Dada David Bowie

Part of our Dada Sound project (February 2016) - see more at http://www.citiesandmemory.com/dadasounds

By the School of Noise.

"We run an after school club for children aged 7-12. For the Cities and Memory project we decided to create two Dada technique inspired pieces for our sound piece. The first was a field recording which was taken inside the playground and the second is two cut-up poems about David Bowie. To change the field recording we decided to use aleatoric chance ideas to automate different effects. To do this we talked about different ways of changing sound; volume, pan, reverb, delay, distortion and tempo and drew a grid with number 1-8 along the y axis. One at a time the children rolled an 8 sided die to determine a number. They plotted this number on a chart with 8 being a high amount of that effect and 1 being a low amount. This process was then repeated for every effect. After a undetermined number of rolls they reached the end of the x axis (time). This chart was then plotted into Logic to automate the effects. The field recording was then added to this template to create the track. As well as the field recording the children made Dadaist inspired poems using a cut-up technique. This involved cutting out words from newspaper headlines on the day after David Bowie passed away. The words were put into a bag and pulled out randomly one by one to form the poems. This was a technique Bowie had used to create some of his lyrics. The poems have also been put through the automated effects as well as keeping some of it unedited."