SHR6E032F~002 TRO23085231 Portfolio and video evidence

1. Project Overview

This project is a performance art film influenced by mine and the artist’s experiences as transgender people. Dressed in a colourful, formless robe, the performer folds laundry in public without interaction. This represents our feelings of being outsiders – unable to fit in despite going through the same daily actions as the cisgendered majority. The musical piece which supports this performance is a electroacoustic style assortment of household sound effects – a kettle boiling, toothbrushing, etc – to underpin the main themes of normal domestic life but disoriented and confused.

I worked with the performance artist, Bee Dove, to devise these ideas and then involved a videographer to film. The original videographer had to drop out due to external circumstances so I asked another videographer, Layla Klimova, to join the team.

Together, we formed the concept for the project and filmed in a variety of locations such as wooded areas, industrial areas and commercial areas to show the subject in a variety of aesthetic situations where folding laundry is unusual and out of place, forcing the subject to adapt and ritualistically perform conformity despite their surroundings.

The musical piece I created for this project is intended to create an idea of otherworldliness and incorporates elements that evoke a dreamlike quality to further support the feelings of unease and being an outsider. Additionally, the samples were all field recorded with a H5 Zoom recorder and their reference is intended to draw attention to the household theme and place other daily rituals in the same semantic field into the piece.

2. Panopto Video – Final Product (10-12 Minutes)

3. Chronological Monthly Diary

December

During December, we held a meeting to begin planning the finer details of the project. This was held over zoom and led us to finalising the concept and the further plans for the timeline and costume (Appendix 1). These were to start making costume after Christmas so that we could start filming in February.

January

In January, we began work on the costume and gathered materials. (Appendix 2). Unfortunately, our plan to finish the costume by the end of January had to be pushed back due to the process taking a lot longer than Bee had anticipated. This was okay because the initial timeline plan allowed for around 2 months of extra time.

February

During February, I started the backing track so that the performer had a better idea of the tone of the piece. This included taking field recordings of household sounds (Appendix 3). We also finished the costume (Appendix 4,5,6).

The videographer I had organised working with had to drop out of the project during this time, so I spoke to another videographer and they agreed to work on the project (Appendix 7). Because of this, we chose to push back the filming dates to accommodate the schedule of the new videographer and planned to start in April.

March

Due to scheduling conflicts, we could not begin filming during this month, but I continued to work on the track (Appendix 8).

April

Our filming took place during April over the course of two sessions (Appendix 9).

The first was in a wooded area and an industrial area which we planned to use due to it being public property, aesthetically fitting and quiet enough to be able to film without interruption. I went along to the filming sessions to help with the process and to keep the vision consistent.

We then met up to review the footage and discuss what else was needed.

The second session was in the city centre in two quiet car parks (Appendix 10). We had intended to film in a street but the weather didn’t allow for it, but our plan was designed to be adaptable for different weather.

I also finished the unmixed track during this time and the videographer began the edit (Appendix 11).

May

During the final weeks of the project, the editor finalised the edit while I finalised the track so that the two could be combined. I also showed the finished product to other artists to get feedback.

4. Evidence of Planning/Process

We communicated using a mix of Whatsapp, video calls and in person meetings. This allowed us to plan dates, logistics and artistic choices (see Appendix 18). We planned a timeline at the start of the process

Initial timeline:

This timeline was created with having ample extra time in mind as I knew that both myself and my collaborators had other projects ongoing and are neurodivergent making consistent progress difficult. These was also part of my original SWOT analysis (see Appendix 19). I knew extra time would also aid us if circumstances changed or anything had to be re-done. We gave ourselves soft deadlines that could be flexible. This was very successful as there were a lot of setbacks which delayed progress but the project didn’t have to be rushed or drastically changed, but sometimes lessened drive to complete tasks on time.

This is the actual project timeline:

Many parts of the project were pushed and reduced in time, but I had originally planned much more time than was needed so this didn’t affect the final outcome.

5. Reference Material/Inspiration

Project Inspiration

As written in my project proposal (see Appendix 14), I was inspired by Stephen Varble’s 1970s Gutter Art movement which featured public performances that used costumes derived from trash to give social commentary around gender as well as class and elitism. The reason for the public nature of these performances was a direct revolt against elitist art spaces and their lack of social and financial accessibility, something me and my collaborators connect to deeply as queer artists with little money, and allowed the artist to involve and question the general public – making art open to everyone. This directly inspired our decision to perform in public, which initially was going to feature the public and faceless figures but, after a discussion with our videographer, we decided to instead perform in public locations but in isolation; partially to contribute to the feelings of loneliness/being outcast but also to avoid potential risks or discomfort for our performer and to avoid filming anyone who didn’t want to be filmed. Varble’s use of discarded/recycled materials also resonates with me because the idea of things that are usually seen as unwanted being reused to create something beautiful parallels the unconventional nature of queer expression in defying traditional or binary gendered beauty conventions. Therefore, our costume was derived from materials found in charity shops or re-used pieces of packaging in shades that occur in nature in plants, eye colours and the sky but are vibrant and stand out when worn, representing things that are natural but unconventional in other contexts that may be seen with queer gender expression such as body hair, muscles, and other secondary sex characteristics.

