Exploring expanded audiovisual format installations
Creators: name: Harris, Louise
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2017
Subjects: audiovisual
composition
expanded
format
experimental
algorithmic
aleatoricism

description: This output consists of two pieces for Expanded Audiovisual Format installation, <em>Alocas </em>(2017) and <em>Visaurihelix</em> (2018) alongside an accompanying book chapter (2020) written to explore the research questions and processes underpinning these two works. Here, I discuss each of the works in turn, followed by a brief introduction to the book chapter. All of the pieces, including installation documentation, and the accompanying chapter can be found in the attached folders. __ <strong>Visaurihelix:</strong> Commissioned by Cryptic as part of Sonica 2018 and the Mackintosh 150 year celebrations, <em>Visaurihelix</em> was an immersive, interactive audiovisual installation based on the geometric forms and proportions prevalent in so much of Mackintosh’s architecture, including the Mackintosh Tower, Scotland Street School, House for an Art Lover and The Hill House. The work consisted of three constituent parts: a 32-minute, 6.1 audio channel audiovisual composition played on speakers spread throughout the Mackintosh tower, the visual representation of that composition on a custom built, octagonal construction positioned at the base of the tower, and an interactive sonic element consisting of struck copper rods, reminiscent of glockenspiels, suspended over the void of the staircase. I’ve been fascinated with Mackintosh architecture and design since I was a child; I love the way he combined quite sharp, geometric shapes with more fluid, organic forms, and the way these worked together to create a truly distinctive, unique and totally recognizable style. In my own work, I work extensively with simple, usually geometric visual forms, utilizing these in hundreds of subtle repetitions to create more fluid and complex visual environments, and combining these with both recorded and synthesized sound materials to create audiovisual relationships – so I’m interested in combining geometric and organic forms, both sonically and visually. One of the things I’ve been pursuing recently is the notion of creating works for Expanded Audiovisual Formats (EAFs), which are works that seek to step away from the ubiquitous single-screen, stereo-speaker format we’re so used to consuming audiovisual works in; instead, I’ve been thinking about designing immersive, audiovisual responses to unique architectural spaces – and this commission was the perfect way of doing that. The work was an immersive, hypnotic and almost meditative experience that sent the audience on a journey around Mackintosh spaces across Glasgow and further afield, whilst also rooting them very strongly in the acoustic and visual environment of the tower itself. The piece altered as audioviewers moved up and down the tower; the visuals in the base moving further away, as though being looked at down a wishing well, while different sonic environments came in and out of focus as participants moved through the speakers positioned up the tower and played the copper rods that were strung across the staircase. It was a unique experience that could only exist in this specific architectural space. Visuarihelix was shortlisted for the Scottish New Music Awards in 2019, and was named as one of the Arts Society Top 5 Art events in the UK in September 2018. Some notes on the sonic and visual materials can be found in the attached pdf entitled 'visaurihelix_additional_info' http://www.louiseharris.co.uk/work/visaurihelix/ __ <strong>Alocas:</strong> Alocas is one of a series of works for Expanded Audiovisual Format (EAF); an ongoing exploration involving pieces that are concerned, in both composition and exhibition, with moving away from a single-screen, two-speaker format. The work is intended to be exhibited in a small, very dark space, creating an immersive environment in which the audioviewer is completely enveloped by both the sonic and visual structures formed in the work. The pitched material in the work is generated algorithmically, then subsequently sculpted and intervened with using both chance and rules-based procedures. The intention, within the confined exhibition space, is that the work both look and sound entirely different dependent on whereabouts in the space one is situated. Please note - in the accompanying files I have included a version of the work in stereo, scaled to a single screen, and a separate folder with the 4.1 audio stems and video channels without embedded audio. http://www.louiseharris.co.uk/work/alocas/ ___ <strong>Exploring Expanded Audiovisual Formats (EAFs) – a practitioner’s perspective</strong> The book chapter included here, entitled <em>Exploring Expanded Audiovisual Formats (EAFs) – a practitioner’s perspective</em>, documents and discusses the work of a contemporary audiovisual artist, based in UK academia, and considers some of the interests and preoccupations that have led to her developing two recent pieces along a particular research trajectory. It considers the author’s understanding of the perceptual experience of the work and the compositional intentions underpinning this. It offers some jumping-off points for considering how <em>site</em>1 has implications for both the composition and exhibition of two, very different, Expanded Audiovisual Format (EAF) works. It also considers how the author’s preoccupation with creating a balance between control and unpredictability, and the manifestation of what Riley describes as ‘repose, disturbance and repose’ (1968) has shaped the audiovisual trajectories of the works discussed here. Ultimately, this chapter offers starting points – ways of thinking about the compositional, material, spatial and perceptual concerns of developing work in expanded formats, which have the potential to be applicable across a range of audiovisual practices.