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Like most of my first classes, Audio Arts commenced with an overview of students with the course outline. This booklet details each project Music Technology degree students do over the year’s course, two of which utilise the EMU’s Recording Studios (Audio Art’s projects). This in mind, Christian toured the class through the EMU. It was exciting to see a plethora of quality recording equipment and know that I’m going to be using it all extensively over the next few years. I’m fortunate to be able to be accommodated in the EMU as new dwelling, as I’m sure all of the new Music Technology students feel.

During my first Creative Computing class Christian highlighted the importance of acquiring a reliable and expansive storage device. After he outlined various storage mediums, it became pretty clear that an external Hard Disk drive would be best suited for this task. I did some research on these products and decided that USB 2.0 drive (such as this) would be sufficient, and ultimately only cost around $160-200.

Robin Minard’s insightful presentation of his life and work was wholly inspiring, particularly because he spoke to us in such a way that made me feel like we’re all sound intellectuals. His personal approach making music was clearly individual, and as he chronologically outlined how he has gotten to where he is, I was utterly impressed. From his description of the Montreal subway music, which he heard as a boy, to the work he’s done with ‘sound space’ and finally to his installation in the Fringe, I observed a great deal of periodic advancement in his work. For example, the first track he played to the forum class, which was made in the mid 1980’s, featured a great deal of single frequency and somewhat monophonic droning sounds. Then later when I visited his exhibit ‘SilentMusic’, I noticed that this installation featured similar single frequency tones but was incorporated into the other rainforest sounds of the piece. The utter dedication with which Minard has progressively worked, in such a unique field, is remarkable and I am totally inspired by him. When Minard spoke about the research he has done with making sound present architectural space, it made me feel like sound is a phenomenon that we still do not understand accurately. Such a point was drawn to my attention when he talked about his efforts in ‘recreating space’. He explained how when someone steps into a cathedral, they get their first perception of space via the sound. As such, sound offers its own space and I found this relationship between sound acoustics and space perception to be somewhat representative of the outer worldly nature of music.

Bibliography:

IT Warehouse (2006) ‘Iomega 80GB External Hard Drive USB2 Win/Mac’, at http://www.itwarehouse.com.au/warehouse/detail.htm?ProductID=ST%2DEH%2DIOM2686 (accessed: 12 March 2006)

Minard, Robin (Artist Talk). Lecture on Sound Installation presented in the EMU, University of Adelaide, 02 March (2006).

Haines, Christian. "Audio Arts - Course Outline." Practical class in the EMU (5th floor), Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 28 Febuary (2006).

Haines, Christian. "Creative Computing - Course Outline." Practical class presented in the Audio Lab (Schulz 4.07), University of Adelaide, 02 March (2006).