prompt 3.3 ~ discourse

One tip that I found helpful that my studio professor Cameron gave me when thinking through this prompt was the double diamond process model. The double diamond is a framework that helps you explore convergence and divergence. After mind mapping the reading and narrowing down on music and stickiness, I decided to diverge again and think of all the different ways that music is sticky.

More explorations for the form of the music object.

I wanted to test out my ideas around rematerializing music and it’s potential to stick to new forms.

I made a song earlier in the semester called “couture (haute mix)” and I produced an output that I thought physically represented the song.

One way I came up with to mediate the physical and digital and test out the idea of music’s stickiness was to attach an NFC tag (top left) to the music object. I have always been fascinated with NFC technology because of its enhanced visceral and physical interaction (in comparison to a QR code).

To get it working was relatively easy. After ordering the tags on Amazon you can download an app called NFC tool and you can program the tags to link to a URL. However, even though it was easy to set up, one thing I did realize after getting some people to test it out was that not everyone’s phone is compatible with NFC technologies. Going forward I will include both a NFC tag and a QR code to increase accessibility.

One point I was internally debating for a while was how I wanted to deliver the music. I was conflicted on whether or not I wanted the musical object to link to a streaming service (Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Music) or if I wanted to keep the music off these platforms and in a Dropbox folder. On the one hand, putting the music on a streaming service allows people to share the song, see how many other people have listened and they can listen to the song alongside other songs in their library. On the other hand, getting the song as a private Dropbox link subverts the streaming model and would make the music object feel more self-contained and not just a proxy.

After a successful test with “couture (haute mix),” I decided I wanted to pursue this idea for prompt 3’s outcome. An idea for a music object that came to me early on was “Scrapbook”. I have spent a lot of time in the comm d studio and I’m always impressed by the scraps that students leave behind from their projects. Instead of seeing them as leftovers, I saw them as beautiful. I thought why not put them in a book and present them in a way that’s appealing?

To repurpose is something that I am starting to recognize as one of my design interests. In an attempt to carry this idea through the entire making of this music object, I thought to not only repurpose the paper in the Comm D studio but also the sounds. Whilst I was working on the couture music object, I used my phone to record the sounds of me cutting, folding, glueing etc.

Lastly, unlike couture where I made the song first and then I made the object, I wanted Scrapbook to be made in parallel. The music is the book, the book is the music.

Some more poetic observation. Each spot has a different feeling sensation. More on this later.