Please pop in to the opening event of Imagined Title Sequences by School of Media students, which will be running in rotation from 4.30-6.00pm this Thursday the 22nd in the foyer of Edward Street.
The project was produced in association with CINECITY The Brighton Film Festival. All of the sequences have been made by the BA Design for Digital Media students in Level 5. Some of the students have used footage kindly leant by Screen Archive South East and some of the sequences have been made in collaboration with Level 5 students on the BA Digital Music and Sound Arts course.
It will also be screened on Fri 23rd, Sat 24th & Mon 25th Nov 10am-5pm.
Monday 26 November, 4:30-6, Performance Studio, GP
We are thrilled to have critically acclaimed composer Laurence Owen (DMSA alumni 2011) back to give a masterclass.
About Laurence
Laurence Owen (DMSA 2011) is a composer, songwriter, sound designer and voice performer. He has written music for the BBC, Toyota, O2, Stella Artois, Sipsmith, ARTE, The Beano, Historic Royal Palaces and the V&A Museum, and provides sound design for critically-acclaimed multimedia theatre company 1927. His film credits include the Sundance Film Festival official selection White Morning, which earned him two music award nominations at SoundTrack Cologne Festival. Laurence has produced music and sound design for productions at London’s Young Vic and Trafalgar Studios theatres, and was nominated for Best Theatre Sound at the ProSound Awards for his work on 1927’s Golem. He has also co-written four original musicals for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (one of which won a 2015 Malcolm Hardee Award), and was composer and musical director of Cat & Mouse, a Village Underground and 1927 co-production.
About the session: How to be a Jack-Of-All-Trades Composer
For the last seven years, I’ve been professionally making music for a wide array of film, theatre, radio, TV and corporate clients – mostly just a few days’ work at a time. It’s not all been glamorous, but it has all been solid, paid composing work. By not specialising with laser-focus on any one area, I’ve built up a diverse and ever-growing network of clients that has provided me a livelihood.
In this session, I’ll tell you about the steps I’ve taken up to this point, ever-available opportunities that you could exploit, and how to keep you well-prepared and confident in this competitive field. Since DMSA students all have different specialities, I’d also like to find out your individual skills, and discuss how you might apply them to kickstart this kind of composing career.
Monday 19 November 2018 | 4:30 -6(ish) | Performance Studio, GP
The next masterclass will feature Louis Sterling, currently on his 3rd year in the course. Louis will be discussing
the release of his upcoming album on David Augusts’ label 99Chants, and tips about leading a career as a freelance recording artist, both musically and with labels.
Louis is currently on tour with David August. Catch him playling live his new set of ambient material on one of the dates.
About
Louis Sterling, formerly known as Auxx, is a multi-genre recording artist from Bath, United Kingdom.
A classically trained musician, he toured under Dr. Peter King with the Bath Abbey Cathedral, absorbing the unique melodic and textural elements of traditional world music; a foundation to his flexible sound design, electronic synthesis and sonic programming consisting of up to 80 different layers. To this day, he proceeds to creatively explore composition and sonic art forms with electronics, acoustic instruments and the contemporary visual arts through a range of technical approaches and aesthetics.
He is also the proud owner of ID Spectral, a brand, record label and multi-disciplinary arts collective that promotes the talents of both up and coming creatives worldwide. The imprint is currently in partnership with the University of Brighton, Resonance Extra and Radio Cascabel London.
We are happy to have Louise Colbourne from Design For Digital Media with us to lead two workhops on experimental film.
Places are limited so please email Louise (l.a.colbourne@brighton.ac.uk) to secure your place. Information on the two sessions can be found below.
DIRECT ANIMATION Room:225 5pm 15th November 2018
This workshop will to offer you the opportunity to work directly with celluloid 16mm film using the technique of direct animation.
This is a practical workshop in which you will be provided some 16mm film stock to work on top of to create a loop of a few seconds in length. We will then join the loop and play the outcomes through a 16mm projector. It is possible to capture the projected images on a camera or phone if you would like to use them in the future.
You will also be shown how to effect and adapt the optical sound track.
The process of direct animation involves either scratching into the surface of the film’s emulsion to make sequential patterns and shapes, or drawing / painting images, textures and shapes on to clear leader.
