CIM417 Creative Practice Research
Artist Statement
ChatGPT Prompt - Hi chat, please write a bio for me in the style of Jeffery Archer based on the information on the home page of my website www.chrisdalyz.com
Answer:
In the vibrant coastal town of Byron Bay, Australia, resides Chris Dalyz—a visionary whose artistry transcends conventional boundaries. With a foundation in Audio Production and a Master's in Creative Industries from SAE Byron Bay, Chris has seamlessly merged disciplines to craft immersive audiovisual experiences that captivate and inspire.
Chris's journey is marked by collaborations that showcase his innovative spirit. At Splendour in the Grass 2023, he partnered with Andy Forbes and Illuminart to unveil "Cloud Bridge," a light sculpture where projection and pixel mapping coalesced into a harmonious symphony of light and motion. This masterpiece was orchestrated through a custom iPad interface, allowing fluid control over the lighting rig via Wi-Fi, and exemplifying Chris's prowess in integrating technology with art.
The year prior, during the Easter weekend of 2022, Chris helmed the sound and lighting production for Duzzi Daze Festival at Byron Bay's Smoke and Mirrors venue. Alongside collaborators Andy Forbes and Teagan Cruse of The Little Poet Productions, he orchestrated performances for 60 bands across four stages, enchanting an audience of a thousand festival-goers.
Currently, Chris lends his expertise as a senior light and sound technician at The Beach Hotel Byron Bay. His freelance endeavors are equally noteworthy, encompassing music production for local neo-soul artists and crafting immersive lighting designs for events and venues. Notable projects include a mesmerizing light show at the Brunswick Picture House on April 29, 2023, in collaboration with promoter Teagan Cruse, and live visual effects for Elderbrook's performance at The Beach Hotel on January 15, 2023.
Chris's portfolio is a testament to his relentless pursuit of innovation, seamlessly blending sensors and data manipulation to create multisensory environments that challenge and expand the horizons of audiovisual artistry.
AI image profile
Generated from a real photo using anime generator AnimeGANv2
https://huggingface.co/spaces/akhaliq/AnimeGANv2
Adobe Sensei AI
Image edited in Photoshop using Sensei to select subject, hair refine and background replace.
(See original photos on website homepage)
Annotated Bibliography - Click here
Consumers of Music Bricolage
Music is purchased and consumed in many ways and for different reasons. From helping to pass the time on a road trip, entertainment in the form of karaoke and concerts, motivation at the gym, expression and socialisation through dance at nightclubs, creating relaxing atmospheres in cafes, restaurants and supermarkets, conveying emotions in storytelling and movies, including celebrating love at weddings or remembering a lost soul. Music can also be used therapeutically to treat insomnia and some traumas.
Armed with this information and delving deeper into why people consume music helps the creators of music not just to identify their audiences, but to find inspiration for their creative practice.
Rain Bricolage - Reflective Practice
(image credit: Anthony Cavaleri)
A Haiku by Chris Daly
Washer of all sins,
tears of the gods, geosmins,
petrichor, monocot
Creative Research Practice
Practice is the how, the manufacturing, the process of creation, the medium, the method of communication
Research is the why, the theory, the meaning behind, the morality, and the application of ideas and concepts. It gives value to practice, it solves the question of practice.
Art & Design Resources. (2013, October 31). Research and Creative Practice - COFA “Insights” collection [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RME9zvuww0o
Jack Ox’s Musical Colour Wheel
The research that I do that informs my creative practice as a sound and lighting engineer includes convergent thinking and both music and colour theories. One of my favourite resources to draw inspiration from is this image.
Ox, J. (2007, January). Colour Harmony Wheel based on the Circle of Fifths. researchgate.net. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221629521_Visualization_and_the_art_of_metaphor
My Methodology
Provided the premise that different colours and chords produce different emotions, what colours match which chords/ songs during a live performance at an entertainment venue? This basic question opens up the proverbial can of worms, and there are many answers not set in stone. Research into which colours work together and why informs a lot of my colour choices, however, with creative practice, this becomes an evolving plethora of options based on experience, genre or even time of day. Sometimes the artist might request something outlandish - a memorable one is “Never Green, A Queen” - a female artist that excluded green from her shows (Telenova at the Byron Bay Beach Hotel June 2024), which made sense at the time, but discussing it later with a colleague made me realise that it was an abstract artistic choice as opposed to an informed artistic direction.
