Date of Completion

5-5-2017

Degree Type

Honors Thesis - Campus Access

Discipline

Recording Arts (RECA)

First Advisor

Albert Gasser

Abstract

More than anything else, the course of human history is defined by suffering. Accordingly, when thinking about suffering, there are universal aspects of suffering that everyone of us can understand. Suffering, then, for those of us fortunate to be largely insulated from this universal phenomena, remains a mystery. What does suffering look like? What does it sound like?

In scoring two separate films about suffering, I researched different approaches to creating digital instruments and how aspects of digital instruments because of their constructive medium may be utilized to create new sounds, including blending analog instruments with complex digital effects. I also researched how to program synthesizers to create timbres that were necessary to evoke particular meanings through the modulation of purely scientific and non-artisanal physical terms.

The importance of showcasing films about suffering is that it not only encourages empathy in increasingly divisive times, but that it presents an alternate viewpoint of suffering that is not heavily represented in current creative expressions of artistic suffering. Fundamental to each of the films are the character’s non-heteronormative sexual identities, and it is through the portrayal of marginalized groups that makes these films, and their respective construction, highly important. I also hope that the work will show people that abstraction is not something to be afraid of, and that art can be enjoyable, even if it is not easy to sit through the consumption thereof.

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