User:Elleke Hageman/Trimester 1

Niek Hilkmann, Trimester 1, 2012

So Far, So Good

Description

I will try not to waste words on idle chitchat. I believe this talk should be mainly about our prototyping lessons and how I experienced these in relation to myself and the rest of the seminar, in particular Richard Wright’s lectures. Let me start with pointing out that one of my basic motivations for joining the institute was that I did no longer want to simply perform music on a conventional music stage and produce a record every once in a while. The reason for this is that life is short, I have too much to tell and I do not seem to get my point across. So I was in search of new ways to convey my stories to an audience, through different means and in new places. Both coding and film seemed interesting places to look for this. As far as the coding part goes this ended up in the Yoshimi! HTML 5.0 Remix Experience. This is basically the first webpage I ever built and it consists of a certain amount of music players playing randomly up to a certain point and resetting themselves to another certain point, thus creating some sort of randomly generated remixes of my own songs. However, the longer I partook in the coding lessons the more obvious it became to me that I am not a coder and I lack the discipline and patience for this role. When I say role I mean this in the most litteral sense; coding for me would involve some sort of role-playing and doesn’t feel natural at all. This feeling has creeped up on me more than once during the last couple of months. Besides learning how to code I have partaken in literary conventions, started following lessons in algorithmic composition, joined three bands, thought up three other (even an orchestra), started making a documentary and | traveled without any particular reason or goal. In the end, despite of my identity crisis and several projects which I doubt will end up anywhere or have any effect (just another scream in the desert) I have found out one important thing about myself. In the next trimester I want to stop thinking about what CAN be done, for I ave done this long enough. but about what I WANT to tell. This means no more self-generating HTML or other interactive projects, but storytelling with a clear emphasis on narrative. Not trying to make the lost visible in an abstract way and producing an object through that, like in these two attempts: Appetite For Destruction & Schatjes . Let's tell stories, my own, narcissistic as this may sound.

Media

Appetite For Destruction

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Schatjes

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Yoshimi! HTML 5.0 Remix Experience

Read

Hillel Schwartz - Making Noise: From Babel To The Big Bang And Beyond

Additional Info

Another confusing trip
The site where the HTML 5.0 Remix Experience will be posted on 12-12-2012 at 12:12