Audio and Visual Design

In this course you will learn to produce music and sound with Ableton Live (professional music production software). Using this programme you will not only compose music, you will also learn how to produce sound for different types of productions - think of film or animation - and you will learn how to convey sound in a live performance or (interactive) installation to a public. The focus lies mainly on the manufacturing process: digitally producing sound.

You could say that our modern (mass) media are very ‘square’. Most of our media consumption happens via rectangular screens or via the equally rectangular print media. At the same time, there are more and more possibilities to use (interactive) media outside the screen. For example in projections on buildings, soundscapes in retail spaces, in the design of the decoration of a festival or in interactive light installations in the urban environment. In this course you learn how to produce visual material for these types of applications. You realise a design for a projection on a physical object where you use the physical characteristics of that object. You learn to start with the shapes and lines that characterise that object. And you will learn how to effectively produce media for applications in the real, physical world. The focus is mainly on the manufacturing process: digitally producing visuals.

Our urban environment does not only consist of brick and concrete. It also exists in the stories that have occurred in that physical background. Sometimes personal stories - in what you have experienced with friends or family - and sometimes stories about the history of a place. You could even say that a place without a story actually has no meaning, or that that place does not really exist (Auge, 1995). In this course we discuss the role of stories in the urban environment and you learn how you can develop your own story against the background of a physical place. We also look at urban environments from the point of view of an architect or an urban planner. How do you deal with the history, the stories and the meaning of an urban environment?

In this programme research is an important part of the process. The research has a very specific function: it is not just about explaining and understanding a situation. It is also - or most importantly - about finding inspiration. In this course you will do research from a creative and artistic perspective. The aim of the research is to find original and surprising ways to shape your media production and to find out how you can actually realise your ideas.

In the project you will develop your own media application in which you - with the aid of image and sound - create a story in a physical environment. You will work in a team in an environment that has been made available by a partner of our university and will work on a question from that partner. The issues we tackle in the project have a very open character. Think of questions such as: how can we positively influence the experience of an environment by making use of audiovisual media? In this project you will develop a ‘proof of concept’ in 20 weeks. You present the solution of your team in the given environment. In doing so, you show in a convincing way that the chosen solution is effective and why it is interesting for the client to turn the development into a permanent installation.