Deceived by the Eyes : Graduation Thesis project

DECIEVED BY THE EYES ANNE TOURANACHUN

DECIEVED BY THE EYES Thesis Journal by Anne Touranachun Communication Design Programme School of Architechture and Design King Mongkut’s University of Technology Bachlor of Fine Art class 2017

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SUMMARY Visuals nowadays have become an important part in the music industry; often found that it has over powered the music.

With the behavior of Gen-Y and younger generations where our song platforms are video-based for instance through YouTube or Vimeo; we are greeted with numbers of competitors trying to grab our attentions visually. As attractive the visual can be, it is limiting the interpretation of music by narrowing down the alternating possibilities.

This project aims to provoke question to the audience whether visual are disturbing or enhancing music?

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INTRODUCTION 3

From the starting point of “What happened on September 6th”:which was the day Madonna perform the Vogue performance at the MTV Music Award. The Performance was one of the unforgettable moments of the award show and also re-enacted by others. I am particularly interested in the impression of shows that have on audience as impression is a one-time thing and is hard to get rid once we have one. With the fact that the performance has a purpose to sell the songs: as the sole-purpose of today’s music video is for promotions.

In result everybody kind of know the song based from that certain show or to be more precise people remember the show so they remember the song. To me it is quite ironic: when the audio comes with the visual some hardly recognize them. Does this means we are being distracted from the song? If the image is so empowering we can hardly hear while listening and we don’t get a second chance to be impressed. To me as a person who tend to listen to music more than watch it is almost a blessing to find someone who can talk about music with by not only having to refer to only the visual attached to them.

INTRODUCTION

RESEARCH QUESTIONS What do we remember a song by?

Are we listening or watching music?

Is there a hierarchy between the 5 sensory?

If there is; does it affect our music experience?

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Through researches and essays: my hypothesis is: when we access music first-hand experience of the song that is attached to a form of visual. We are lead down the suggested path of understandingthe song as presented.

Therefor our interpretation is limited at that point as well as our impression.

This leads to the last question in which

Is the visual presented distracting or enhancing to destined music?

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AIM/OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT My aim is to provoke question among audience in whether these visuals are disturbing being over dominance or enhancing the music by experimenting on audios and visuals. As to that it is an understandment that nowadays visual in pop music culture and the music itselfare dependent to each other. And that some visuals are strictly embedded to certain audio piece.

By creating an dyptrique audio-visual of the famous classical music piece: Blue Danube; portray two contrasting visual interpretation of the song.

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SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT This project explores the in-depth affact from so call popular music by its connections with listeners; whether it is from a physical scientific based or from an person’s from the music industry point of view. I specifically focus towards the connection of visual of the songs and the actual song.

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INTERLECTUAL FRAMEWORK

Budd (1985) defined music as “the art of uninterpreted sounds” (p. 9) stating: “music was understood as an acceptable nonrepresentational but sensual and emotionally resonant art, with resonance only between the viewer and a work of art.” Whereas in nowadays the approach of “listening to music” has changed along the years being more dependent toward visual elements as Boardman stated that music “need strong creative visuals to give them a substantial competitive advantage over their peers.” […]

“In some ways music videos have become just as or sometimes even more important than the artwork due to the way we now consume music. We used to buy a physical album with nice cover design, but now we consume on a plethora of platforms.Can you rememberthe artwork of the last track you heard? can’t. But I CAN remember the video. It’s like a digital CD case for the track.” (Boardman, 2016)

This became relevant with the shift of music listening platform to online streaming video-base website is a big percentage of sole destinations when using the internet. (Nielsen Music, 2011) This being said: people are commonly accessing music and being introduced to newer song via audio-visuals. Music visuals (music video in specific) has first started off as a ground breaking phenomenon then constantly happened until it has reached the point of attached to at least a generation that it has become a culture to watch music video or even becoming a topic to talk about just like sport and weather. “Most pop videos are made with their share ability in mind, and some are made with the sole intention of going viral (…) Music videos can be utilized to introduce interesting, underground or lesser-known concepts to the fore,” (Jones, 2015) In which this is

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evidential in our daily lives as to memes snippet from a certain video is used in widespread. By leading back to Music video through the meme (Jones, 2015) we are given mild impression of that song even before listening to it. Therefor we are unconsciously planted an expectation and a brief interpretation beforehand. This sometime shuts out some small detail when listening briefly to the song for the first time. That can be explain through scientific fact that visual mostly dominates other perceiving senses — in other words, we believe in what we see.

It is sometime stated almost controversial between the disadvantages between the sync of image and sound as it is mostly based individual perception as Monaco has written: “While the fact of the image is a disadvantage of a king in terms of point view in film narrative, the fact of sound —its ever-presence— is a distinct advantage. “ (Monaco, p.212) Meanwhile many scientific researches on sensory back-up the statement that: “The emphasison visual illusions occurs because vision overpowers the other senses.” ( Knittingdoc, 2009) When our attention is devotedly focused on one than the other it is neglected in a sense. (Filley CM, 2002) In which attention and memory are base direct result of perceiving sensory. (Kriukov VI., 2005)

“The two continuous channels themselves communicate distinctly separate way. We “read” images by directing our attention; we do not read sound” Monaco also added “Sound is not only omnipresent but also omnidirectional.

