FUN_RANDOM_SOUNDS - 2007

Video loop of 9 minutes with three televisions showing a succession of nine people in total. View a video clip here

This project is a response to my skeptical view of marketing language, particularly those marketers who appeal to the almost universal need to be creative by naming a software tool
XYZ Creative or naming a mundane feature to imply excitment.

The impetus: a group of free sound effects in Microsoft’s Creative Fun Pack was titled ‘fun_random_sounds’. However, when listening to the sounds, I realized that the sounds were neither ‘fun’ nor particularly ‘random’. For example, the sound of a door closing defies categorization as either fun or random.

So I decided to create a project that would make use of these sound effects in a fun and random manner. Participants were filmed listening to the sound effects and then defining each sound effect in a binary manner. The sound would be described as either fun or random - a perplexing activity for viewers and participants.

April 2007