Music Inspiration

My inspiration for the background track to accompany visuals was inspired by the electroacoustic genre, a practice of creating pieces of sound art from the processing of recorded sound stemming from the musique concrete movement, specifically in it’s use of real world sounds and reference to those to reinforce themes. For example, in Jonty Harrison’s piece ‘Unsound Objects’, the listener hears recognisable sounds such as water dripping which creates imagery that completely fabricated sounds would not, and the processing of these sounds contributes to a sense of unease; ‘the known becomes strange and the unknown familiar in a continuum of reality, unreality and surreality, where boundaries shift and continually renewed definitions are the only constant’ (Harrison, 2011). In a deconstruction of this piece, David Hirst writes that ‘the beginning of an electrocacoustic work is always an important phase’ as ‘the composer creates the embryo of a sound world, so that some sort of relationship between the sound objects, the composer, and the listener can begin to be established’ and thus the piece starts with ‘two seconds of what I will describe a ‘sonic motive’’ (Hirst, 2013). Thus, I began my piece with a much more recognisable sample of a kettle being switched on than the sounds which follow, to establish a semantic field and ‘sonic motive’. The piece was further inspired by the continued use of these sounds to create my instrumentation, which I expand on in the next section.

Mix References

In mixing, I aimed to make the track interesting and impactful but not obtrusive to the viewing of the visuals. I used ambient film music tracks as reference for this such as ‘Ensurance Trap’ by Michael Andrews from the Donnie Darko soundtrack. This track is rich and dense in frequencies and has lo-fi and dissonant qualities but maintains clarity in its feeling. I mastered to around -14LUFS as we intend to upload the video to online platforms such as YouTube and Instagram where this is the standard (Martinovich, 2024).

6. Use of Technology

The majority of this piece was created in the box, produced in Logic Pro X using digital processing rather than through analog processing of instruments/recordings. I chose to create the track this way as this aligns with how I prefer to work creatively as I can have more control over when, where and how I create as opposed to having a lot of variables as you do in a studio. However, all of the sound material in the piece was recorded in my home using a field recorder.

I chose to use the Zoom H5 field recorder as it is recommended by many field recording/music journals as well as the fact that I had experience with it and knew that it had the capacity for clear quality recordings without needing masses of kit or a power supply, meaning I could record almost anywhere I wanted to (Blake, 2022). These field recordings, (see Appendix 3), were the basis for every sound in the piece through sample synthesis and processing effects; there are no library MIDI samples, recorded instruments or digital waveform synthesisers. I made this choice because I wanted the piece to have an original sound with instrumentation that mimicked/disguised itself as common instrumentation (drums, bass, strings) but were actually derived from non-musical household sounds (kettle, toothbrush); similarly to the subject of the film assimilating with everyday household routine by performing the ritual of folding laundry, but being out of place and unusual.

The impact of this choice is subtle at times, obvious at others, but I think still contributes to an otherworldly/unusual sound. An example of this was the use of the clicks of a kettle lid being closed and switched on to create parts of a drum kit to use in a sampler (see Appendix 12). The remainder of the instruments were also created this way, using EQ to process the field recordings into samples as well as plug-ins from the GRM Tools Classic Bundle such as Freeze and Shuffling (see Appendix 13). This bundle was recommended to me by Professor Robert Bentall during his electroacoustic module – from which I gained a lot of inspiration for the concept of the piece – as an effective, budget friendly basis for electroacoustic processing. Their use was effective in allowing me to creatively process sounds to be used as instruments.

I also used panning to create an immersive stereo experience as this is effective for more ambient pieces (White, 2018). See Appendix 20 for further accounts of production.

7. Evaluation

Overall, I think the project was a success. We planned out a project with social and cultural relevance to a current movement in performance art, set a timeline with realistic deadlines and contingency plans, and completed the project reasonably similarly to what we originally set out to do.