CONTACT PRINTING Grand Parade Dark-room 7th February 2019
A further workshop will be held in a darkroom facility where you will be able to process your own short film strips. The technique used is contact printing (or photogram) and an optical soundtrack can also be created here. It is possible to create contact prints by exposing small objects and other film strips onto high contrast film stock which then creates an inverted, negative image.
Since graduating from the course, Alan Myson has been leading a quite successful career in the electronic music scene for over a decade now as well as working as a sound designer and composer for films, TV commercials and video games including Roll7-505Games’s award winning Laser Leage. We talk to Alan about his background, inspirations, impressions from the course and his recent release on Planet Mu, titled ‘Bodied’.
DMSA: Where do we find you now?
AM: Hi! I am currently in my studio in Norwich where I have just very recently moved to from Brighton. Sad to say goodbye to Brighton after having been there for so many years but fancied a change and it’s a beautiful part of the world around here.
DMSA: Three important words that represent you as a creative person
AM: Naivety: I think it’s really important as a musician to keep learning and (at least try to!) hold on to the magic of why you love making music in the first place. It is so easy after years of working in music to get stuck in your ways or start thinking of it purely as a job, I find I have to keep finding new ways to keep myself inspired and excited in what I’m doing, surprise myself and not take things for granted.
Experimentation: This is kind of an obvious one but there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’re sticking to your comfort zone. It can feel like a safety net if you’ve established a certain way of working and if you just keep repeating that you’ll stay fulfilled or productive, but for me I just can’t work that way. I don’t believe anyone does their best work when they are too comfortable!
Process: By this I mean I’m a firm believer that nothing is really wasted in art or music. Everything you do is a process and you have to take a lot of wrong turns, missteps and frankly write a lot of crappy music in order to get to the good stuff. You also never really know when you’re going to come back to an idea from years ago which at the time seemed like nothing. I have on countless occasions re-appropriated some weird idea I had previously or had even forgotten I’d written. I think its important to just churn out as much music as possible, you always learn something even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time!
DMSA: When did you start working with sound and music?
AM: I’ve been involved in music since a very young age at school where I was in orchestras and sang in choirs, played in bands and the like, but I would say my real passion for creating and writing music rather than just performing was when I got my first electric guitar around aged 13. That opened the door for me into the world of experimenting with effects pedals and loopers. From there I began making very lo-fi electronic music and beginning to teach myself the basics. Once I managed to get myself a computer and a copy of Ableton Live around 2004 I was just totally obsessed with it and have been ever since.
DMSA: In what ways has the DMSA course supported or helped you to develop into who you are today creatively and professionally?
AM: We had a great bunch of people on the course whilst at Uni, I feel we all inspired each other and I still regularly collaborate with and keep in touch with a few people from my DMSA days. I was signed as an artist just as I was starting the course in 2007 so it was a really good time for me to experiment and learn both on the academic side and starting out on my career as well. I was able to combine techniques and experiences from the course into my work straight away as I was doing both in parallel.
DMSA: Can you tell us a bit more about Bodied, your recent release on Planet Mu?
AM: I definitely feel I’ve had a change in my musical approach and attitude over the last few years with my album ‘Hollowed’ in 2016 and this latest album ‘Bodied’ I’ve had a strong urge to change things up. Over the last couple of years making this album I’ve also been working on a fair few composing projects for video games/film and other stuff. Doing this gave me some space from my own work and let me look at it in a different light. It was refreshing for my own solo musical output to not be my only creative outlet. Having been working as a musician for over 10 years now I found it really important to give myself a new focus and way of working. This album features a lot more live recording, which is usually totally mangled. It’s very firmly an electronic record but I’ve used recordings of Cello, Guitar, Piano etc as a backbone for a lot of the textures. I was also keen to work with a vocalist to give the record a human element, it’s totally non-lyrical – more ghostly and choral but gave me a different sound palette to work with than on previous material of mine.
DMSA: Other plans for the future? projects, events, visions?