Because it is so pervasive, we tend to discount it. Images can be manipulated

in many different ways, and the manipulation is relatively obvious; with sound, even the limited manipulation that does occur is vague and tends to be ignored.” Or in other words as stated

by Louise Gray “ ..the richness and diversity that sound offers has often been neglected in favor of the image.”

As for impressions or first impression is created by the Anchor Effect that compares an impression to an anchor as it is claimed that “once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor.” (PON, 2017) “Everything has been thought of before. The difficulty is to think of it again.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832); Therefore making it impossible to re-listen again without being reminded of a certain key visual that was presented along with the song.

We are still being said that we are unconsciously watching these music videos (Lindsay, 2017) which can be said are based on mostly pop-music. On the other hand classical music is in itself a composition of un-lyrical sound that harmonize together; this enhances the point of interpretation as to when there is no focal point to what the composition should mean other than the name.

“Abstractly, film offers the same possibility of rhythm, melody and harmonyas music.”

(Monaco, p.54) “Film itself has had a strong economic impact on music, providing a major market for musicians,” however “ it has had no particular strong esthetic effect on music” as Monaco stated. Even though the topic of “audio-visual” being a big part of the marketing segment of the music industry, as stated by Jones that “The aforementioned ideas shed some light on the relevancy of music videos today,

it’s not as if every music video has now been reduced to superficial, marketingcampaign or even an intended vehicle for a wider discussion.” (2015) Being said these visual provided have deeply impact in leading our interpretation of a song.

Which may be or may not: be distracting.

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ฤญฯAPPROACH ฤญฯAPPROACH ฤญฯAPPROACH ฤญฯAPPROACH ฤญฯAPPROACH ฤญฯAPPROACH ฤญฯAPPROACH

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METHODOLOGY fig 1.1

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keyword: focus/ blurred fig 4.1

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keyword: essence/ recognization

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keyword: distance

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exploring under the keyword: relation of sound and sight

During the first semester I did primal experiment and observation on senses perception; relation between hearing and vision. My experiments are mostly based on audio-visual medium (video) as it is relevant to the topic itself. There are also additions of few interactive items to depict certain keyword as an observation and study cases of very distinctive pieces that shows the unrelated evidence of music and visual that lead to misleading interpretation. (fig.1-4)

METHODOLOGY

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Recreating setting: Hotline Bling by Drake ratio referring to original screening: [21:9]

Recreating setting: Bohemian Rhapsody by Queens ratio referring to original screening: [4:3]

METHODOLOGY fig 5.1

key: recognition; iconic setting

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For the following semester after more research and conclusion to develop my work towards audio visual, I observed from existing pop-music that are lately relevant in the past year by applying shifting music with images editing techniques to create a disturbing result. Later, I moved on to observe with pop-music icons such as editing iconic scenes (fig. 5) and recreating iconic item that resemble a well-known song (fig. 6-11) by using only color, scenes and items, attempting to twist around the existing key visuals to see the effect on people impressions.

Recoloring iconic piece from pop music: Michael Jackson’s iconic “Smooth Criminal” shoe fig 6.1

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METHODOLOGY

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solid majority color

gradient by proportion in scene

key: essence/ recognization by using color and proportion

METHODOLOGY

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color blocks by proportion in scene

METHODOLOGY

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key: recognization; experiment with choreography and icon signs

METHODOLOGY fig . 10

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METHODOLOGY key: experiment attachment of scene and sound to create a lyric video-like but using choreograph instead of words. technique: Kinetic motion graphics

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METHODOLOGY

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key: experiment inform of lyrics video by creating a opposing visual appearance of the meaning of the phrase /word.

technique: kinetic motion graphics

METHODOLOGY

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METHODOLOGY Later, I decided on using classical music as it isn’t created with any intended visual to begin with. For my experiment: I took a bypassing people footage then translating it into image sequence to apply on highlighter to create a stop-motion to create a distracting ambiance by emphasizing parts of each image to lead the eyes.

technique: stop motion

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I soon later settle with using footages to illustrate sound and narrate at the same time by using both montage and juxtaposition in a comparing composition to show the different impact from the provided sets of film.

technique: juxtoposition

METHODOLOGY

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METHODOLOGY For my execution I created an experimental audio-visual set in which shows different interpretations on a single song by using juxtoposition. In order to communicate how opposing visuals of the same can lead to being total misled and misinterpret I place both audio visual side by side as comparing composition.

I started constructing two storyboard based on the contrasting scene of expressing imaginary joyfulness and a struggling, Depressed person.

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METHODOLOGY 24

METHODOLOGY

Both video consist different style of editing and color schemetics to create as much distinctive differences as possible. Most of the footages are shots of objects instead of people, considering many factors.

METHODOLOGY

DISCOVERIES DISCOVERIES DISCOVERIES DISCOVERIES DISCOVERIES

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The music video culture is constantly evolving and has been relevant since. To me the more recent cases in my experiment proved my question right by being less related to the song yet can conduct the impression of the song far more than the classics iconic ones, even furthermore affecting the rise of popularity of the song.

