Early on I decided that I would use the poem ‘Windharp’ by John Montague for my digital art project. I love the sounds of the poem, and the images it conjures. Even though the obvious approach to recreating this poem might be to focus on various ‘sounds of Ireland’, or even the eponymous windharp itself, my favourite line is: ‘that restless whispering you never get away from.’, and this line gave rise to the visuals and audio. Where I live the local river is at the heart of the town and the community. It flows through the town park, where the children and adult running clubs meet, where teams practise rugby and football, there is a community centre, a gym, a pitch and putt course, playground, tennis courts, picnic tables, even the local graveyard, and the beautiful riverwalk. The river is at the heart of all this. At night in the quiet it can be heard in the distance. It is the ‘hand ceaselessly combing’ the landscape of life here.
I began taking photographs along the riverwalk in January. I wanted to capture the river in different lights, at various times of day and from winter into spring. I also wanted to do as much as I could using the tools on my phone, as this is what our students would choose to do given any digital task. I took the photos using a portrait filter which gave a swirling wind tunnel effect that I felt matched the ‘restless’ nature of the river sounds. I also applied a cartoon filter to the photos as I liked the enhanced reality effect it created. I recorded the audio using my phone – my work colleague Paddy has a wonderfully sonorous voice and he recorded the poem. Having explored some of the examples we heard in the soundart week of our course, I decided to record the vocals as well, trying to fit as close rhythmically to Paddy, in order to create a kind of spoken harmony. I then mixed these two tracks, again on my phone using an app called Supersound. I applied a short loop to the mixed vocals to give a slight echo effect which I felt was appropriate for the content. On one of my walks, I recorded the river and birdsong, and using the same app I mixed this with the vocal track.
I decided I would put the photographs and audio track together using PowerPoint and Screencast-o-matic video making software. I put the photos on slides but felt that the first slide needed movement and so I went back to the river and captured a video of the river flowing. In order to create ‘that restless whispering’, I superimposed two videos on top of each other, slightly out of sync and off-center. Then I felt that ideally the river should flow through all the images, so I needed to add movement to the photos on the other slides. While it is possible to add animation to PowerPoint I didn’t think I could mimic the flow of water easily and so instead I cropped the flowing river video, added it to the background of the slides and then added the original photos on top, editing each to make them slightly transparent and thereby simulating movement on the images, as the river flowed behind each one. I left the last slide without movement as I felt the lines of the poem here feel calm and restful and the photo itself reflects those lines well.
If I were doing this project again, I would probably change my own vocal, as I felt trying to match Paddy’s pronunciation sounded a little unnatural for me. I would also add a third vocal – I would like to further explore the idea of spoken harmony and mixing using the app I downloaded. I would also have perhaps had the vocals spoken a little slower with more pauses. I adjusted the speed in the editing but couldn’t slow any further while still sounding natural.
