Last weekend I had a fun homework assignment for my Phenomenological Approaches to Music Analysis class at school (yeah, it took me a while to pronounce the class title, lol.) Anyway, I got to play with my art and crafts supplies guilt-free! Our assignment was to listen to a piece by Anna Clyne for bari sax and tape called "Choke" and to present a representation of it, which could be anything as long as it did not involve using musical terminology to describe the piece. This turned out to be very easy because it did not sound like a typical musical piece at all. Actually, Bryce and I decided that the piece sounded like aliens gathering together to cook live pig and eat bacon! Seriously, you should listen to the piece (I don't want to post it here because that would be stealing from the composer) - I bet it's probably available to listen to through Spotify or itunes or somewhere for free or maybe just a small fee.
Ok, so I decided that I would create a picture book as my representation. I got out some size 10 manila tags and my Dylusions spray inks and created ten backgrounds. I heat set the inks using the Heat It Craft Tool and then got to work stamping images from some of my favorite stamping companies: Lawn Fawn, Paper Smooches, Dylusions by Dyan Reaveley, and a few others. I used pipettes to fill Tim Holtz's water brushes with the same Dylusions spray inks I used for the backgrounds and colored in the images. I then cut them all out and started playing around with them to see which images I wanted to use on which backgrounds. To add a bit more to the background tags and give them more dimension, I did some border stamping in black archival ink and used a white gel pen to add some highlights. Then I used the Inksentials collaging glue stick to adhere my images to the tags. To finish, I added some glossy accents and stickles for added interest, texture, and dimension.
What a fun project this was! This was the first time I've made something of this nature, and I absolutely LOVE how it turned out (and so did my professor!) I can definitely see myself creating similar projects in the future. Now it's time to show you the pictures! I'll give a brief explanation of each scene and what I was hearing in the music.
The title of Anna Clyne's composition for bari sax and tape.
Pigs, hanging out innocently in a field before the aliens come. I imagined this would have been a scene just prior to the music starting.
The aliens are coming. I heard the sounds of space ships and UFO's.
The aliens are eyeing their prey. I heard a clanking sound near the beginning of the piece which I imagined to be the pigs trying to escape. The pigs really aren't as happy as they look here, lol.
This big moster guy represents the bari sax playing in the low register of the instrument. The squealing pigs are what the bari sax sounded like in the high register. The monster is taking the pigs to the fire to cook them for dinner.
The music sounded like aliens conversing, so this is a scene of some pre-dinner conversation.
Monster dude is cooking the pigs and creating the bacon. There are a lot of sizzling sounds in the music.
The aliens are enjoying eating their bacon dinner. The little guy is in a bacon coma.
The aliens return home to their planet. The music settles down.
The music ends.
Hello awesome tags!!! Wow Lisa, that was a lot of work, but totally cool!
Posted by: Hilde van Rijnsoever | Sunday, March 03, 2013 at 07:58 AM