Sound Art, Final Project

For my final project in Sound Art class, I plan to further refine the soundtrack within an ongoing video project titled Content in Context. This is a collection of interviews that ask Chicago women to discuss their values, happiness, and life stories. The visual element guiding each spoken narrative is made up of a sequence of contour line drawings that animate the woman herself in a number of portraits, along with supplementary imagery placed to coincide with and further describe the storyline as interpreted by me, the artist.

On a technical level, I have recorded these subjects using either a zoom microphone or hand held camera in a variety of spaces. Due to these variables, the resulting audio tracks need to be edited so the speaker is clearly heard and the background noise is limited. I will revise each track in Audacity, pulling down the peaks, equalizing, and lastly normalizing the content to optimize the raw recording as much as possible. In the end, the volume will be consistent from one track to the next and will be complemented by individualized musical compositions that relate to characteristics of the female subject and her intimate accounts. More specifically, I will devise a short song or jingle for each video that will periodically play below the speaker, at the beginning and end of the track, and, when necessary, above the speaker to disguise any inaudible content or unwanted noises that were recorded.

These songs will be created in Reason and is intended to further communicate the personality and thoughts of the speaker. Because I have already made and applied a medley to one audio interview, I have established a process of using a keyboard to play notes, manipulating and repeating the short recording, and lastly, adding in a few more instruments or chords to give the score more depth. The collection of songs will be similar to one another because I plan to use this first composition as a template for the others, attempting to recreate it using sounds that symbolize the different subjects, or interviewees. The instruments will be chosen based on the content of their stories, heritage, and emotional state. The most effective way to execute the layering and editing process for the spoken word track to coincide with reason soundtrack and animation sequence is to work in Final Cut Pro. This will allow for conscious coordination between all the elements in the video.

The final product of this piece will be unified through repetition in the visual elements and through editing the audio to play consistent levels of volume, placement of music, and clear vocal recordings. I will sequence the interview videos one after another, as chapters, following an introductory video that I have already devised with the first of my Reason soundtracks. If time allows in my website development, I will also post the interviews to view online and give the viewer an opportunity of post their own thoughts and stories on the site.