When I look at my learning experience over the past three years, there has been a reaffirmation of my goals as an artist. When I first started this course, I hoped to abandon my career as a film professional, as I felt at the time that this work robbed me of inspiration and artistic freedom. Later I came to realise that these skills would elevate my creative work.
I entered this course because I wanted to look for new ways of experimenting with sound without knowing much about how and where to start. During the first academic year, I invested my energy and wisdom in a project that had nothing to do with my previous practice because I found myself developing a piece of experimental music with voices and noises – something I had never done before. The result dazzled me because I didn’t know it would be very satisfying for some of my colleagues. This beginning of the course opened up my idea of the course and gave me a general insight into what sound art is all about.
The second project of the first academic year of equal relevance was the radio project. Although it was a project with a disastrous result, in my opinion, it was a project that made me realise something – “where not to fall”. I touched on clichéd themes and developed sounds that were somewhat, for me, embarrassing. There was, of course, some displeasure from some students, and there were others as, of course, it was to their liking, but that’s when I found myself falling off a cliff of ambiguity. I feared the same would happen again in the following projects and years.
In all the projects of that year, I failed miserably, but looking back, they were mistakes that helped me to evolve as an artist. Despite the success of my first project, the second one further accentuated the learning process, which was reflected during the rest of the course. In the last and third projects, I managed to achieve greater coherence. I explored a format I felt comfortable with and used techniques that also served as inspiration for future works. I remember receiving mixed feedback from my tutor. I remember not being pleased with one of his comments regarding my references for using a narrative voice – that I should have referenced x author or way of speaking when I thought it was something other than a relevant note.
Also, during that year, I finished my first experimental song. I don’t remember the name, but I remember it being a somewhat unpleasant project, given that I wasn’t clear about what “sound art” was.