creative dissonance, such as when a studio session ends with one artist feeling really excited and another feeling unsatisfied with the work, thinking it could be more than it is. The stakes are high as each piece of work created with energy and intention impacts our journeys as artists and the relationship we have with our art and the act of making itself. Working on this track has been one of the rare instances where I’ve experienced an effortless flow of creativity and energy exchange in my years of making music. Amongst all the stakes, it felt like every decision we made was in service and submission of the music and the feelings they provoked, which guided us until its completion. We plan to shoot a video for it in a couple of days. As sound is the core of my practice, I believe that this video will fulfill the criteria for interdisciplinary work for this assessment and, more importantly, will complete a process that still feels unfinished at present. As both of our practices involve performance art and a strong inclination for visual direction, it feels only right to take another risk and attempt the creation of this video in order to see the idea through to the end.

As most of my collaborations within my own practice happen online, the process of finishing and polishing this song in person was very refreshing. I feel that while online collaborations can produce good work, being able to work in the same room and make decisions that don’t require much verbal communication, instead relying on reading the energy from both people in the physical space, makes the process feel a lot more immediate, intimate, and raw. It did not take much to finalize the track after recording. After we placed the vocals over the instrumental, it was enough for us to pause and just soak in what we were creating. The vocals would naturally hit and bring out details that we had not even noticed in the track beforehand, and intuitively making quick edits to the sounds to help bring out the character in the vocals and make things hit harder was a seamless process. It felt like many elements of this track happened by accident. Even the last part which is the entire song chopped and resampled at a ridiculously fast rate, was the result of a joke that grew into a crazy ending for the track. I will link a demo of the track below.

The recording process of this song was incredibly intense. When I first heard the instrumental, albeit a very unfinished version, I wasn’t particularly moved or inspired, but I definitely thought it was interesting. However, when I brought it to record, it brought out very raw and visceral feelings in me, and I feel that my vocal performance was even more intense than usual. As this track has no real drums or rhythm, I thought it allowed me to tap into my own vocal style more closely, aligning it with the source of what I am always trying to achieve. As I take a lot of inspiration from punk, hardcore, and noise music, I always try to deliver vocals in af free-form manner that adds new layers of interpretation to preexisting rhythmic elements and compositional decisions in production. Having almost no rhythm or notable structure in this track gave me total freedom to create structure through my vocal delivery and pacing. I felt that the vocals actually give what would otherwise feel like a sound design session a feeling closer to a full song.

I have begun working on a song with my friend Ryan, which has considerable potential. If I can somehow turn this into an interdisciplinary or multimedia piece of work, that would be ideal, as collaboration is the thing that is most artistically inspiring to me right now. But as it stands, it’s just a file on his laptop. However, it is the most exciting collaboration happening right now, so I will begin writing about it in my process blogs, regardless of the result. This song started after a decision to create music together, sparked by a conversation we had in a club the other weekend. Ryan’s music has a highly experimental edge, and I consider him at the forefront of experimental sound design techniques in electronic music. While he has created one club-type loop that we could potentially develop, the most exciting aspect to me is the demo he has created using Ableton’s vocoder. The vocoder has an external setting that can be used to play a secondary sample’s harmonic content through the attack of another sample, like a drum loop. He has used a paul stretched vocal pad playing through exponential rhythmic kick drums that make it feel granulated and very free flowing. Doing the same thing with the bass gives it a very dynamic feeling, with all the elements being hard to trace in the mix. I will try recording on it soon.

I am still unsure as to what I would like to do for this collaboration unit. The idea I have proposed in class is to create an immersive game experience around the EP I am making with my friend and artist ALPARR. As he studies game design at university, I thought this could potentially be an exciting way to add an extra element of immersion with our music, and release our EP through USBs that have the feeling of cursed media. If the game evokes a sense of being a stray file accidentally left on a USB, then it could further immerse our audience in a way that is interactive and transcends the linear domain of listening to music digitally. However, I am not sure whether this is realistic due to time constraints and the amount of work it would require. Otherwise, I would ideally like to work with video or film in some way that centers around my practice. I am not sure who I could do this with, but I will work lightly with multiple people in a casual manner until I feel like a particular project has potential.