Portrait of Strokes · posted by vaibhav bhawsar Oct 22, 2007

Portrait of Strokes

Initiative
What is a character? Is a character always anthropomorphic or can it be something else? We set out to investigate the very basic forms, such as the sound made while writing, and the most reduced form that can be to be recognized as a character. Does it have to be expressive? How can generative forms help?

Description
Portrait of strokes is a project where we attempt to make aural
multi-layered compositions using pen strokes as they are drawn on
paper. Two people sketch glyphs and in the process record the sound the marker/pen makes using a microphone. The sound made by drawing each glyph is recorded as an individual sound sample which is then layered with previously recorded glyph samples.

In our initial explorations we discovered that drawing the glyph with a certain gesture (of stroke) we could produce a variety of sounds and tones. For example drawing dots produced a staccato sound whereas drawing curves produced a much more continuous sound. By layering such characteristics sounds produced by different strokes, we were able to produce interesting progressions and rhythms (with almost jazz-like quality).

We were interested in constructing something larger through repetition of smaller discrete elements. To us, doing this illustrated the idea of building a character- a process that involves iterations in form of editing, removal and addition of elements that eventually give characteristics (make the character). The initial idea was to explore how hand drawn typographical characters/alphabets translate to unique sounds and compositions. We expanded this idea to further include abstract shapes and strokes because it gave us the freedom to explore and construct a larger gamut of sounds and glyphs.

Throughout the project we found it hard to locate the ‘character’ of/within a piece. The piece as a whole was somewhat non-deterministic compared to individual discrete sounds of strokes. We discovered that each recording/improvisation we experimented with had varying qualities. We have realized that it is now important to define a language that establishes the relationship between a stroke and a shape/glyph. Doing this will help us create a framework to help us improvise and perform.

What we consider as an interesting residue were the left over pen
drawings- glyphs/strokes. We weren’t sure what to do with sheets of paper. They did represent the process in discrete steps and served as manuscript of the composition/performance. We feel these could have been a much more important part of the performance had we used larger surface (like a whiteboard) to draw.

Feedback from Class Critique

- This was an interesting framework for further exploring gestures, drawings and sound.

- It’s interesting because our building blocks are naturaly produced sounds of a stroke vs a computationally synthesized sound.

- It will help to define more shapes, elements or drawings that reflect a certain sound quality. Instead of making the composition abstract, we could consider giving performance that actually portrays a particular sound: ie: rain, birds in a forest, autumn etc.

tags: isco, play