My ideas of what I wanted to do for this prototype portfolio project and the concepts I wanted to cover changed a lot throughout the process of realising the draught version of my final piece. I always knew I wanted to do something with celebrity caricatures, and the idea of a ‘Hall of Fame’ came to me very quickly. I had a lot of ideas about how I wanted it to look, and I was thinking about the concepts behind it too. However, as was pointed out to me more obviously by José, my project tutor, in our first meeting – I hadn’t thought about the sound at all. This is a problem I also ran into when I developed my first gallery installation last year, as I think I get more inspired when thinking of the aesthetic of whatever I am making before I think of how I want it to sound. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing, but in both cases it has meant I’ve hit a slight mental block when trying to think of a sonic atmosphere to put around my visual ideas.

I struggled for quite a while to think of what kind of sound I wanted to make. In my tutorials I discussed with José the possibility of potentially making it into a form of radio drama, with either voice actors or AI playing the part of the celebrities I wanted to make as caricatures. I did consider this and made an attempt at using the AI text-to-speech websites however I felt a little uninspired with this approach and I felt it was a little too on the nose for what I wanted to convey – I wanted more of an abstract soundscape that works together with the visual elements to create a world. Also, whilst I did want to tell a story with sound, I also wanted to leave it more open to the viewer to figure out what exactly the story was. Once I had decided to go without narration, my ideas about leaving the story abstract were further solidified through reading the research paper by Mariana J. Lopez and Sandra Pauletto on storytelling through sound, and how trying to present too specific of a narrative in this format can confuse audiences and mean parts of the plot get lost.

My ideas for the themes I wanted to portray in this piece also changed a lot over time. I originally wanted to either cover conspiracy theories of para-social relationships between celebrities and fans. However these felt a little vague. Then I read the book Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger and I was going to make a piece about the darker side of Hollywood and the mistruths presented about celebrities in the media. However, I found it still a little difficult to think of ideas – so, I did what I usually do when I can’t think of what to do. I just start with something; anything. The theme came more naturally to me when I just started making the piece – it just came together. This was also partly inspired by a George Monbiot article that I mentioned in an earlier blog post. I decided to make the piece about celebrity gossip culture and how it covers up much more important stories and increases democratic apathy amongst populations – show in an academic article featured in the International Journal of Cultural Studies.

I ended up making a piece that comprised of a mix of mainly cut-up parts of celebrity gossip articles and dark soundscapes that signified the stories that can often be ignored by the public. For these darker soundscapes I included sounds of war, sounds of oil rigs and white noise, amongst others. I won’t go too into detail about the making of this piece here as I have covered this substantially in my previous blog posts, however I will reflect on how I feel about how this prototype turned out.

Overall I am happy with the piece. There are elements of it I’m not too sure about, but I think it mostly achieves its goal of telling the story in an abstract way. There is a clear beginning, middle and end – I’ve also composed it in such a way that it is easy to loop. Obviously for a gallery installation this is important as anyone may walk in or out at any time. This is actually something I had to continue to remind myself during the making of the piece – that I had to compose it in a way so that it would make sense even if someone came in ‘halfway through’. I like the selection of celebrity gossip articles I have used, I think they sound inconsequential and stupid enough to get the point across. I also like the way the piece fades out with all of the elements gradually fading away.

One thing I have noticed is that the piece sounds markedly better on my monitor speakers than on my headphones. It sounds full and interesting coming out of my monitors, however on the headphones it sounds a little flat. This doesn’t bother me too much as I don’t intend for anyone to listen to my piece on headphones, although it does highlight to me I still have some mixing skills I should probably improve on.

I also feel as though I could have been a little more intentional with the sounds I used; for the most part I believe I was successful in doing this, however I’m still not sure about the drone sound at the beginning of the piece. I mainly used it as a way to come unstuck when I started composing, however when I continue with this piece I think I will replace it with something else that is slightly more relevant to the theme. Other than this I think I was mostly very intentional with the sounds I used, although as I mentioned earlier I think the mixing could be slightly better. I felt as though my use of panning could have been slightly more engaging. However, there are times when one needs to pull oneself away from their work and call it a day, and I felt at the end as if I had reached this point with the prototype and I didn’t want to go further.

I will next focus on building the set for the piece, then I will come back to extending the composition, adding more elements and clearing up the mix more. Once I feel as though the composition is finished, I will then mix it into a multi-channel piece. Trying to do this as I am still composing will probably be too difficult for me as I haven’t used this technology before.

I am excited to see how everything turns out when I finish my full portfolio piece. This prototype process has already been quite long for me and I have changed what I wanted to make many times, however I am now mostly satisfied with what I have made. I look forward to building the set as this may inspire me to further explore the sonic elements. As it is all still very much in my imagination visual-wise this may be why it has been difficult for me to compose the piece at times. All in all whilst there are some aspects I would improve, I am still happy with the piece and the concepts behind it.