International Journal of Creative Media Research
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109 research outputs found
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Composing With Crystallography
No full textIn 2016, I started a collaborative project with Architects and Crystallographers from Cardiff University to explore creative opportunities within crystallographic data-sets and modelling algorithms. This composition research developed and extended their Leverhulme-funded research which had already commenced. Outputs include music, generative compositions, composition tools, audio-visual work and an installation in Berlin
Piano Dreamscapes Ice-Flow Isolation - A case study in binaural mixing for multi-speaker arrays
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Piano Dreamscapes Ice-Flow Isolation is the third in an ongoing series of works focused on transformations of piano improvisations done by myself, as well as collaborators Simon Henley & Neusha Taherian. Composed in remote collaboration throughout late 2020 and early 2021, the piece explores concepts of isolation through spatialization, granular synthesis & spectral transformations. I investigate the process of creating a piece that is both fulfilling to listen to in binaural as well as large speaker array systems from home, with minimal hardware and largely spatialized using the free SPARTA software, without compromising on the compositional quality or techniques used. I also outline some novel expansions on existing spatialization techniques such as timbre spatialization which arose during the composition process
A Screenshot into the World: A Comparative Analysis of Star Wars Film Posters (1977-2019)
No full textA screenshot into the world. That’s all the film poster allows an audience, showing the fine balance between constructing meaning and grabbing audience attention. This balance is
explored throughout this research, which used the case study of Star Wars and took the form of two stages. On an academic level, it looked into how changes within the industry have resulted in two main variables of alteration, artistic style and composition for today's film posters, resulting in trends and stages of similarities across the traditional and contemporary promotional film landscape. Specifically, this research found that contemporary film posters have become formulaic with film and marketing industries using the same composition (what I term the 'celebrity pyramid') and art style (real images photoshopped) within the large majority of their posters, using the case study of Star Wars to study this change. I argue that this has resulted in audiences becoming less engaged with posters and many wanting posters to go back to the traditional style from the 1970s.
On a second level, and going beyond an academic dissertation, this research undertook industry research into the marketing sector in order to develop the conclusions from the research into a practical and creative set of digital media artefacts beneficial to industry. Specifically, this project aimed to recreate the Star Wars sequel trilogy posters, which many fans saw as uninspired, using the style of traditional posters such as the original Star Wars trilogy. As well as this, I then aimed to explore how this can be pushed into contemporary society, adding moving elements to the posters which would make them stand out. In doing so, and with my academic conclusions asking the question of whether nostalgia impacts the success of posters, with ‘old school’ artwork and style having and greater positive result, this work explores a possible outlet for industry to develop a new trend of film posters, harnessing the possibilities that digital technology and social media have given us
Interrogating Democracy in the Digital Gaze
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I first started to explore the digital gaze in late 2014 through a video project that later expanded into 7 x 2D large photographic images in 2019. This Multi-Piece Portfolio project explores the digital gaze, questions the democracy of Google, and investigates the type of visual registry provided, by asking: Is the digital gaze a Caucasian heterosexual male gaze? Christopher Frayling claims that ‘research through art and design’ is one of three research methods that artists could select in order to perform academic research. I, however, reverse the name of the method from ‘research through art’ to ‘art through research’. Performed in two phases, the first phase of the Digital Gaze project is academic research that is followed by phase two – the artistic expression informed by the first phase, hence the term ‘Art through Research’
Affordances (and Potential Pitfalls) of Documentary as Research: The Creative Process of Australian Screenwriter Jan Sardi
No full textThis article examines the creative process of prominent Australian screenwriter Jan Sardi (Shine, Mao’s Last Dancer, Love’s Brother, Moving Out) through the use of documentary production as a research methodology. The increasing acceptance of creative practice research within the academy has led to increased interest by scholars in the research capabilities, affordances and potential pitfalls of documentary production. I will draw upon my own extensive documentary production experience as well as my recent research in completing a practice-led PhD to offer some observations about the advantages and disadvantages of this form of research. The research adopted a case study methodology to investigate Sardi’s creative process on four feature films, and comprises a 70-minute documentary investigating the prominent Australian screenwriter’s process. The documentary enables Sardi’s own testimony about his creative process to be foregrounded, and includes corroborating data in the form of comments from his collaborators, such as the producers and directors from within his field. Documentary production also enabled the inclusion of the final output of Sardi’s screen work to be investigated through the inclusion of excerpts from the four completed films. This article explores the issues raised by documentary production as research, including the perspective taken by the researcher towards the subject in an overtly subjective stance rather than attempting a more objective point of view. The article also discusses the rationale for the selection of documentary production as a research method for this study, reviews the usefulness of documentary production as a research tool, and offers some conclusions
Saving (and Re-Saving) Videogames: Rethinking Emulation for Preservation, Exhibition and Interpretation
