Proposal

Concept

 

This proposal is all about Televisions and installation art.  The I plan to create installation is going to involve playing audio signals into the visual inputs of televisions. The reason that it will involve this is because in TVs of a certain vintage this produces lines of static which are actually created by the waveforms of the music. This means you get light that is synced perfectly to the music and completely changeable depending on what audio waveforms are in use and interacting with each other.

 

The general aesthetic idea is to create a darkened space in which the audience can witness the interaction of light as it plays from the televisions and spreads around the room, encountering and interacting with other waves of light produced by different televisions. While the aesthetic is simple, white light produced by the televisions in a otherwise completely dark room, I feel it is within its simplicity that the aesthetic gains much of its strength. Simple aesthetics that an audience can enjoy and connect to are often much more effective than complex and obscure ones. 

The light and sound present in this piece will obviously compliment each other due to the fact that they are inherently linked, as it is actually the sound that is creating the light. However I think it is very important to keep in mind that I am composing primarily for light, and that the sound is just a tool to create this light. This approach changes the work form being an installation with sound to a whole whose primary parts consist of light as it is created by sounds. In this way I hope to explore the interaction of sound as expressed through light.

Inspiration 

This idea came about as a result of my desire to create something tactile that an audience can view and even interact with in an exhibition space. While the digital media degree has taught me many useful skills I sometimes feel a bit depressed that my entire output can essentially be boiled down to a few files on an external hard-drive. With this in mind I sought to create something that would engage an audience while being conceptually interesting. 

I started out with a few naive ideas and a general plan to create an interactive installation. However as all my ideas stemmed from interactivity as a first thought they tended to be conceptually weak, obscure and boring. While I am still interested in interactive art I now think that interaction should not be the core concept of any artwork, rather a concept should involve something that will engage an audience and interaction can be added if it is necessary to the effect. 

I then began to simplify my ideas to that of playing with light, while still maintaining the use of music in order to utilize my skills in this area. Then I came across the fact that audio signals can be used to create static on the screens of televisions. With this in mind it became clear that simplicity was best and in this case interaction was certainly not needed. So the idea became manipulating several different sources of light using audio signals. 

Artists like Carsten Nicolai, who has completed similar works are also an inspiration.