Independent Study/Personal Creative Practice
Post your practice-research questions to your blog. Write a blog post (200-500 words) reflecting on your possible choices of topic for this unit and the various advantages and disadvantages of these.
As this unit is quite extensive and taking into account that we are researching for our practice in the next 5 years, I have started my research in a quite wide spectrum of different practices which is Media Art, or New Media Art. This field involves different categories of contemporary art in which Sound Art is one of them and its main fundament is that new emerging technology is normally implemented in the creation of the art itself. New Media art is compromised with the audiovisual realm, and in its creation, electronic media technologies are used. Other aspects that I’m interested in, apart from sound are: computer graphics, internet and video games.
These fields are really extensive but I will choose a specific related topic to research in depth for this essay and I will keep evolving this research looking forward to the third year. Some specific topics that I’m thinking on could be Creative Coding, Immersive Experiences or the sustainability of electronic devices. These topics will be also supported by my own practice in which I will keep implementing generative computer graphics and electronic music production, looking forward to more projects at university as well as personal work.
Another aspect where I’d like to put a special focus is the activism behind these practices, to make it a diverse artistic field, where all sectors of the society are equally represented without distinction on gender, race or cultural background; and differencing this new forms of art from older visual art, music or high culture where many of these sectors were underrepresented. Also to create awareness about the impact of new technology in the environment, being committed with recycling methods, and also approaching technology to disadvantaged people, by supporting humanitarian projects and charities, or developing open source software and affordable hardware for example.
In conclusion, New Media Art is a subject that really fascinates me and englobes many factors that I enjoy apart from sound, but the majority of practices on this discipline include sound. Because I like the visual aspect, but always when the experience is audiovisual, and never something just visual which is definitely not my practice. This is just the beginning of the research, soon I’ll have opportunities to get more specific, however, from my point of view sound is quite specific in itself, not being that easily understood in comparison with visual art like painting or photography. As we see in the Guest Lectures, the majority of sound artists explore different activities and genres; making sonic compositions, but also developing and collaborating with sound design, sculpture, visuals, media or activism projects at the same time, making it a bit difficult to find sound artists whose practice doesn’t get flexible at some points, stretching and discovering new areas where they think they can get creative.
I have navigated the library search trying to find related books and I have taken these two to start getting some knowledge on the field.
