Drawing Marathon
artwork/flyer by ?
Note on the Video and Sound [4:00]: The video and the audio presented here are two temporally separate entities that were edited together in a way that was intended to sum up the basic experience of the event. Tim Pedersen recorded the raw video footage to Mini-Digital Video; I later edited together particular events from that footage. I chose to exclude the video's soundtrack 1) because of the post-production slow-down of the raw video footage (by Pedersen) which led to a major manipulation of the original sound, and 2) due to the fact that some of the footage took place while we were still setting up and testing the sound equipment. Instead I have overlaid the video imagery with a soundtrack that I assembled from three separate moments later on during the event that I myself recorded onto a minidisc player.
Drawing Marathon 2002: Shadows and Senses
Georgia State University, Student Center, House and Senate Salons
April 2nd @ 7:00 PM - April 3rd @ 4:00 PM 2002
Event Director and Coordinator: Craig Dongoski
Sound Designers: Adam Overton and Wonder Arillo
Summary:
Drawing Marathon 2002 was a multimedia installation based on the concept of the shadow. Students of Georgia State University and the general public were invited to attend the installation and draw, using projected shadows, various shadow-inspired installations, and projected sound to inspire their design. The ballroom (89 ft x 84 ft) was transformed into a shadowy realm with its floor covered in black plastic, lighting set low, and large, scrim walls set up where the shadows of various participants were projected (left wall). Other visible intrusions in the space included a "Garden" area with various seats and props (front-center), a dome-like "Cave" with shadows projected from within (front right), a shrouded sound booth with adjacent stage (back right corner), and various other video and sculptural installations scattered around the room.
The sound projection setup consisted of 8 speakers and 2 subwoofers placed equidistantly around the space. The sound design for the project was implemented using two computers (an Apple iBook and an iMac) each running separate programs written by Adam Overton in the SuperCollider programming environment. One of these programs, WarpFreezeBuf0.01.5.70, can sample either live or recorded sound and then manipulate it in real-time via granulation and looping. The second program, shadow_space00116, was in charge of spatialization and utilized a MOTU 828 audio interface. In this particular instance, shadow_space00116 allowed for 4 separate audio inputs (CPU/RAM restrictions limited us from utilizing all 8 inputs supported by the MOTU 828) which were then independently routed to the 8 output channels according to several user-selected spatialization methods.
The material for the sound projection came from two sources, live elements (i.e. percussion instruments, an a few performers, and sound from activities on the stage) and a prerecorded reading of the short story, Peter Schlemeel by Adelbert von Chamisso (1839), which had inspired the initial shadow-concept for this event. The concept of sonic shadows dominated our thoughts as sound designers and we proceeded with the goal to take live and prerecorded sounds and cast their sonic "shadows"; around the space. A shadow can be characterized as a filtered and recontextualized mutation of its original source (i.e. the dark shadow of a tree cast upon green grass). If small enough, the original source of the shadow is often recognizable, though distorted (possibly severely) by its new location. When bigger, the shadow becomes more engulfing, casting its hue of darkness on all that is caught in its path (i.e. a building casting it shadow upon the streets below, or perhaps a cloud intercepting the sunlight from the land below). These were the thoughts and concepts we then developed to create and manipulate the sonic character of this event.
One of the more interesting and collaborative portions of the event occurred near the end of the drawing marathon. A group of artists moved onto the stage and proceeded to draw, color and sketch together on a large piece of drawing paper which was laid on a silk screen (originally used for poster and t-shirt design) with a contact mic mounted to the underside of the screen. The silk screen"s thin yet stiff fabric material served as a great sound conductor, and the resulting scraping and scratching was subsequently sent to the sound booth where it was processed and projected around the room.