Proposition: I intend to make a spatialised piece on the octophonic ring using this Takashi Ito experimental short film as inspiration/content.
Its unique rotating POV and experimental, flashing techniques such as long exposure and stop motion particularly piqued my interest as I thought it lends well to my interest in no-input mixing noise. I intend to try to create sound effects in almost an experimental foley sort of way – playing with the mixer whilst watching the film. Then, as the film features a lot of movement and spinning I thought that would lend well to the new spatialisation techniques (GRM spaces) we have been focusing on in my other chosen module.
Takashi Ito was born in Fukuoka, Japan in 1956 and studied at the Kyushu Institute of Design where he was mentored by experimental director Toshio Matsumoto taking his style of sequential photographs further.
The ghostly and ominous film has no discernable plot but features travel through space (an office block? university? and its outside) and time with rotating projections of a woman’s face and quick beams of light zapping back and forth.
An interesting quote from the image forum’s introduction to Ito, Norio Nishiiima writes:
‘We were also enchanted with the fast speed of “automatic” camera as if it was computerized. The ecstasy of auto-machines which move beyond man’s logic and sensation. And the filmmaker’s desire to “get into” the film instead of possessing it. This ecstasy and the desire are common to all of his films including sequential photograph works as well as his other series such as THUNDER (1982) GHOST (1984) and, GRIM (1985) which are occult experimental “horror” films featuring the technique of bulb shutters and time-lapse photography.’ http://www.imageforum.co.jp/ito/introduction_e.html
I wish to convey this sense of ecstasy through improvisatory techniques and discovery – like a ghost in the mixer. Another theme that feels relevant is circles: I will map the spatialisation on an octophonic ring of monitors; the knobs I turn whilst no input mixing; the feedback cycles that creates the noise; the spinning and rotation featured in the film; and more broadly cycles of life.
Just as his process is experimentation with light “taking up” space through long exposure and projections I will try to think of sound as an almost tangible object.
“Film is capable of presenting unrealistic world as a vivid reality and creating a strange space peculiar to the media. My major intention is to change the ordinary every day life scenes and draw the audience (myself) into a vortex of supernatural illusion by exercising the magic of films.” (Takashi Ito, in Image Forum, Oct.1984) His figure even appears in moments of the film. Through sound I wish to do the same – putting (even surrounding) both myself and the audience in the liminal atmosphere of noise. I intend this process will be a journey of exploring/experimenting within our given limits and my own (individual).