This was one of the most definitive works in my early academic career. Collaborating with animator Sarah Woodward, we won one of 6 commissions from Sound and Music (formerly Sonic Arts Network) to create a short film based around the idea of the collaboration between a sonic and visual artist.

The ambitious aim was to present the progress of a lifetime analogous to the passing of a day.

Sarah Woodward and I collaborated to win this commission, one of 6 offered by the Sonic Arts Network (now called Sound and Music). The stipulation of the commission was that it had to be a collaborative process, so once the main structure was decided upon, we each created our little snippet of audio or video and sent it to the other to add the missing component. Of course this became such an organic process that some sections went back and forth several times as we each tweaked our part in response to what our collaborator had created.

For my part, the audio creation was meticulous, and intensive – manipulating found sounds sometimes at sample level to achieve the desired effect. We tried to mimic each other’s compositional techniques in places, so that, for example, when the animation dissolved into blocks, the audio would sound like it was doing the same.

Here is a link to the notes we wrote for the accompanying presentation, which were included in the DVD booklet: Sonimation notes. (Both Sarah’s and my surnames have changed since this project!)