1 Becoming...
MARY ELLEN BUTE For this project we were researching Mary Ellen Bute. Bute was an experimental filmmaker and animator, specialising in ‘visual music’, whoes work was most prominent between the 1930s and 50s. To start this project we all first became familiar with her work and her practices. My initial impression of her and her work was that she was really ahead of its time. Much of her work seems like it could have been made decades after it actually was. I believe this is because she was an early new media artist, experimenting with new technologies of the time. I think it was also due to the way she mixed different medias and techniques to create her visuals. Mary Ellen Bute used many different effects and techniques in her films and animation to create her unique visuals. From my research I found that one common way she would create her abstract shapes were through various lighting and shadow effects, these were sometimes overlaid with traditional animation or painting.
2 Becoming...
For the group project we decided to make our own experimental film. We wanted to include animations inspired by the techniques used by Mary Ellen Bute, but also include more current New Media techniques. Once we had decide what we were going to make, we all did some experimental animations and videos ourselves. We then came back as a group to give each other some feedback on what we had created and to further develop ideas. Although the deadline for this part of the project was quite tight, in hindsight, it would have also been a good idea to create some experiments as a group, rather than solely as individuals. It was still a collaborative project, but it would have been interesting to see what we produced together, as it might have added more to out outcome. I think overall it was a fairly good outcome, however, it could have been much improved and more accurate to our initial intention. For example, for the 2D animation, I wanted to try more paper cutout animation, or tradition frame by frame animation. Unfortunately, due to quite a tight deadline, this wasn’t possible. Also - again if we had more time - it would have be good for us to include more experiments that use new media techniques. We did, of course, use computer animation, but maybe some experiments that pushed the idea further would have produced a more interesting and unique outcome.
3 Becoming...
SHAPE & SOUND For the individual part of this project, I decided to take part of what Mary Ellen Bute was exploring with her work, ‘Visual Music’ and create something more linked with modern new media techniques. It was a similar idea to what we were looking at with the group project, but taken a lot further in terms of putting her work in a new media context. Rather than creating an animation or film inspired by the music (like Bute’s work), however, I wanted to look more at the relationship between shapes and sounds. My idea was to create a projection mapping piece that could interact with different surroundings, creating something visual and audible based on the environment. For my final piece of this project, I think I can fairly close to what I was aiming for but there were somethings I had hoped to include which would have made the interaction between shape and sound more interesting. Where it’s at, at the moment, is more of a working prototype, which is mainly due to my basic Processing skills. For example, I wanted the sound to be more diverse and more based on the surroundings (like base the pitch on the size of the object it is interacting as one idea). Currently I’ve only got 1-2 different sounds working together. I plan on working on this project further, so I think my next step will be trying to work out how to assign a different sound to each object (rather than the same sound on every object that it is currently), so that the interaction with the environment is more interesting.
4 Becoming...