An Island of Sound (electronic literature)

Last updated

An Island of Sound is a piece of digital storytelling created by J.R. Carpenter that combines generative text and sound, images, spoken word, as well as live voice effects to explore and deconstruct the idea of phantom islands. [1] This has been described as "A live performance and sound experience exploring phantom islands as weather phenomenon by J. R. Carpenter and Jules Rawlinson." [2]

Contents

Origins and influences

J.R. Carpenter's inspiration for An Island of Sound came from the tales told throughout history that "try to make sense of wind." [2] [1] The description of this work points to legends of mythical creatures such as sirens and sprites causing storms. [2]

Carpenter was inspired by her research of phantom islands in the North Atlantic and was interested in the “distant” and “unknown.” [3] Growing up in Canada, Carpenter encountered a lot of myth making in her youth surrounding explorers and discoveries. [3] Carpenter stated that she wants to deconstruct these myths rooted in colonialism by using the “materials against themselves.” [3]

Publication history

A live performance of An Island of Sound was held December 2022 for the Edinburgh Futures Institute. [4] Carpenter was accompanied by sound designer Jules Rawlinson for this performance. [1] A second performance of this work was on July 7, 2023 as part of the British Library's exhibitions as part of the MIX 2023 conference held at the British Library. [1] [2]

Plot

An Island of Sound combines images, generative text and sound, and spoken word. [1] The images are selected from the archives of the British Library. [3] The text and sound are carefully selected and then generated in a random order. [3] The sound environment combines field recordings from the BBC sound effects library, wind synthesis, and live voice alteration by Jules Rawlinson. [3] [1] The generated text is selected from colonial era books. [3] Due to the generative nature of the text and sound, Rawlinson has stated how the story, "doesn't always occur in the same way” and that it generates something “new” each time. [3]

Genre

This is a hypertext merged with a live performance work. [1]

Events

This work was exhibited in events on December 2, 2022 at the Edinburgh Candlelight Concerts [5] [6] and July 7, 2003 at the Mix Conference 2023 at the British Library. [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. R. R. Tolkien</span> English writer and philologist (1892–1973)

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leaf by Niggle</span> Short story by J. R. R. Tolkien

"Leaf by Niggle" is a short story written by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1938–39 and first published in the Dublin Review in January 1945. It was reprinted in Tolkien's book Tree and Leaf, and in several later collections. Contrary to Tolkien's claim that he despised allegory in any form, the story is an allegory of Tolkien's own creative process, and, to an extent, of his own life, following the structure of Dante's Purgatorio. It also expresses his philosophy of divine creation and human sub-creation. The story came to him in a dream.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital art</span> Collective term for art that is generated digitally with a computer

Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process. It can also refer to computational art that uses and engages with digital media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Generative art</span> Art created by a set of rules, often using computers

Generative art is post-conceptual art that has been created with the use of an autonomous system. An autonomous system in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist. In some cases the human creator may claim that the generative system represents their own artistic idea, and in others that the system takes on the role of the creator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic art</span> Art that uses or refers to electronic media

Electronic art is a form of art that makes use of electronic media. More broadly, it refers to technology and/or electronic media. It is related to information art, new media art, video art, digital art, interactive art, internet art, and electronic music. It is considered an outgrowth of conceptual art and systems art.

Algorithmic composition is the technique of using algorithms to create music.

Generative music is a term popularized by Brian Eno to describe music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system.

Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers. Digital poetry can be available in form of CD-ROM, DVD, as installations in art galleries, in certain cases also recorded as digital video or films, as digital holograms, on the World Wide Web or Internet, and as mobile phone apps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VJing</span> Broad designation for realtime visual performance

VJing is a broad designation for realtime visual performance. Characteristics of VJing are the creation or manipulation of imagery in realtime through technological mediation and for an audience, in synchronization to music. VJing often takes place at events such as concerts, nightclubs, music festivals and sometimes in combination with other performative arts. This results in a live multimedia performance that can include music, actors and dancers. The term VJing became popular in its association with MTV's Video Jockey but its origins date back to the New York club scene of the 1970s. In both situations VJing is the manipulation or selection of visuals, the same way DJing is a selection and manipulation of audio.

