MDes Sound for the Moving Image School of Innovation & Technology
James Fairlie
James Fairlie is a music producer and audio artist based in Glasgow.
Works
Collaborative Works
Sketches in 19 Dimensions
This suite is a collection of generative music – music created through a combination of composition and chance.
By their nature, generative works are infinite, running for as long as they are given to run and never repeating. The versions presented here are excerpts, but should give a faithful representation of each piece.
The Sound of Fun Surrounds You
This video contains depictions of surgery, as well as casual misogyny and transphobia.
This video delves into the bizarre, wonderful, and often horrifying world of corporate musicals from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Originally mixed for full surround sound, it is presented here in a binaural format, and is best enjoyed in headphones.
[Game Design / Group Project] Stream Strider
This is the final project for the course Serious Games Development in MSc Serious Games and Virtual Reality at the Glasgow School of Art. It’s an interdisciplinary project in collaboration with MDes Sound for Moving Image.
In the game Stream Strider, you will play the role of a water quality inspector and go to Water Town to do some tests. The city officials are planning on the future of Water Town, so your report on the area and advice will be supportive. During your three days here, apart from your daily job, you can not only travel around and fish like a local, but also talk to the villagers to know about the stories in the Water Town.
The main theme of the game is the dilemma between environmental protection and economic development. The Water Town is a town surrounded by the water based on Chinese culture and tradition. It’s a remote place, so compared with other town, the Water Town is less developed. There are several villages in the town, and most of the people here live a life through fishing.
Through the conversation with different villagers, player can have a thorough understanding towards the town and get to know their thoughts for the future. Some are attached to the environment, while others want to bring prosperity to the town. With these thoughts in mind, the player needs to decide: which solution bring the best of the Water Town? Environment protection or economic development?
Rain
Few phenomena can be considered more common to human experience than rain. Across the globe rain has meaning to everyone, though what that meaning is varies greatly depending on culture, opinions, and beliefs. From a life-giving necessity to the cause of devastating disasters, rain can be both a torrential force of nature, or irritation in the background.
In Glasgow, rain has become part of the fabric of the city. The third wettest city in the United Kingdom, a country with over 100 words or phrases for rain, it rains here on average every other day.
As a common, shared experience rain, and our perception of it, is an ideal topic for opening interesting and engaging topics of conversation with interviewees, giving insight into how they feel about wider topics, and how they engage with the world in a wider sense.
This work is a collaboration with Ellie Ford, James Fairlie, and Jamie Graham.