Critically acclaimed composer Nitin Sawhney in conversation with writer and director Vivek J. Tiwary discussing their collaboration and approach to music for the new film The Fifth Beatle.
Nitin Sawhney is widely regarded as one of the most influential and versatile creative talents alive today. Firmly established as a world-class producer, songwriter, DJ, multi-instrumentalist, orchestral composer, and cultural pioneer, Sawhney has become a latter-day Renaissance man in the worlds of music, film, videogames, dance and theatre.
Vivek J. Tiwary is the writer and director of The Fifth Beatle, a feature film currently in development and based on the life of Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein.
Musicians and filmmakers compete to make a music video in two weeks, from start to finish, and the best one, as voted by both the public and panel of experts, wins a coveted prize.
‘Chills, thrills and other feeling states: Understanding emotional responses to music in film soundtracks.’
For many people music elicits strong emotional experiences, and film soundtracks often exploit that potential, whether it be to heighten an effect of suspense and terror, as in the shower scene of the film Psycho, or of love and romance, as in Brief Encounter. Musicians have developed the ability to evoke emotions through a folk psychology of musical techniques, many of the clichés of which can be heard in film music. But why do these techniques work (and why do they sometimes fail?). The talk will explore the way in which affective response to music is dependent on psycho-biological mechanisms for expectation, illustrated with clips from films, and data drawn from experimental research. The talk illustrates the way in which affective experience of music is shaped both by culture and biology.
Dr Nicola Dibben is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Sheffield where her research and teaching focuses on the relationship between music, mind and culture.
She has over 40 publications spanning music cognition and emotion, textual analysis of popular music, gender and identity, and critical and cultural theory. She is editor of the journal Popular Music and has two books forthcoming: Björk (Equinox Press, 2009) and Music and Mind in Everyday Life (Oxford University Press).
Join us as we walk the streets of Sheffield pondering the changes in the city’s urban landscape and seeing short film and video on suitable walls as and when we find them.
Starting location – outside main entrance of Showroom Cinema, Paternoster Row, Sheffield S1 2BX
As one short film finishes we will pack up and find another site. A unique perspective of Sheffield that brings to life some key points in its musical, cultural and architectural history. Many of the films or videos correspond with its surroundings and the environment corresponds to the film.
Please note that this event will entail a fair amount of mobility around the city – amounting to a distance of around 1.5 miles. We will be crossing the city’s highways and byways and possibly walking off the beaten track. You can join us along the way or peel off from the crowd as and when you wish.
Sensoria would like to acknowledge the kind support of this event by the Short Film Agency, Hamburg.
Music and film installation, on a 360° screen with surround sound, by Sheffield’s own Flat-e, Warp’s Mira Calix and Dave Sheppard.
Commissioned by Streetwise Opera.
Electronic composer and Warp artist Mira Calix, video artists Flat-e and sound designer Dave Sheppard worked with around 100 Streetwise performers to create this unique work on a purpose built 360 degree screen with surround sound. The piece is inspired by the Allegri’s 17th-century choral work Miserere Mei, a piece so protected by the Vatican that they put an embargo on it. Mira Calix and Flat-e have used the theme of secrecy to explore movements and singing with Streetwise’s participants to create this new century-leaping work.
An immersive experience of underwater music provided by Wet Sounds, combined with accompanying visuals from Universal Everything’s Advanced Beauty.
“Astonishingly immediate, inescapable, and faintly perplexing.” (The Guardian)
Presented in association with onedotzero and with support from TDC and Sheffield International Venues.
Wet Sounds is a listening gallery of sound art by artists from around the world played back through underwater speakers to a floating and diving audience. With ears submerged the listener is immersed in sound perceived through the ears and through the body.
Advanced Beauty is a collection of digital artworks curated by Universal Everything and musician Freeform. The collection is a series of audio-reactive ‘video sound sculptures’. These videos are physical manifestations of sound, sculpted by volume, pitch or structure of the soundtrack and for the first time will be broadcast underwater.
“The underwater sounds I was perceiving were paradoxically extended, as if they were made of elastic and invisible pulls were stretching them, making them vibrate even more intensely as bodies passed in and out of them.” (a-n Magazine)
‘Wet Sounds managed to bring a niche art form to a public space frequented by people usually ignorant or uninterested in that niche and display it in such a fashion so as to make them interested… Exhibitions dont get much more successful than that.’ (Wire Magazine)
