Hypercinema Week 01 - Sound vacation

Group Assignment with: William Yao and Gerardo Abogado

We started with several abstract ideas accompanied by sonic impressions, and gradually shaped them into a concept connected to a clear narrative.

The initial ideas included:

• recording the sound of a dream, such as playing untuned instruments, recording the movement of the wind, or using echoes to simulate a sense of depth. We also considered recording gentle snoring and an alarm clock in order to construct a timeline around falling asleep, dreaming, and waking up.

• Creating interactions between household electrical machines as if they were collaborating, singing a cappella, protesting, celebrating, or alternatively debating or arguing.

• Building through sound,a world of robotic insects by using metallic objects to mimic organic rhythms.

Eventually, we decided to merge these three directions into one story told through sound: the dream of a robot.

Various ideas came up, such as exposing the robot’s childhood memories through its dream, following events it experiences throughout its life, or imagining that the robot is on vacation. These reflections raised broader questions: What is a robot’s childhood? How does it experience memory? What do robots dream of? What do they long for?

Some of the proposals included:

• Longing for data input, represented by the sound of phone data transmission.

• A robotic voice speaking to and guiding it (to be recorded and manipulated).

• Sounds of electrical charging and the oiling of rusty parts.

• The roboticization of nature as part of the robot’s vacation experience — robotic birds, robotic animals, robotic water.

• Realazing the concept of rest itself for the robot: perhaps a steady hum at a constant frequency is the equivalent of peaceful breathing.

There are still open questions, but the decisions we have reached so far are:

The story should be divided into three parts

- The robot’s falling asleep

- The dream of a vacation that expresses its desires

- The awakening — most likely caused by a crisis in the dream

The sounds we decided to collect for this week are:

- Mechanical sounds of nature

- A background sound that accompanies the robot (a voice or a hum)

- Sounds that represent its desires (plugging a charger, data transfer)

creating some of the sounds

screws

0:26

Plugging

0:33

grater_01

0:15

grater_02

0:17

Kitchen_hooks

0:05

hard drive working

0:43

string scratch

0:34

phone through guitar

0:47

strings and whammy

0:49