FULL-BODY MUSIC MAKER


ARTIST STATEMENT:


The Full-body music maker is an interactive tool to fill the gap between dancing and song making. It subtly encourages group participation in order to foster the collaboration of different styles and beats of music as if to create a song as unique as the people who make it. A simple square and circle arrangement acts as a visual aid to guide you, through the medium of light from a projector. With this medium the body is unimpeded from moving in anyway it's owner commands and can go to different octaves and pitches as will. The best part of the Full-body music maker is the active participation the audience has with the work. Although I have made and arranged the sound without the audience the art does not exist.

More Development

Press Release:

Memphis College of Art and the Cinema 7 present ENTER=ACTIVE, an evening of bottomless play for both artists and non-artists. Come experience these visually stunning works on May 5th anytime between 8 and 10 pm. Featuring work by Kaitlyn Chandler, Stephen Harris, Jorge Soto and Amanda Willoughby; this will be an unmissable, unreproducible event. All of the games, music, lights and labyrinths are free and open to the public, come join us for 2 hours of your life that will be unlike any other.

Forgot to post this:

The Night Test:

Rehema Barber: Artist Lecture

This was a pretty interesting lecture, and I'm glad I went. Rehema Barber (I may have spelled her name wrong) is faculty at MCA teaching art history. This lecture was about a grant/program she was given to go and experience Japanese contemporary art. It was on the whole a little bit long but also not rigid and stoic like  many lectures are.


She first went over a piece by Kenji Yanobe, called "Sun Child" This one really caught my eye out of a lot of the art she showed:

This is a reactionary piece against the earthquake that really devastated parts of Japan recently, which she talked about saying: "The earthquake changed the way artists framed their work" Which was interesting to me- art reacting to the climate and enviroment that it is produced in. What if we did this and made art that sucked up CO2 fumes?


Another thing that caught my eye was a permanent work at the 21st century museum in Kanazawa:

The architecture of the muesum itself is a work of art- it's basically all windows except for the inner room and is open and free to the public except for the galleries inside. It's really enforcing a sense of community and allowing anyone to enter from all sides. But this work really interested me:

 Leandro Erlich

It's really surreal and interactive to me- basically a pane of glass slices the top of the pool and between the pane is water that is circulated. This level of simplicity and yet interactivity and surrealism is really genius. 

Another standout piece is this jazz musician who wanted to meld art and music- so he played a piano that was on fire;

Yosuke Yamashita

He's done this before but the video he did before of it was in very bad quality. He succeeded in playing the piano as long as possible until the strings melted and no sound could be played- even at the expense his own health.

Layout Design

DANCE-SONG Space

Blurry Crappy Photo:

Concept Development

Twister Concept:

At the beginning of the semester I talked about wanting to create a visual and aural beat machine. I think this would be a perfect opportunity to do this as well. Just like in my twister concept there would be a number of circles (colored this time) and would behave exactly like the demonstration Jill showed us that one time only this plays a looped beat that would repeat. Starting with the first circle that would be closest to the sidewalk it would be very simple but you can move from circle to circle and the beat would play and you could stretch out so you could play more at once if you wanted. There would be an animation for each circle that triggered when you were on it as well so it was apparent you were triggering it.

There will be a few synths and chords as well to make it more interesting.

This game would ideally be best played however with multiple people to trigger the space and make a more interesting sound. It will hopefully encourage people to communicate with one another. to play a game to make music in their own different ways.

Key Emotions:
Fun
Interesting
Interactive and participatory

Theme Premise:
Music/Sound
Encouraging meeting new people
Team-oriented
Physicality

Face Concept:

A while ago I came across a fact that really interested me while reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. The fact is that while we can see other people we cannot see ourselves and thus our perception of what we look like is skewed and usually cartoony. On the other hand we can always see other people so we usually draw them as accurately as possible.

So what I want to do is ask people to draw themselves on the tablet, and when they finish ask them to stand in front of the projection so the audience can see the differences and similarities, this could not be done with a simple caricature on paper. To make it even more fun I think having two people draw each other and then go in front of the projector to see the differences would be interesting.

In order to make people more comfortable with using the tablet I think I may put a piece of paper over it and tape it there.

Key emotions:
Comical
Funny
Interesting

Theme/Premise:
Our Perception of ourselves
Self-Reflection
Interactive and Viewer-generated

I'll take this image down after tomorrow.

Concepts

My concept so far is that I know I want to be mobile, but if possible I want to create a project that could be stationery as well and still be awesome. Here are some things that have inspired me over the break for my ideas:





This has probably been influenced by all the science-fiction novels I've been reading over the break probably.

CONCEPT I:

When I was trying to think of a way to get adults to act like children what I immediately thought of is adding a game element. So what I want to do is have an adults TWISTER on the lawn in the back of Rust Hall and project down on the grass to do so. Instead of people being told which color to put their body parts on they can choose whichever and when they put their body part on it- it becomes activated and whoever has activated the most colored circles wins.


CONCEPT II:

 This may or may not need kinect- but my idea is to give someone a 3-D hologram caricature of themselves from the chest up. I think drawing is really cool and I can do it really fast so I really like this idea. the only problem is of course people have to keep their eyes closed so I'm thinking maybe have them wear sunglasses. Of course I can always draw there eyes open. Omit the ending where a bunch of balls come from like nowhere.



CONCEPT III:

Put the audience/user into an alien enviroment using the kinect.

I want the audience to feel whimsy and actively feel like they are being placed in this world. by using the kinect to shadow their figure into a science-fiction like landscape that scrolls. There silhouetted figure is equipped with a flashlight and a jetpack that really drives the fact that they are adventuring into this different place.

I believe this is possible as long as we can get the same "shadowing effect that is present here: