—Music Piece—
In the researching processes, I got myself three music pieces.
Actium-I need you
This is a really immersive and calming piece, making me feel like everything around me stays still during the period of the piece. I can also feel the flow and passage of time from it. Even though several sections of this piece uses a strong drum beat and a faster tempo, it does not change the tone of this music in my vision, but gives me a feeling of tranquility in the trembling. At the same time, the track makes full use of the dual voice function, making me feel as if something is passing through my body.
刘雨昕-飓《XANADU》Due to copyright issues, the audio cannot be downloaded 💡click here💡
It is the third piece in Xin Liu’s recent album 《XANADU》, in which she made a combination of Ethnic elements, especially minority music from Guizhou region（where she comes from）and pop music elements. In this song, she mainly uses elements of Miao flying songs（苗族飞歌） and combines them with hiphop style. In terms of the singing format, she engages melodic rap, lyrical trap and lyrical melodic vocal singing. As a dance song, in the 🎞 music video 🎞, she mainly uses the krump in street dance to enhance the output of power in the music. The song uses multiple layers of emotion and background instruments, allowing me to feel the perfect combination of an outburst of oppressive power and a loud and clear output of Xin’s love for Miao’s culture as well as her passion for underground street dancing.
高橋英明 teamLab-追われるカラス、追うカラスも追われるカラス (Crows Are Chased and the Chasing Crows Are Destined to Be Chased as Well)This is a piece of background music of an installation called “Crows are Chased and the Chasing Crows are Destined to be Chased as well, Transcending Space” from TeamLab Borderless. I finally chose this piece for my project. When listening to it, I can feel the whole flow of music going smoothly before my eyes. The right combination of grand and hard feeling and crisp and light flow gives me a feeling of opposition and harmony.
—Project—
—Design & Concept—
- Background
As I mentioned above, the music in general gives me a feeling of opposition but harmony, so I wanted to reflect this opposition in the background of the picture. At the same time, in order to express the “blurring” of the border, because even though I divided the music into three parts, I still think the three parts are not separated, but there is a detached but close connection between them, so I added different thicknesses of black “lines” on the edge of the black and white to express this continuity and connection. The straight background border and the soft, organic upper layer represent the “tougher” elements of the musical background, such as gongs and drums, and the flowing rhythm respectively. All the background design were completed with the letter “I” in Futura Bold. In the first version, I placed them horizontally, which made the picture look a bit stiff, so I adapted Prof.Chen’s suggestions and arranged them diagonally to add to the dynamic. The thinner lines also follow the diagonal placement rule, but in the opposite direction to the larger background, which is also a reflection of conflict – it conflicts with both parts it connects, but acts as a bridge and a link to weaken the conflict and make the picture more harmonious. - Part I
The focus of this section is on the “O” stacked on top of each other in the center of the picture. I called this piece “Endless Abyss” because in the first part of the music（～1:07）, I felt ethereal, as if I was in the middle of a huge swirling black cave, the thick dry dust on the ground shining in the sunlight from the distant dome, and when I looked up, I could not see the end of the cave and the source of the sunlight.Then, the dimension of music increased instantly, the silence of the cave was suddenly broken, in my mind, as if the top of the cave was smashed out of a hole, a large amount of sunlight scattered and moved quickly, while I was still standing in the center, the vines on the cave wall fell and stretched, swaying with the sunlight and entwined with each other, giving me a sense of vertigo rich in change and vitality. I used the letter “l” in the flower style to express this feeling by interlocking and twisting the letter “l” in the flower style. In this perspective, the abyss made of O becomes the “source of life”, where all the vines and connections originate. - Part II
In this section, I wanted to express the crisp sound of bells in the middle part of the music (1:08~3:08) under the continuing melody, which gave me a feeling of flowers blooming on the vine, so in this section, I used a more descriptive way to show the blossom. In this part，I used the letter “R” with the mask function, this shift in the thickness of the lines presents a sense of twisting. As for the part of the bud, I combined the “s” of the two flower bodies in different ways to construct two types of flowers—— the bud and the blooming flower. - Part III
In the final section of this music, the sound of the instruments basically fades completely, with the sound of gongs and bells dominating and gradually diminishing. This string of crisp sounds makes me imagine the feeling of flower petals falling and smashing on the thick dust in the cave.
The focus of this section is on these little combinations, and I used “I”, “^”and “*” to make a group and let them scatter with random direction, size and position on the lower part. In addition to this, I reintroduced the “l” link from the first part in this section, because when I played this music on a loop, I found that the end blended so perfectly with the beginning that I often missed the ending moment. Therefore, I constructed an echo as an expression of the concept of a cycle and “never-ending”.
—Sketches—