No full textThe rapidly growing number of museums, archives and galleries turning their attentions to videogames reveals both the level of public and scholarly interest in the histories of design and play and, rather more worryingly, that we currently possess extremely limited methods for exhibiting, interpreting and accessing games and gameplay. Strategies based around the collection, maintenance and use of original hardware and software satisfy purists in search of authenticity but are necessarily short-term as technological obsolescence and media deterioration inevitably render systems and games unusable. As such, for most game preservation practitioners, the only viable long-term approaches make use of emulation – that is the creation of new software environments that mimic the operation of obsolete hardware and allow old games to be run on new computing platforms thereby sidestepping the need to keep old systems up and running. However, where most critical commentary on emulation centres on evaluating the accuracy of audiovisual reproduction, here I argue that the fixation with authenticity and the fetishisation of the recreation of the original experience leaves the interpretative potential of emulation untapped. Accordingly, in this article I propose a rethinking of the preservation and interpretation functions of emulation. This approach actively embraces the transformative nature of emulation and makes positive play of the innovative ways in which games and gameplay can be altered. Focusing in particular on the unique affordance of the ‘savestate’ that allows games to be arbitrarily suspended and recalled, this article explores how a reconceptualisation of emulation offers curators, scholars and players methods and tools for interpreting, accessing and navigating gameplay in ways hitherto impossible
X for Methotrexate: Groundedness Filmed from the Rheumatic Body
No full textThis film and statement looks at the different sites involved in the research, development, production and use of the medication Methotrexate. Initially used to treat childhood leukaemia in Boston in the late 1940s, this chemotherapy proved successful in treating autoimmune illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis. After a series of trials conducted by Michael Weinblatt (MD), Methotrexate became the most commonly used medication for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis from 1990s and onward, replacing or substituting alternative treatment forms such as climatic or hydrotherapy. Whereas most countries have ventured away from these alternative therapies, Norway still has a governmental funded programme offering climatic therapy, where patients are sent for rehabilitation in warm climates. Aiming at engaging with the sites that relates to this medication, my research uncovered a series of places from Norway to Boston and Puerto Rico. Based on archival research, oral history, site-visits and film production, my film X for Methotrexate (Andersen, 2019, 16mm, 05:59, produced at the Harvard Film Study Center) addresses the theme Grounded Place by juxtaposing the chronically ill and disabled body’s embodied connection to place, with a global network of pharmaceutical production, experienced and seen from the disabled body
Yr Ogof: Site-Responsive Immersive Composition for Bryn Celli Ddu
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Yr Ogof is a site-responsive composition that was created during an artist residency at the Neolithic site Bryn Celli Ddu on Ynys Mon. It is an ethereal vocal piece that uses movement and spatial ambience to create an otherworldly, canonic and hypnotic choral soundscape that reflects on how voice can connect to the ancient landscape. The choral piece has no words and was influenced by the storytelling-like encounters with archaeologists and previous artist interpretations that In the passing-on of knowledge, these encounters shaped the direction of how as an artist I could respond to the site leading to the creation of three immersive iterations and listening experiences of Yr Ogof; binaural installation and performance at Heuldro Festival (Bryn Celli Ddu) and an ambisonic interaction for Everday is Spatial
Mmabolela – A hybrid approach to working with ambisonics
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From the palm-strewn banks of the Limpopo River to the dark depths of the Hippo Pool, Mmabolela transports the listener through the soundscapes of this remote location in South Africa. A series of interweaving “snapshots” and constructed realities based upon the many recording locations visited during the 2017 Sonic Mmabolela residency transport the listener to this hyper-real time and place. This work has been composed using a combination of stereo and ambisonics A format recordings, requiring a hybrid approach to working with ambisonics. The research statement addresses the aesthetics and workflow behind the composition, including the idea of soundscape composition and environmentalism within the work, recording in ambisonics, workflow and methodology (including a hybrid approach), aesthetic choices (including the idea of hyper-realism), the use of ambisonics to create a portable work that can be decoded to listen to on any loudspeaker system and the power of ambisonics to create an immersive listenin
The Mock Down: Comics and a History of Trust
No full textTaking as a starting point recent political and cultural debates surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-), this graphic research paper explores questions of “trust” as they have appeared in a variety of historical contexts. The concept of trust is a familiar one to psychologists, behavioural economists and political scientists, who have considered its implications within a variety of individual, group and national settings, including in relation to the pandemic. However, as the historian Geoffrey Hosking (2014) has observed (and his points seem to us to remain valid today), there are fewer explicit histories of trust, or efforts to explore the ways in which configurations of trust ebb, flow and/or break across specific historical periods. Rather than attempt any singular expansive history, we are concerned, here, with making a case for the value of practice research and, especially, comics-based research, as a useful method through which to interrogate trust and the various ideas and conflicts that it potentially evokes. As a medium that many scholars argue is especially given to metacommentary – on its own status as a constructed/invented representation, on its “factual” limitations, on the omissions lurking beyond its panels – the comic offers an array of formal and stylistic devices pertinent to those seeking to analyse trust and attendant issues of truth, fabrication, conspiracy and lies. Our article experiments with such devices, suggesting ways in which they allow for the development of visual symmetries, politically charged metaphors and historical connections that offer fresh perspective on, or “a different way of looking” at, this timely phenomenon. Engaging with philosophical writings on the nature of history, our article also contributes to wider debates on the value of creative practice as a form of historical and historiographical research. We provide at the end of the comic extensive explanatory notes and an introduction to our approach, but invite readers to engage with the images and text in ways that allows them to uncover their own interpretations, connections and meanings