prompt 7.1 - dissemination
I have had a few breakthroughs while working on this last and final prompt of my first year in the Master of Design, Interdisciplinary program at Emily Carr.
I knew I wanted to do this embodied music piece, Euro Step (In-Transit), but I wasn’t sure how it connected to my practice and body of work. However, thinking back to what the studio professor said in our first class, she was insistent that all we needed to keep in mind was something we were curious about and what methods we wanted to try. I was curious about seeing this idea through and a method I wanted to keep using and refining was bookmaking.
Open Air Flea/Trade Market in Barcelona, Spain
The idea for this prompt came last summer as I was preparing for my first European adventure. One of the things I was most excited about was experiencing European culture especially as it relates to their music scenes. I tasked myself with the prompt that for every city I visit, I will make music that represents the type of music/vibe I was hearing and experiencing. This was both an exercise in synthesis as it was a diary. For the trip, I also knew I wanted to shoot film photography of the people, places and the everyday
At the time, I had the vague idea that I wanted to combine both mediums into a book but it wasn’t until developing my confidence and skillset these past 2 semesters, that the concept of Euro Step (In-transit) fully crystallized. The overarching idea for this prompt was to combine the music I made for each place I visited with the pictures I took and create an intermedia book. The prompt would conclude with me trading the books I made.
The first breakthrough I had was what to call and how to position this work. Scrapbook was one of the first iterations of my intermedia work and I was calling it a “music object”. However, after doing the sonic mural, Snow Days, the word object doesn’t capture the essence of what I am doing
Quick sketch on the different layers of experience with music.
After chatting with colleagues, my supervisor and Chat-GPT, the phrase “Embodied Music” was discussed. I felt much better at how it represented what I was doing. Embodied music captures the essence of Scrapbook, Snow Days and Euro Step (In-Transit) as it speaks to my intention to increase the tangible experience with the music I was making.
For now, I am going to keep calling this work embodied music but the eureka moment came after settling on these words.
I realized that my work with embodied music shares a similar intention with music videos and concerts. Music videos, just like what I did with Euro Step (In-Transit) are a chance for the artist to provide an extra layer of meaning, context and experience with their work. In some cases, the music video takes a life of its own and becomes appreciated as something separate from the studio recording of a song. Similarly, concerts allow creative freedom for the artist to create an environment that embodies the music they made. I see all my work so far with embodied music deriving from the same desire of wanting to create another layer of experience with music.
Monet’s garden in Giverny, France
The next eureka moment was realizing two concepts in my personal design language.
I was put on to the idea of the personal design language by Virgil Abloh and he discusses it as a list every designer should have to measure their work against. For him, a personal design language is a set of things you consistently do in the design process but have not yet articulated. Abloh argues that by articulating the things you already do, you save yourself time and you help yourself know when things are finished.
Through working on this prompt and preparing for my interim thesis presentation, I recognized that my practice and the work surround setting up the conditions for exchanges and encounters. More and more I am seeing my role as a designer as facilitator and listener. I am less interested in dictating outcomes as I am in setting up the conditions and letting people meet them where they are at.
For this prompt, it wasn’t good enough for me to just make the book, I also needed to trade them i.e. exchange. In previous prompts, such as Scrapbook and Flat Stanely, I needed to hand them out at Open Studios and mail them to my friends for the prompt to feel complete.
When I recontextualize my work through the lens of encounters, Listening Spaces is all about bringing people together for just that.
When I think about my work with Radio Emily, it sets up the conditions for both the exchange and encounter. With my work on the production and programming side of Radio Emily, my focus is on the exchange of information through aural means. However, with my interest in the spatial design of a radio station, I also see my actions as setting up the conditions for encounters,
I added couches and a table as an extension of the Radio Station
Reflecting further on my work with Radio Emily and how it combines both the exchange and encounter, my embodied music projects also tend to deal with both. My sonic mural: “Snow Days”, combined the exchange of music and images with the encounter of only being able to obtain the music by physically going to the park. With Euro Step, it combined the exchange of trade with the encounter of it taking place at the Emily Carr caf.
Choosing the location for this prompt was a large consideration for the execution of it. The initial idea was to do it in the exhibition space right next to the RBC media gallery but, I couldn’t reconcile the intention of doing it in an exhibition versus next door in front of the library where people at school tend to sell/promote things.
My worry with setting up in an exhibition space was that by doing so I am taking on all the context and traditions of what it means to show work in a “gallery” context and I wasn’t convinced that was my intention for this prompt. I ultimately chose to set up in the cafeteria because when I think about the historical context of a cafeteria, I have fond memories of growing up and trading cards in my elementary and junior high school cafeterias.
If I want to take my analysis one step further, the book itself is about the encounters and exchanges I had in Europe.
Going forward, I am going to include this concept of exchange/encounters in my personal design language as a way to frame my future work.
Before I started working on Euro Step, I made a sketchbook to be used solely for the ideas for this prompt. I wanted to slowly bring myself back into the bookmaking mood but also with the idea that by keeping all my ideas for this prompt in one book detached from my previous work, I would feel a greater sense of freedom and confidence when designing it.
Find below my sketches/progress pictures for this prompt:
