‘He adopts a “flat” medium, but displays a flurry of lights to seemingly expand it into the third dimension.’ (https://artelectronicmedia.com/en/artwork/thunder/) – This quote represents my thinking behind why I chose this film to make a spatialised sound piece to. His awareness of space and how he uses photography and light to in his artistic process is mesmerising.
Having bounced the arranged tracks from reaper I imported them into the Protools preset for spatialisation, ready to use GRM. As I didn’t have much time due to the fact I kept stressing and overthinking instead of getting to the important I again embraced random discovery. Using the touch/latch automation mode, I watched the particular section of the film with which I had paired with my recording. And soloing that track, I click and dragged, fiddled with settings on grm performing the automation of spatialisation. I did this for certain short clips with distinctive popping or buzzing sounds rather than the prolonged bubbling beneath-the-surface stuff. As they were stereo tracks I played with the orientation as well as the spread, size, left/right, up/down so that the objects moved naturally and vaguely like what was happening on screen. I resisted my initial attempts to mimic the movements exactly so as to avoid cliché and a mickey mousing feeling.
A difficulty I encountered was literally thinking of sound in space or like an object that can move. I think I am too used to experiencing recorded music and sound through headphones or worse my phone, that I have lost touch with the experience of listening in a space. The sensation of music being played aloud and filling a room or covering a specific area you are in. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I love live gigs so much. This importance is only more highlighted when working with surround and spatial arrangements. Not just in terms of immersion, but adding another level to sound works. The directionality of being amongst the music, occupying the same space rather than it going straight into your ears or coming from a single source.
In the mubi article ‘Ghosts of Time and Light’, Yaron Dahan writes that in his films Ito reinvents the spectacle of space and I hope to have done with sound even an bit of what he achieved with moving image.
