Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications

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    Abstracts from the Spectra 2018 Symposium Part 2: Visualization
    Cooke, G ; Bain, P ; Lewens, C ; Fluke, C ; Josephides, J ; Cooke, J ; Andreoni, I ; Alsop, R ; Sacco, S ; Alexander, U ; Gascooke, J ; Lawrance, W ; Tyurina, A (MIT Press - Journals, 2021-10-14)
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    Intangible, invisible and eternally nascent: Designing sound in Australian performing arts
    Alsop, R (Intellect, 2021-12-01)
    This article is primarily focused on sound design in the performing arts. While scenography is usually defined as the visual/object elements of a performance design, it is often discussed as including all of the heard and seen elements: sound, costume, lighting, sets, props and projections. The intention is that these elements work synergistically to create a ‘whole-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts’, with scenography considered a wholistic discipline that embraces many aspects to support the intentions of the creators and the performers in a performance. Scenographic designers provide bespoke or unique solutions required to do this across specific briefs and budgets. While the discussion here centres on sound design for performance in Melbourne, it is intended to apply more broadly, particularly in developing a more complementary, integrated approach to sound in scenography, and regarding education and processes. This is to encourage a more global and inclusive consideration of the topic ‐ to develop discussion, and therefore potential ‐ of the manifold interrelationships in scenographic design in the performing arts. While there is no attempt to explicitly answer a key question or propose a defined theory, this discussion intends to illuminate various issues in sound design for performing arts in order to develop conceptual and practical approaches that enhance the collaborations and synergies possible in scenography for performing arts, ensuring that the whole is indeed more than the sum of its parts.
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    Australia on display: Tracing an Australian identity through the evolving costume design for The Australian Ballet’s production The Display
    Collett, E ; Alsop, R (Intellect, 2007-06-01)
    Abstract The topic of costume for performance as a marker of national identity is in its infancy within the context of theatre studies. As the means by which an audience relates to character and narrative, costume is central to our understanding of identity. Here, we consider costume for performance, specifically for dance, in Australia as an indicator of the developing national identity, using the 1964, 1983 and 2012 Australian Ballet productions of The Display as a case study. The original 1964 costumes were credited to expatriate artist Sidney Nolan, the 1983 version was designed by Sydney fashion designer Adele Weiss and the 2012 remount utilized photographs, written documentation and memories to recreate the original 1964 costumes. By examining the three sets of costumes, we aim to demonstrate how a study of the costumed body offers insights into Australia’s evolving national character.
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    Trace Time to Measure Space
    Alsop, P ; Soddu, C ; Colabella, E (Domus Argenia, 2019)
    This paper discusses my personal trajectory and development in the act of generating art. The desire to create art works through a generative process came about through a need to extend my personal creative, aesthetic, philosophical, and knowledge boundaries. Through doing so a sense and experience of interconnectedness arose that may seem incongruous with the idea of computer-generated art as being in some way soulless and lacking in ‘human’ sensibilities. This possibly came about through the understanding that computer-based systems perceive the world with absolutely equality, every object is considered through numbers and through relationships of and between numbers. With this in mind, based systems and procedures, when set in motion, offered a unique perspective for the creative artist. One in which a colour, a movement, an articulated idea, the motion of air and its interpretation (sound), the physiological responses, the behaviour of flora and fauna, and so on, can be integrated, adjusted, influenced by and influential on, the creation of something that while generated from the sum of its parts far exceeds the sum of those parts
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    HEAT
    Alsop, P (bandcamp, 2016-12-28)
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    Four Men (10 track album)
    Alsop, PR (Bandcamp, 2018)
    Four Men is the outcome of a collaborative process that engaged actors, director, stage management and other design team members in the responsive development of music and sound design to support performance. These tracks were used in the performance of Four Men at La Mama Carlton. This was directed by Richard Murphet as part of 'The Absence of Knowing', and more information about the play can be found at lamama.com.au/2017-winter-program/the-absence-of-knowing-four-men-dog-play-aug-17-sep-3
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    Four men sound design
    Alsop, P (La Mama, 2017-08-17)
    This was the sound design to accompany you play Four Men, directed by Richard Murphet. Diegetic sounds were developed in rehearsal, and then used to form a background for the musical compositions used to complement the drama.
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    riverrun 20 seconds
    ALSOP, P (seensound, 2017)
    riverrun 20 seconds was selected for performance at seensound, an international monthly festival of short films that focus on sound and vision works that emphasize inherent complementarity in sound and moving image. This audio/visual work explores potential relationships between sound, text, and image. It is built from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and found images. Precedents to this type of exploration exist in, for example: performing arts (opera) film (sound design and score), and installation arts. Finnnegans Wake as sound art is discussed by Kostelanetz , Toop, Tubridy, et.al, and in practice by Cage. Here the first 20 seconds of a computer reading of Finnegans Wake is manipulated and affected and the resulting sounds are used first to select sections of a film and to then trigger effects on those selections. In doing this it adds more layers to the already complex relationships in the convergence of text, sound, and sight.
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    SOUND, SHADOW AND LIGHT: generating the experience of a natural environment
    ALSOP, P ; Borda, A ; Williams, J ; Soddu, C ; Colabella, E (Generative Design Lab, Politecnico di Milano University, Italy Generative Art Lab, Domus Argenia, 2016)
    Sound, Shadow and Light is a generative program that seeks to replicate the visual and aural experience of a natural environment in a designed space that responds to the inhabitants of that space. In a natural environment there are opposing senses of intimacy and expanse, bounded only by the horizon. While each natural environment may have different or unique elements in it, Sound, Shadow and Light explores the hypothesis that just a few of these elements may create a sense, or experience, of being in a natural environment. It will do this by defining and then distilling the prototypical elements of an environment to form an essence, a small set of events that may be influenced by the inhabitant to create a mental and emotional experience of being in a natural environment. Sound, Shadow and Light bases its approach on the assumption that the natural environment is mostly static with predictable sounds, and that this causes the inhabitant to ignore most of the events in the environment. For this reason, it focuses on replicating the moving elements of an environment. By creating subtle and unexpected changes and introducing occasional unexpected events it is designed to create an experience of a natural environment with reduced overt interruption to the actual environment. The process for doing this is based on the concept of the garden as a place of simultaneous rest and subtle activity, in which expected events may occur at unexpected times; rhythmically repeated events occur separated by long periods, thus forming a sense of long structure; and occasional unexpected events that have no precedent. An interactive program is used to generate natural and synthetic images and sound; it takes pre- existing images and sounds, arranges them in groups for playback, subverts these groupings, and introduce synthetic versions of the sounds and images. This process is being developed to create virtual outdoor environments for people unable to venture into natural environments, as a demonstrator of responsive virtual environments, and as a platform for art-oriented projects.
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    Alsop, PR ( 2016-01-30)