Class Visual and Audio Communication

The curriculum centers on the conversation between sound and image, exploring this beyond traditional dielectics.  Students are challenged to question their audio and visual work in these fundamental areas:

• as instruments for communicating emotions
• as drivers of meaning
• as narrative elements, abstract or concrete
• with repect to sound semiotics, structural and post structural, and diegese in abstraction
• in the rhetorical relationship between what is heard and shown
• in sound abstraction

The semester will be comprised of three distinct exercises, for which the theoretical framework will be discussed with preparatory work to explore concepts and forms of expression, which should result in small film exercises (between a few seconds and approximately one minute). This preparation time will also be used for students to explore the limits of animation and sound, and will highlight that exploration as the main objective of their audiovisual experimentation.

Image-sound relationship, discovering it through deep work of questioning and experimentation in that relationship, according to the following focuses:

1. Pure movement and its potential. Poetic movement / the poetics of movement. Articulation between sound and image in motion, abstract and concrete, with different work approaches: beginning with abstract image, beginning with sound, and developing in tandem.  

2. Work with a focus on conveying emotions and sensations without resorting to stereotypes, mainly using abstract animation.

3. Phenomenological underpinnings of abstraction.

Practical and guided exercises for exploring movement and sound, with different objectives for relating them to each other. Continuous and growing assessment - including students' ability to evolve.

1st exercise: ABSTRACT ROTOSCOPE: from concrete moving image (dance video), highlighting notions of movement. 

Sound: This is followed by building a narrative soundscape based on the abstracted image, forging new meanings and sensations.

2nd exercise: ABSTRACT SOUNDSCAPE CONSTRUCTION: Developed to capture abstract essences around a theme. 

Image: ILLUSTRATION AND MEANING: From the soundscapes, create abstract animations, through harmonious enrichment, contrast, counterpoint.

3rd exercise: Development of an audiovisual idea iwhere sound and image evolve simultaneously. Presentations, development and execution in an iterative fashion, advancing both sound and image together.

#1 - 10% sound, 10% anim

#2 - 10% sound, 10% anim, 10% overall

#3 - 10% Pres, 10% sound, 10% anim, 20% overall

• Williams, R. The Animator¿s Survival Kit. (2002). London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 9780571212682

• Xavier, J-M. A Poética do Movimento. (2007). Lisboa: Edições da Monstra. ISBN 9789892006604

• Chion, M., & Brewster, B. (1991, Autumn). Quiet Revolution... And Rigid Stagnation. Rendering

  the Real, 58, 72.

• Sonnenschein, D. (2001). Sound Design : The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound

  Effects in Cinema. Seattle: Michael Wiese Productions. ISBN 978-0941188265

• Weis, E., & Belton, J. (Eds.). (1985). Film Sound: Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Columbia

  University Press. ISBN 978-0231056373