AM: I tend to take a bit of a break from writing any of my “Ital Tek” music for a while after completing an album. I’ve been working on a number of composing projects and have some that I’m excited about coming up but unfortunately I can’t mention! I’m also working on a few collaborative projects which is not something I’ve done a great deal of in the past. I’m a bit of a control freak with my own music so it’s refreshing to get involved in projects where I have to leave that at the door. It makes me work in a different way and leads onto results that I could never have come up with myself.
L5 students from BA Design for Digital Media have completed a collaborative joint animation and sound project, ‘DOT – 2 – DOT’ with L5 BA Digital Music and Sound Arts students.
The animation showreel will be shown in room G5 in Grand Parade on Sat/Sun this weekend, as part of BIF (Brighton Illustration Fair).
BIF (Brighton Illustration Fair) runs all weekend in the Sallis Benney Theatre and adjoining rooms.
Monday 12 November 2018 | 4:30pm | Performance Studio, GP
DMSA alumnus Alan Myson returns to share his experiences, skills and tips with our students.
The masteclass is going to be part practical demonstration of a load of techniques Alan use’s – breaking down a track/tracks from recent album and explore some examples of work from his career – alongside composing work for video games etc.
About Alan
Alan Myson aka ‘Ital Tek’ is a recording artist and composer for Film, Video Games, TV based in Brighton UK
Over the past decade Alan has had an esteemed electronic music career. Signing to the renowned British record label Planet Mu in 2006 he has released five albums, many EPs and has toured playing live worldwide.
His 2016 album ‘Hollowed’ saw a more cinematic, abstract and impressionistic approach and was one of the most highly acclaimed electronic music releases of the year, cementing his reputation as one of the most exciting voices in electronic music.
Alan’s highly anticipated new Ital Tek album ‘Bodied’ was released on September 7th 2018.
Also working as a composer his music has been heard across BBC, ITV, Channel4, MTV, Amazon, National Geographic, The Discovery Channel, FX. And brands including Go Pro, Red Bull, DKNY, Google Glass, UEFA Champions League, Playstation.
Alan recently worked with BAFTA winning studio Roll7 composing the original score for the sci fi video game ‘Laser League’. The game released on Playstation 4, XboxOne & PC in May 2018 to critical acclaim.
We are excited to have Joseph Higgins (DMSA Alumni, 2017) back to lead a masterclass. Please note that the session starts at 5pm (not 4:30) and it is relocated to Studio 1.
Metrist is an outlet for Joseph Higgins’ idiosyncratic, constantly evolving dancefloor tailored endeavours. The Brighton based artist’s intensity and sense of humour can be heard through his approach to alien-like sound design and mangled beatwork in his jaunty oddball shaped work. Through his collaborations with labels such as Opal Tapes, Where To Now? and most recently Timedance, Higgins’s work has been described by Hardwax as a “Dare-to-be-different true techno explorer”.
The session will be looking into how we approach sound design in club music, keeping what is essentially nearly 40 years of electronic music fresh and exciting by adding experimental techniques and approaches to dance music formulas. I will also be talking about working in the industry, how to garner releases and DJ’ing.
Friday 26th of October, 5-6pm | Performance Studio (R225), GP
On Friday 26th of October, Caleb Madden, artist and member of the Creative Sound & Music Research Group, will do a presentation about his upcoming OUTLANDS Project to our students and will offer them an opportunity to work with in the festival as ambassadors helping out with curatorial, technical tasks, event and stage management management, publicity etc.
About OUTLANDS:
OUTLANDS is a new national experimental music touring network, which brings together progressive producers, venues, and artist agencies from across the UK. The OUTLANDS programme includes original collaborations and bespoke productions from international musical artists such as Beatrice Dillon (UK), Eartheater (US), Boris (Japan) and UK visual artists Semiconductor and Keith Harrison. Caleb Madden will be coming in to introduce the aims and scope of the project and there will specific details about the forthcoming Raster Noton/Drift multi-projection AV production with artists Kyoka and Grischa Lichtenberger – including how to get involved through the creative producer placement opportunity and the workshops that run alongside each tour. There will also be information about how to access reduced / free tickets for UoB students.
Students will have the chance to register for free entry and artists Q&A for the upcoming concert of KYOKA / GRISCHA LICHTENBERGER / YTAC UK TOUR, on Sunday November 11th at De la War Pavillion.
