Category Archives: Collaborations

Folia – Film Collaboration with Rachel Strickland

Calculating how short-length cinema might set about to examine the experience of a tree that plays out in year-long cycles, this 24-minute study experiments with polylinear construction and polytemporal scaling of sound and image that were recorded during one 24-hour slice of street life in the span of a city block. 8K video (7680×4320) with 5.1 mix has been downsized to HD (1920×1080) with LtRt audio for this preview.

THE SOCIAL LIVES OF URBAN TREES is work-in-progress name for an experimental video project that merges environmental sensing with observational cinema techniques—inventing a cinéma vérité approach that takes cues from revelations that emerge from ongoing data capture. A series of video portraits of San Francisco street trees will explore the forms and qualities of public spaces created by individual trees, while using small programmable cameras and sensory apparatus to visualize and listen to the trees’ own perspectives regarding their environments and various other inhabitants with whom they share the territory.

https://vimeo.com/169625954

In the course of the project, techniques were devised to capture and present actual synchronized production sound for time-lapse visuals. This is most clearly audible at the beginning and at the tail end of this video. It was discovered that multiple-timescale audio of particular events made the presentation more accessible. An example is the car-departure between 2:00 and 2:10. Actual production sound of this moment was placed into the edit at different timescales, and edited to produce an impression of “time-compressed car departure” whereas the actual 60x timecompression sounded more like a clik.

While it began as a piece about the trees specifically, during the audio editing and mixing process, which ultimately included several additional field sound gathering sessions to the location, it became a kind of study of the soundscape of this particular intersection: 24th and Folsom Streets in San Francisco’s Mission District.

You could listen without watching… I won’t tell.

Doug Hall’s Chrysopylae

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I joined Jim McKee and Joan Jeanrenaud in realizing the soundscape for Doug Hall’s large-scale video installation Chrysopylae.

Chrysopylae is a double video projection that was commissioned by the For-Site Foundation for its exhibition International Orange (May 24 – October 28, 2012). The exhibition included the works of sixteen artists and was part of the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Golden Gate Bridge. All of the projects were installed at Fort Point, the historic 19th century fort located beneath the southern span of the bridge. Chrysopylae (Greek for Golden Gate) was the name given to the straight between San Francisco and the Marin Headlands by the explorer John C. Fremont in 1846.

The video was shot with two HD camera that were synched to one another, allowing for the creation of large, two-screen panoramas. The video focuses on the bridge, seen over time and under differing weather conditions, and on the immense container ships that pass beneath it every day. The two synchronized projections (6’9″ x 12′ each) loop every 28 minutes.

Mixing Chrysopylae at Fort Point. It was cold.
Mixing Chrysopylae at Fort Point. It was cold.

The sound track was composed by Jim McKee and Joan Jeanrenaud, with sound design and additional composition by Jeremiah Moore. The project was produced by Starr Sutherland.

Recording sessions took place at Fort Point, Jim’s North Beach studio, Joan’s home, and my Lower Haight studio.  Mix was completed on site.  Playback was via a very satisfying 3.1 Meyer UPJ system with cardioid subwoofer array.

https://vimeo.com/43634333
password: goodsound

In 2013 San Jose Museum of Art hosted a version with 5.1 channel mix.

Doug Hall website

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