Media Lab is a new CMW initiative to teach students audio and visual media skills in order to:
Jori Ketten, Media Lab Director
jori@communitymusicworks.org
Media Lab is generously supported by the Champlin Foundations and the Rhode Island Foundation.
Today we went on a field trip to Zachary S. Martin, Luthier Restorations in Pawtucket.This is a workshop specializing in repair & restoration of contrabass and cello, by Zachary. (He is also known as Gus, so we’ll call him Gus!) Gus showed us the workshop and gave us a basic but thorough explanation of how string instruments are made and repaired. He showed us all the different stages of the whole process.
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!