Today marked the beginning of an epic adventure.

David, Juan (Jay), Gaby (Gabrielle), Anthony, Sienna, Jori, and Laura have devised a truly incredible movie treatment involving pillow monsters, snow, and (of course), music.

Backing up, class started with a conversation about the Media Lab for those who were new to the space. We looked at the Media Lab website, and checked out current and past Media Lab student projects, including work from the Experimental Music class and the Different Trains classes.

From there we started talking about narrative, and elements of narrative including:

– setting
– plot
– conflict
– characters
– point of view

We next watched some music videos, including Black Leaf’s The Cave Singers and Math the Band’s Four to Six. We talked about narrative (and a lot of other things) relevant to these videos, and then looked up some music on the Free Music Archive to see how the videos looked with music that had a different feel than the original soundtracks. We also looked at a simple home movie, Friday I’m in Love, as a way to talk about something that was shot almost exclusively in one location yet still held our interest.

We also checked out this awesome video, Birds on the Wires, which helped us think a little abstractly, and then the more literal Peter and the Wolf, in which we saw different instruments and sounds representing specific characters in a narrative.

After that we collectively wrote a kind of secret and very awesome plot for a movie we’ll be making – and scoring – as a class. Stay tuned to see how the project progresses!

After many weeks of rehearsal, the Cage Centennial Concert at the Arsenal finally arrived.

In the words of one concert-goer:

“I’ve never attended a show of this type of music, or sound art, or whatever it is referred to as. It mostly had the same effect on me as meditating – forcing me to confront uncomfortable thoughts or acute self-consciousness. It was very different than listening to it recorded. I was really effected by the one with four or five percussionist around room, and the one with the guy reading cage writings and kids eating carrots and cereal and people playing checkers. Those kids were cool.”

Thanks to Laura and Mark Cetilia for organizing the show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaI9BPKhExk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag7j-pCvvfU

Today we ran through the Cage piece with the timings we set through a chance game last week.

We talked about stage presence, performing, meditation, and timing.

We noticed that it felt uncomortable or awkward or boring to sit in silence for some people, and felt nice, quiet, and relaxing to others.

The piece is 19 minutes, and we get to run it through one more time next week before the performance (at 8PM on the 23rd at the Arsenal on Benefit Street – hope to see you there!).