Songs in Isolation VII: MOOD2020

<p>This piece was created in collaboration with Little Songs of the Mutilated, coordinated by Justin Ashworth. Around 42 individuals (from a collective of 120+ participants) submitted one sample of five seconds or less. Everyone had access to other participants&#39; samples and tasked with creating a piece with simple guidelines: duration (3 &ndash; 15 minutes) and content (at least 90% of the sounds in the work should derive from the sample database). I used 17 of these samples, including my contribution.</p> <p>I created blocks of samples by editing and combining several samples into a block. I then used <em>GLVD</em> version four to create layers of sound by controlling the speed, pitch, and audio effects on each sample block. Takes were performed, curated, and stacked to make the final piece.&nbsp;I start and stop samples in this video and control the audio effects (speed, distortion, filtering, et cetera).</p> <p>The piece was composed over several months and completed in January 2021. The work was inspired by the name of one of the samples &ndash; &lsquo;MOOD20&rsquo;. I laughed at the track name at the time because I felt cranky, confined, and thoroughly sick of lockdown and the winter. As many a parent would put it, I was in a <em>mood</em>. This emotion seemed to be Melbourne&#39;s wave of public sentiment when I began writing the piece.</p> <p>Text from YouTube description box: &quot;I&#39;m still not sure if this is an optimistic take on 2020, or not. We spent a lot of time plodding through life, and a lot of time on zoom video calls. There were many audio glitches and spontaneous cat appearances. This video was created for the January 2021 SeenSound event. This piece was done in collaboration with the wonderful people from Little Songs of the Mutilated. Around 42 of us submitted samples of 5 seconds (or less). This piece was made with those samples, and the layers were largely created by manipulating the audio and audio effects with my GLVD glove-based gestural control system. You can see little bits of the top layers being recorded poking out through the other visuals.&quot;</p>