Sound arts BA graduate Daniel O’Sullivan gave a personal and insightful talk at the most recent guest lecture. O’Sullivan’s practice has changed with him since he graduated from LCC in 2008 from punk to kitchen sink psychedelia to library musik.
The lecture began with a precursor to O’Sullivan’s time at LCC giving us an insight into his early life, explaining his innate interest in experimenting with music and sound. In his early years of practice, O’Sullivan spent time questioning sound philosophies, with questions such as ‘when does sound become music’… “as soon as you impose your will upon sound it can become music”.
O’Sullivans time at LCC: between 2005 and 2008 when studying BA sound arts, he took influence from varying artistic practices available at the university, such as attending print-making and film lectures, and gaining influence from them to apply to his sound practice. O’Sullivan emphasised his main regret of his time at university was not nurturing the relationships he could have had with other artists, he said that these interactions both balance and sustain you which I found to be a nice sentiment. When peer-reviewing for the audio paper feeling as though you can put your full trust into the person reviewing is important, the ability to feel your artistic vision is understood matters enormously.
O’Sullivan’s practice is vast and varying, however, the part of his practice that resonated with me most at this particular moment is his work in Library Music. Library Music is composed with the intention of being used within another form of media such as film, tv, and radio. O’Sullivan described library music as “wallpaper for the world” and then subsequently as “deep wallpaper”, which is the sonic layer sitting behind the image/ narrative. Each library music track builds a sonic image or world. As soon as the world is built the composer must stay within that world, it is important to stick to the intended theme/ vibe for the library music to be usable. Library music has usability in the form of audio paper, I want to now consider the world in which I want the listener to be situated for my audio paper, and what are the sonic qualities of this world.