John Eacott is a British jazz trumpeter and composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Generative design</span> Iterative design process

Generative design is an iterative design process that uses software to generate outputs that fulfill a set of constraints iteratively adjusted by a designer. Whether a human, test program, or artificial intelligence, the designer algorithmically or manually refines the feasible region of the program's inputs and outputs with each iteration to fulfill evolving design requirements. By employing computing power to evaluate more design permutations than a human alone is capable of, the process is capable of producing an optimal design that mimics nature's evolutionary approach to design through genetic variation and selection. The output can be images, sounds, architectural models, animation, and much more. It is therefore a fast method of exploring design possibilities that is used in various design fields such as art, architecture, communication design, and product design.

<i>The Silmarillion</i> Collection of J. R. R. Tolkiens mythopoeic works

The Silmarillion is a book consisting of a collection of myths and stories in varying styles by the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. It was edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, assisted by Guy Gavriel Kay, who became a fantasy author. It tells of Eä, a fictional universe that includes the Blessed Realm of Valinor, the ill-fated region of Beleriand, the island of Númenor, and the continent of Middle-earth, where Tolkien's most popular works—The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings—are set. After the success of The Hobbit, Tolkien's publisher, Stanley Unwin, requested a sequel, and Tolkien offered a draft of the writings that would later become The Silmarillion. Unwin rejected this proposal, calling the draft obscure and "too Celtic", so Tolkien began working on a new story that eventually became The Lord of the Rings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer-generated imagery</span> Application of computer graphics to create or contribute to images

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is a specific-technology or application of computer graphics for creating or improving images in art, printed media, simulators, videos and video games. These images are either static or dynamic. CGI both refers to 2D computer graphics and 3D computer graphics with the purpose of designing characters, virtual worlds, or scenes and special effects. The application of CGI for creating/improving animations is called computer animation, or CGI animation.

Steven J. Fowler or SJ Fowler is a contemporary English poet, writer and avant-garde artist, and the founder of European Poetry Festival.

J. R. Carpenter is a British-Canadian artist, writer, and researcher working across performance, print, and digital media. She was born in Nova Scotia in 1972. She lived in Montreal from 1990 to 2009. She emigrated to England in 2010, and became a British citizen in 2019. She now lives in Southampton, England.

Julie Andreyev is a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores themes of animal agency and consciousness. Her ongoing Animal Lover work explores nonhuman animal agency and creativity through modes of interspecies collaboration and aleatoric methods. The Animal Lover projects seek to contribute towards an ethic of compassion and regard for the intrinsic worth of other-than-human individuals. She was born in Burnaby, British Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Generative adversarial network</span> Deep learning method

A generative adversarial network (GAN) is a class of machine learning frameworks and a prominent framework for approaching generative AI. The concept was initially developed by Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues in June 2014. In a GAN, two neural networks contest with each other in the form of a zero-sum game, where one agent's gain is another agent's loss.

WaveNet is a deep neural network for generating raw audio. It was created by researchers at London-based AI firm DeepMind. The technique, outlined in a paper in September 2016, is able to generate relatively realistic-sounding human-like voices by directly modelling waveforms using a neural network method trained with recordings of real speech. Tests with US English and Mandarin reportedly showed that the system outperforms Google's best existing text-to-speech (TTS) systems, although as of 2016 its text-to-speech synthesis still was less convincing than actual human speech. WaveNet's ability to generate raw waveforms means that it can model any kind of audio, including music.

<i>Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth</i> Book by Catherine Mcilwaine

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth is a 2018 art book exploring images of the artwork, illustrations, maps, letters and manuscripts of J. R. R. Tolkien. The book was written by Catherine McIlwaine, Tolkien archivist at the Bodleian Library. It was timed to coincide with an exhibition of the same name, also curated by McIlwaine.

Notes on the Voyage of Owl & Girl is a generative HTML work written by J.R. Carpenter. It debuted in 2013 and was printed in 2014. The work has little to no user input to control this story. The work includes some Morse code that can be translated into a message.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "An Island of Sound: J. R. Carpenter with Jules Rawlinson". Edinburgh Futures Institute. Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "An Island of Sound". MIX 2023. Retrieved 2023-10-08.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Institute, Edinburgh Futures (2022-12-06), An Island of Sound: J. R. Carpenter with Jules Rawlinson , retrieved 2023-11-07
  4. ↑ Rawlinson, Jules (December 2022). "pixelmechanics". www.pixelmechanics.com. Retrieved 2023-10-07.
  5. ↑ "An Island of Sound: J. R. Carpenter with Jules Rawlinson". AllEvents.in. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
  6. ↑ "An Island of Sound: J. R. Carpenter with Jules Rawlinson". Funzippy. Retrieved 2023-12-03.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.