Thursday 21 June 2012

What is a Virtual Portfolio?

In my previous couple of posts I have been considering from an academic point of view exactly what a portfolio is and what is required of a portfolio for sound design.  In doing so it has started to become obvious that one of the things that is unique to creating portfolios for this area is the diverse range of content that is required.

Another area for consideration is although this maybe an academic portfolio it is for an art based discipline where it is important that the content can be showcased as a professional portfolio for the sector, such as a showreel.  This may not actually be that different to any other discipline, but being an art it is important that the aesthetics are showed off appropriately via the portfolios medium itself.  How is the best way to showcase a sounds that have been designed?  The normal way is to show them in-situ in the final content.  Although this does immediately show the context for the sound it may not necessarily be the best way to show some of the aesthetics of the sounds created.

Something else that I have considered is that not all content naturally lends itself to representation in a portfolio.  For example, if I were a sculpture of stone then my artistic medium would be blocks of stone.  This being the case then a paper or digital portfolio would contain virtual representations of the sculptures rather than the sculptures themselves.  This is the same for certain aspects of sound design, where the mediun is sound.  For example, if a sound is created with a synthesizer the artefact is the patch itself that makes that sound.  Although the patch file itself could be uploaded, assuming it's a soft synthesizer of cause, it will not mean a lot as it can't be played.  Therefore, a virtual representations, such as audio files or samples will need to be included.  This will also allow appropriate delivery content to show off the aesthetics of the artefact.  In this case the portfolio become a virtual portfolio of the actual output artefacts.  Hence it is a virtual portfolio.

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