Hypothetical Creative Work
Variations on Jack Ox’s Harmony/ Colour Wheel
I am not synesthetic, but I am sensitive to, and fascinated by, the emotional reactions to stimulation of the aural and visual senses. Here I present some images to be used as references for colour choices of the lighting during live performances in entertainment venues, in respect to the harmonic content of the music being performed. The aim is to re-inforce the emotional content of the music to create a multi-sensory reactive environment.
What is a question you can’t google?
Firstly - I would ask if this question is framed as ‘google can’t provide a satisfactory answer’, or if the question is framed as ‘because the googling of such a question would alert the authorities and the consequences would be extremely undesirable.
In the first case - asking what the weather will be like in a tropical location on a date far into the future is a good example.
In the second case - asking a question of a terroristic/ homocidal or pedophilic nature would be a very bad idea.
How do you find inspiration for your art - or, what inspires you to make art?
For me, the most fundamental driving force behind why I consume art is the expression of emotions in a sympathetic way. When I’m happy, I listen to happy music, and when I’m sad, I listen to sad music. I use sympathetic emotional journeys to inspire my creative choices. I take notes on how different lighting engineers work within different genres and environments. I like to reharmonise my favourite songs in my head and then that inspires my songwriting techniques. On the other hand, when I am painting, I like to start with abstract shapes and then use my imagination to conjure up images and textures and personifications to create a visual story.
Objectively Ugly
Byron Bay’s ‘Disco Dong’, a traffic roundabout sculpture that cost $50 000 in 2019. With it’s phalic shape and jagged edges, it did not receive the love it’s maker nor the council that voted for it intended. It was meant to show the Byron Bay Lighthouse swarming with swallows, instead, it was graffiti’d and used for protest placards and anti-establishment flags, which had to be taken down by council staff regularly using a cherry-picker, causing traffic delays and unexpected costs.
Objectively Beautiful
Byron Bay’s Lighthouse: the only working lighthouse in Australia. It symbolises the protection of sailors and sits on a cliff overlooking the Easternmost point of the mainland. An iconic place to watch the sunrise and sunset and a hotspot for visitors and locals alike. Coming home to Byron Bay from abroad at night and seeing the sweeping light of the lighthouse is a truly magical experience.
Identifying the Habitus of my work
I am a mid-thirties Caucasian middle-class male living in a multi-cultural tourist town on the East Coast of Australia. Most people around me are very similar in race, class and lifestyle: religion and socio-economic struggles are not big impacts on people’s lives. Most people are generally active, and leasure activities include working out, eating out and partying. The entertainment consumed by these people includes live music events, lifestyle festivals, theatre productions, raves and wellness retreats. Due to good economic conditions, great healthcare and an abundance of well-paid work, Byronites tend to be able to afford higher ticket prices, and demand high quality entertainment. This provides artists like myself with opportunities to create complex lightshows for the best national and international musicians.
From a post-modernist perspective a lot of these forms of entertainment are linked with new-age spiritual practices like ceremonial cacao ceremonies, breathwork and ecstatic dance. This cultural practice ties into the idea of the entertainment industry moving towards being a knowledge-based economy. (Hartley, 2011).
Semiotics Analysis
Sitting on my desk is a learners plate. It’s a yellow plastic sheet with a black L shape on the bottom left and then 90 with a circle on it at the top right. It denotes someone who is learning to drive and that they cannot go faster than 90km/h. What it signifies to regular drivers is someone to give extra space to as they may make simple mistakes like stalling their engine or pulling out at the wrong moment. Patient drivers may take kindly to learners and give them a wide berth, whereas impatient drivers may not take so kindly and make aggressive driving decisions.
Open Work
Image from https://www.gerardfriel.com/the-heros-journey/
I present a piece of music (or is it a sonic film?) in which the instrumentation tries to follow the motifs of the classic monomyth. In typical jazz style, 2 instruments have a conversation about overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles to reinstate stability, order and purpose in a homeland to which forces seem determined to prevent their return.
(Brown, 1999)
Semiotic Analysis
For this assignment, I have provided a piece of music named “Chrisdalyz—The Hero’s Journey.” Being an MP3 file implies that it is music, but I offer that it is, in fact, a sonic story. Rather than a visual story, mine is an aural adventure. I take the challenges of songwriting and overcome them using music theory and creative writing while allowing the listener to interpret this sound design openly.
The Circle of Fifths
Image from https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/music-theory/circle-of-fifths/
I assigned each 12 points of the Hero’s Journey a tonal key that follows the circle of fifths in a clockwise fashion. Starting at 1 (Ordinary World) = F, then 2 (Call to Adventure) = C and so forth. Each passage of music will be inspired by each stage of the journey, which will take place in a different key; the obstacle will be trying to capture the emotions of the hero and evoke them in the listener.
References
