Im not sure if my portfolio really does relate to any of the themes or issues in the guest lectures that I’ve seen (so far) this year.
I’ve found that a lot of the guest lectures were quite interesting and based on interesting practices and ideas, however they were all about something, like our relationship with our environment, or nature or time perception, or concepts like this.
I don’t feel that my work really relates so directly to being about something in the way these guest lecturer’s works have been about things. This has made me question my work, but also has provoked thoughts about whether sound art really needs to be about anything more than exploration of sounds and doing that, and whether or not something is actually more valid (outside of an academic context) because of its situation in context and conventional research, as I believe the most impactful research comes from real life experiences such as live shows and conversations.
My work is about exploring the idea of the field of taste and trying to find its boundaries and seeing what I learn from that, hearing what these borders sound like, if I even make it to the borders, and if not why not.
This is still a concept or idea but its not something that I feel is directly comparable in an academic way to anything I’ve read so far and I’ve been struggling a lot to find ways to contextualise this project.
The music has elements of free jazz, hardcore punk, ambient music & minimalism, so I’ve looked more into the contexts of these genre’s, but in terms of ‘academic framework and key concepts’ I’ve been struggling to know how to approach that side.
For my second portfolio piece, I’m doing an audio visual piece, which at least allows me to reference a wide range of academic texts on sound for screen such as Michel Chion, however for my first piece the conceptual album, I’ve been struggling a lot. However I have found use in the methodology of improvisation, and have been reading various texts on improvisation, and key improvisation based artists, specifically in the free jazz context.