Yet the relation between both physically and emotionally between visual and music (sound) are mostly mixed together and very hard to differentiate which is which (and it doesn’t actually matters! If it didn’t felt right it just doesn’t). As for the classical music that was my choice of workpiece, it is already relevant that one song is used as a soundtrack to more than one scenario. In reality the choice of the song chosen matters to a extend whether the song was well exposed enough for people to realize but further than that it doesn’t affect the work in and audience point of view. By using classical music introduce my work that I’m am not only talking about only pop music and wanting to be perceived less bias from any preference of artist, style and era.

Throughout the project in the past 8 months, at first I hope the project execution to come out somewhat interactive with the audiences.

Yet as thoroughly going through the outline of the project; the medium was decided at an early stage into the process due to the topic of the project: as a result the experiment phase was more of a technical exploration to find the suitable technique for the video format; this medium was very out of my comfort zone and skill set. As for the selected main idea for both video: to find the suitable mutual way to convey the so-call emotion was the main concern throughout the production process. The idea was for audience to be able to grasp the idea within the duration of about a minute or shorter when viewing but because of the length of the song it is executed into more toward a short-film instead of just two simple music videos because to be honest the duration of six minute is quite lengthy.

In conclusion this project has widen my skills that I never wish I would be doing up until recently. To me; we are still under the influence of music video and even more than the past. The visuals stand for themselves as well as the music being part of the music culture.

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EXAMPLE

installed work

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installed work

EXAMPLE

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References Cited/ Bibliography of Reading @graemem, G. M. (2011, April 12). Study: More People Watch Music On YouTube Than Download It.Time, Retrieved October 31, 2017, from http://techland.time. com/2011/04/12/study-more-people-watch-music-onyoutube-than-download-it/ Anchoring effect Archives. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2017, from https://www.pon.harvard.edu/tag/anchoring-effect/ Budd, M. (2015). Music and the emotions: the philosophical theories. London: Routledge.

Coleman, P., & Miller, S. (2015). The art of music:. San Diego, CA: <> San Diego Museum of Art. Danino, N., & Gray, L. (2005). Ways of Hearing . In Visionary Landscapes: The Films of Nina Danino (pp. 9098). Black Dog Publ.

Filley, C. M. (2002, May). The neuroanatomy of attention.

Retrieved October 31, 2017, from https://www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pubmed/11951169

INDEX Fig. 1

video exploring under the keyword: relation of sound and direction.

Fig. 2

video exploring under the keyword: relation of sound and distance.

Jones, D. (2015, April 15). Why music videos are still relevant. I-D Vice. Retrieved October 7, 2017, from https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/zmxzzw/why-music-videos-are-still-relevant

Fig. 3

motion graphic exploring visualization of focusing and blurring in relation of emphasis cerian part of a song.

LINDSAY, K. (2017, August 30). Do Teens Still Watch Music Videos? [Editorial]. Refinery29. Retrieved October 7, 2017, from http://www.refinery29.com/2017/08/169943/ music-videos-history-popular-2017

Fig. 4.1

Cropped scene from Drake’s Hotline Bling music video. (2016)

Fig. 4.2

Mesulam, M. (1981). A cortical network for directed attention and unilateral neglect. Annals of Neurology, 10(4), 309-325. doi:10.1002/ana.410100402

Cropped scene from Beyoncé’s Single Ladies music video. (2008)

Fig. 5.1

Monaco, J. (2011). How to read a film movies, media, and beyond: art, technology, language, history, theory.

Brantford, Ont.: W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library.

Refering to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody music video: “I see a little silluette of a man—”.(1975) Ratio 4:3

Fig. 5.2

Edited screen capture from Drake’s Hotline Bling. (2016) Ratio 21:9

Illusions —- Tactile – Optical – Auditory – Olfactory – Taste. (2009, January 21). Retrieved October 31, 2017, from https://knittingdoc.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/ illusions/

Nielson Music. (2011). The hyper‐fragmentedworld of music:Marketing considerations and revenue maximisation (Rep.). Retrieved October 31, 2017, from www. midem.com.

P. (2016, February 04). Why Music Videos Are Still So Important: Views from inside the industry. Medium. Retrieved October 7, 2017, from https://medium.com/@ pulsefilms/why-music-videos-are-still-so-importantviews-from-inside-the-industry-ebaa7d4758d2

Fig. 10

referring to Beyoncé’s Single Ladies choreography then translating into icon signs

Fig. 11

taken from Madonna’s Vogue music video. Each picture captured the choreography in synced with the word then using it to replace the missing sound.

Fig. 12

Lyrics from “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac. (1975)

Fig. 13

Free footage of commuter in subway. (taken: 20 Febuary 2018)

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Free footages

Fig. 6

Michael Jackson’s iconic performance shoe from Smooth Criminal.

Fig. 7.1, 8.1,9.1, Michael Jackson’s Thriller 9.2 music video. (1982) Fig. 7.2, Drake’s Hotline Bling music video.

8.2,9.3, (2016) 9.4

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SPECIAL THANKS