Background

This exposition is spread out over six pages listed below. You can access the chapters from any page using the menu bar that pops up by moving your mouse to, or touching, the top left corner of the screen. Any text that turns red on mouseover is either an internal, or external link. Image and video captions can be viewed by mousing over the material. Non-linearity is at the core of this project: you are invited to browse, scroll, click, watch, and read this exposition in any order you see fit. 

You are currently viewing the Background page, where methodology, research inquiries and general notes on the project are found. The Network is the main web of theories explored through this project, here concepts and tools are also discussed. Mellanrum and Swimmers represents two separate pieces/projects that emerged from the process. A reference list and an appendix containing the raw audiovisual journal for the project is provided. 

¹ Background     ² The Network     ³ Mellanrum    ⁴ Swimmers    ⁵ Reference List    ⁶ Appendix: The Journal

Context

I have had an urge to blur the line between my work with video and my writing of music for some years now. The two mediums have been separate entities within my artistic practice since its early days, and to some extent my practice has always been of audiovisual character. As a teenager I realized I had an interest in rhythm whilst editing skate videos to electronic music, a revelation that not only led me to create music videos and attempt VJ-ing, but also to pursuit digital music production and composition. My video work, mainly filming and editing footage, has since always been carried out in connection to my own, or others music. Despite the connection being present I have inadvertently managed to keep the processes separate, as two parallel ways of working, pursued one after the other, with a bold differentiating line in between. I thought I could arrive at new depths of interconnection following the traces of my bachelor’s thesis in Music and Sound Production, with a focus on Binaural sound for electroacoustic music. I applied to the master program in Experimental Composition and Creation with the ambition to further explore writing and performing music in Ambisonics and other surround sound formats, and I had a vague idea that spatialization could act as compound in me fusing my visual and sounding art.

The final steps of a draw-out album process with my band Post Pines coincided with me entering the Master's degree program. After an intense year of writing, producing, and mixing in my DAW of choice, Ableton Live, I was not that eager to open the arrangement view and get back to work as usual. Instead, I started my master's project with an underused and unexplored tool at my disposal, a small Eurorack modular synthesizer setup. I acquired some secondhand modules and begun experimenting with random control voltages thinking they could be fruitful control signals for spatializing sound sources. The randomness brought life into the modular synthesizer in ways I did not expect. It not only helped me form a modular mindset of sorts, but it also sparked my interest in aleatoric compositional techniques and non-linearities on a general level. Based on the idea to step away from a timeline perspective I was also eager to try some new tools and techniques for handling the visual side of things. I put my camera to the side and left my familiar milieus for editing and animating, Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects and started conducting experiments in the visual programming platform Touchdesigner. I quickly realized how related the workflow was to the modular synthesizer, how concepts and signals could be applied and shared between the two. This both physical and mental connection forged a new path for this project and hinted at a way to arrive at an entangled practice where the connections themselves where at the core.

The project and its purpose

I have stopped writing music and started designing networks*

*This is may sound simplified and dramatic, but the statement nonetheless serves as an emotional backbone to this experience. To be accurate it should include that I have stopped editing filmed footage to music and started designing interconnected audiovisual networks based on generative techniques. This exposition is an attempt to share the journey, material and knowledge that makes me comfortable in making such a statement. It is an artistic research project seeking to blur the line between the process of generating sounding material and the process of generating visual material. It represents my move from writing and performing fixed compositions towards designing and improvising with systems that output open-form pieces in real time. It is a document of an entangled audiovisual practice in progress.

Inquiries:

• How can thinking in systems expand my understanding and use of modular synthesizers and visual programming environments?
• How can my artistic practice benefit from a generative approach?
• How do I relate to my practice in change, in what way is my approach transformed? 

Method

Given my background in video production and the audiovisual nature of this project it seemed appropriate to document the process in video. I decided to keep a video journal, not only as a documentational method, but as a way to craft prototypes and try out techniques. The ethos of my method has been to conduct experiments with new tools based on read theories and other influences, and to document, share, and reflect upon the experiments in and around the audiovisual journal. A spiraling process oscillating between modes with the ambition to gain knowledge about the tools and myself using them.

Definitions of the terms used:

• Experiment - Create models of work, prototypes formed by trial and error. Guided by questions.

• Document- Record the models created. Keep a journal of videos, audio snippets, notes, sketches etc.

• Share - Share all or some of the documents, as they are, or adapted to specific contexts. In conversation with others, presentations etc. (the journal was shared publicly on Youtube)

• Read - Allow external influence - be it texts, theories, conversations, other artworks: anything.

• Reflect – Reflect on all the above, and everything in between. In speech, in text, in documenting, in experiments. Reflect from within, reflect with the help of the read and created.

Enter the network

General notes:

≡ I consistently use the words system and network as synonyms. 

≈ The theories presented are discussed from my perspective, as artistic interpretations of phenomena of varying complexity.

¬ Although specific at times, I try to leave the technical solutions at a minimum in favour of a wider conceptual discussion/presentation. Please do contact me if you have any questions: julius.norrbom@gmail.com