Darkroom Sound-Design?

A friend of mine is hosting a presentation of some kind of experimental art-porno-project at art school, and a sort of after-show party as well. I was recruited as DJ for the dancefloor-section of the party a while ago and naturally said I was gonna do it.

 

Today I learned he's got some pretty messed up stuff in mind for the party (which the school doesn't know about), supposedly there's gonna be some "performances", a girl painting with the brush up her ass or something (seriously!) He also wants to have a darkroom and wants me to improvise some kind of sound design for that room, too!

 

I gotta come up with something. Can't have a silent darkroom, but I wouldn't know what kind of music to play in there either - Any ideas?

 

 

I'm not joking.

lol, that is some ridiculous performance art. I'm not surprised by it either though. in art if you lack talent, sensationalism and shock value are your friends

 

you should just make some weird minimal dark ambient. check out robert henke's sound installations for inspiration maybe?

A 5.1 noisy performance kinda like the ae+hafler trio stuff (but maybe not so minimal) would be awesome.

just paulstretch a fart or something. they'll love it

Dark Ambient was something I had in mind, actually. I was thinking about pretty much just looping Metastatic Resonance by Lustmord.

 

I just realized I've never even heard the ae+hafler trio thing!

How about some Dub Techno? Certainly would be MY kind of thing, but I dunno about the rest of the world ...

 

 

 

 

 

Just play tim hecker paulstretched and reversed.

 

If you really wanna go Po-Mo, have the turntables control you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdO9orWQ-Nk

have you got a half decent field mike? Record loads of street sounds and stuff while walking around at night. Give people the perception that they are walking through a dark city or something. And add loads of noise at random intervals to really shit people up. Sounds like a fun project let us know how it goes

I've got a Zoom H2n which is pretty fantastic, I made some city-at-night recordings already. There's surely loads of stuff that can be done in a dark room, however, I'm not sure something like this will work for the sake of a traditional >darkroom<. Won't that just make people freak out instead of ... getting busy?

paulstretch some porn

If you wanna get really artsy you should do some sonic time layering of that very room.

  On 4/7/2013 at 1:24 PM, feltcher said:

paulstretch some porn

 

Actually, this would be perfect. Just slow enough to not be too obvious, but also not too slow so people won't understand what it is. If you want music as well, this should go in the background anyway.

How about Hafler Trio's Masturbatorium and Fuck 'albums' (I'd class them more as singles given the running time). Arty, sexually fuelled. Perfick !

  On 4/7/2013 at 1:35 PM, Squee said:

If you wanna get really artsy you should do some sonic time layering of that very room.

 

Sample the audience and play it back to them all glitched up and shizzle?

  On 4/7/2013 at 8:14 PM, feltcher said:

 

  On 4/7/2013 at 1:35 PM, Squee said:

If you wanna get really artsy you should do some sonic time layering of that very room.

 

Sample the audience and play it back to them all glitched up and shizzle?

 

Well, he could do that. But I was just thinking about amplifying the room tone of the room. Record the sound of the room, then play that recording in the same room and record that, and so on and so on.

  On 4/7/2013 at 8:17 PM, Squee said:

 

  On 4/7/2013 at 8:14 PM, feltcher said:

 

  On 4/7/2013 at 1:35 PM, Squee said:

If you wanna get really artsy you should do some sonic time layering of that very room.

 

Sample the audience and play it back to them all glitched up and shizzle?

 

Well, he could do that. But I was just thinking about amplifying the room tone of the room. Record the sound of the room, then play that recording in the same room and record that, and so on and so on.

That's a good idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jU9mJbJsQ8

Edited April 8, 2013 by Joseph

  On 4/7/2013 at 8:17 PM, Squee said:

I was just thinking about amplifying the room tone of the room. Record the sound of the room, then play that recording in the same room and record that, and so on and so on.

There's an awesome album (4 rooms) by Jacob Kirkegaard where he does just that, visitng four rooms in the 'Zone of Alienation' in Chernobyl. He recorded the room then played that back in the same room, recorded that etc. etc. about a half dozen times. Here's one in a swimming pool -

 

  On 4/8/2013 at 2:43 PM, mcbpete said:

 

  On 4/7/2013 at 8:17 PM, Squee said:

I was just thinking about amplifying the room tone of the room. Record the sound of the room, then play that recording in the same room and record that, and so on and so on.

There's an awesome album (4 rooms) by Jacob Kirkegaard where he does just that by visitng four rooms in the 'Zone of Alienation' in Chernobyl that he's recorded, played back in the room, recorded that etc. etc. . Here's one in a swimming pool -

 

 

Yeah, that's where I got the idea from :)

Whoops, didn't check my own thread until now.

 

First of all, what does >paulstretch< mean? Like time-stretching without affecting the pitch?

 

Second of all, these are some neat ideas! I don't have enough time to do some amazing experiment as I've already got the mix, a video and the lighting to do and the party is going down Friday.

Porn-Samples are a good idea, they'd need to subtly merge into the music somehow and not be too blatantly coming from speakers... perhaps I could take some moans and kill all high and middle frequencies. Will try that.

 

That re-recording thing is interesting. Will it sound different depending on the room or is it just the sound system?

Paulstretch is just a program that is able to stretch audio insanely well. Back when it came out people would timestretch Justin Bieber and turn his music into beautiful ambient.

 

Not sure what you're asking about about the sonic time layering?

Don't record the room/people and play it back. It's been done to death.

 

Just play dub techno like you planned, in my experience most people's affinity for interesting visual/performance art doesn't transfer to music.

 

edit: plus dub techno owns anyway

Edited April 8, 2013 by zkreso

Yeah Squee I was asking about the sonic time layering - would it sound different in every room, due to the shape of that very room? Even if I use the same exact sample and sound system?

 

So that's where these Bieber ambient pieces came from ... Is Paulstretch freeware? Also, how does it work so well?

 

My list of Darkroom-tracks so far:

 

Ohrwert - Converse (Segue Dos Remix)
Ohrwert - Übertragene Anwählungen (Teil Eins)
Fluxion - Fovea Centralis
Fluxion - Outerside
Fluxion - Aviation
Plastikman - Contain
Plastikman - In Side

 

I'm open to some Dub Techno recommendations!

Yeah it's freeware (well Donationware - http://hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch/ ). It works using granular synthesis, to put it in the most simple terms it breaks down the sound into tiny little (as in millisecond) 'particles' and repeats little blocks of those particles for the extreme time stretching.

  On 4/8/2013 at 4:48 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

Yeah Squee I was asking about the sonic time layering - would it sound different in every room, due to the shape of that very room? Even if I use the same exact sample and sound system?

 

Yeah, I guess... kinda... since the recording will end up as one long drone, and there will most likely be frequencies in that drone that will resonate and sound fucked depending on the shape and size of the room.

But if you have time for it and if you think this would be an interesting idea, you should record the roomtone from the darkroom and play and record that in the same darkroom for maximum effect.

That'd be cool but won't that just get people nauseous pretty much?

 

About Paulstretch - it says I can download the sourcecode, that's nice but what do I do with it? I was expecting like a small exe-file or something