I think that the artistic vision of the piece as a representation of feelings of being an outsider as a trans person while trying to assimilate and perform daily living is one with weight and emotional impact, and I think that our interpretation of this is substantial. The visuals are simplistic but quietly communicate an isolation and otherworldliness and a crescendo of overwhelm, confusion and blurred sense of self. My track supports the themes with field recorded samples that reflect the same semantic field of household objects as well as reinforcing the emotional content with a dreamlike but tense and dissonant quality. In sharing the product with fellow artists in my scene, I gained positive feedback that the visual content and music were symbiotic through the ‘repetition’ and ‘disorienting visuals’ and that the piece had a ‘strangeness’ and ‘weird beauty’ as well as being ‘dense’ and having a focus on ‘tactility and texture’ (see Appendix 15). I think these pieces of feedback align strongly with the vision of the piece. I also gained some feedback that the piece could’ve benefitted from introducing ‘more scenes and environments for this ritual to take place in? Perhaps the ritual could’ve evolved into something else’. Another response said that they were ‘not sure when it would end’, perhaps hinting that the piece became boring or lacked consistent development (see Appendix 15). The repetition and drudgery is an intended element of the piece artistically, but perhaps from an engagement standpoint, the product could benefit from more variation and maybe sometimes loses the focus of the audience. Although, in an essay about art, Francis Colpitt writes that ‘boring art is interesting art’ (Colpitt, 1985). With more commitment to our timeline, we could’ve gained this feedback earlier and had time to make edits, but overall the piece gained positive feedback.

Additionally, the product has a firm relevance to other pieces I have seen in the performance art scene in Leeds, such as a piece I saw at an event called Slime Mold Rodeo by an artist called GAPZ which featured a dissonant track with references to transphobia and the performer covering themselves in clay, representing the feeling of being trapped/moulding themself into something else (see Appendix 16)(slimemoldrodeo, 2025).

The planning of the project overall succeeded and all elements came together by the deadline without having to be changed. However, as with any creative collaboration, there were some setbacks, oversights and opportunities for improvements.

The first big setback was the change in videographer as this led to a lot of the deadlines having to be pushed back as our second videographer wasn’t available until later. I accounted for this during my planning and set deadlines far in advance of what was necessary as well as being prepared to find new collaborators if necessary, so it wasn’t completely detrimental to the end product. However, the second videographer was often busy and sometimes difficult to communicate with so, despite the fact that the videographer and performer knew each other creatively and thus worked together effectively, in retrospect, I would consider choosing a different videographer so that we could’ve spent more time developing ideas and had another session of filming. In the scenario that we had the same team throughout the process, I think it would have also been an advantage to involve the videographer from the beginning so that the concept could be formed with filming in mind, as the performer and I found it difficult to translate our concept to film and another creative insight could have helped with this.

Another issue was staying true to the original timeline which we deviated from by around a month and a half. This was partially due to the change in videographer but I think some of this was my lack of strictness. I was sometimes not firm in communication with my collaborators, meaning the timeline slipped away at times. It could’ve benefitted the project to have made an adjusted timeline after changing videographers and sticking to it to allow more time for editing and less pressure on deadlines.

The concepts of the piece as well as the collaboration have a lot of opportunity for development. After completing the project, the performance artist stated his enjoyment and suggested us working together again on a sound piece or stage performance (see Appendix 17). I agreed and we are both looking forward to future collaborations. Additionally, I could take the piece to a night called Conceived Conceptions, an experimental open mic night for new or work-in-progress performance pieces to gain more feedback and develop ideas. The piece will also serve as an item in portfolios for both me and my collaborators, aiding us in sharing our art and finding more opportunities.

8. Bibliography

Andrews, M. (2002). Ensurance Trap.

Blake, J. (2022). Best Field Recorders in 2022: a Professional’s Opinion. [online] Acoustic Nature. Available at: https://acousticnature.com/journal/best-field-recorders-this-year.

Colpitt, F. (1985). The Issue of Boredom: Is It Interesting? The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 43(4), p.359. doi:https://doi.org/10.2307/429897.

Emmerson, S. and Smalley, D. (2001). Electro-acoustic Music. Grove Music Online. [online] Available at: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/154-spring-2009/Electro-acoustic_Music_Grove_Music.pdf.

Harrison, J. (2011). ‘Unsound Objects’ Programme Notes. [online] Available at: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/user/ruviaro/jonty_harrison_program_notes_2011.pdf.

Hirst, D. (2013). Connecting the Objects in Jonty Harrison’s Unsound Objects. OREMA. [online] Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Hirst-11/publication/267395147_Connecting_the_Objects_in_Jonty_Harrison’s_Unsound_Objects/links/551a302e0cf26cbb81a2bb48/Connecting-the-Objects-in-Jonty-Harrisons-Unsound-Objects.pdf.

Martinovich, A. (2024). Top Tips for Sound Mixing in Film. [online] Izotope.com. Available at: https://www.izotope.com/en/learn/sound-mixing-in-film.

slimemoldrodeo (2025). A Virtual Vaudeville was everything we hoped it would be and more ! Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DQudwhgDmAE/?img_index=1.

White, P. (2018). Sound Design for Ambient Music. [online] www.soundonsound.com. Available at: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/sound-design-ambient-music.