COP3: To what extent do visual tropes exist within design for electronic music?

Practical investigation

Rationale

Concept

When starting this project, I wanted to work with a concept that would help further my investigation into the question: To what extent do visual tropes exist within design for electronic music? However, I am keen to make sure the work doesn’t simply become about illustrating the essay.

Therefore, rather than creating work in response to the factors (social, economic, geographic etc) that shaped the visual tropes associated with electronic music I instead wanted to create a body of work purely in response to the sounds and rhythms of electronic music and in essence create a series of images that would visualise the music in question.

With this in mind I am also interested in what, if any images, motifs and overall aesthetic themes may emerge throughout my work and what connections can be drawn between these and the music.

Approach

I want this project to have quite a visceral feel and for it to be mainly process driven working in a free manner where by the music will shape the visuals. This is because I feel that, at the moment, texture is one of the key aspects of my practice and I feel that working in such a way will allow me to further develop and refine this aspect of my practice.

Furthermore, I want to use this project to focus on print, specifically screen printing. This is because it is a process that I really enjoy and feel adds value to my work given that much of my work is comprised of bold shapes and bold lighting within carefully considered compositions which I feel translate well on to paper when screen printed. My use of, usually no more than 4, colours within my compositions has also impacted this decision as I am keen to further explore colour separation within screen printing.

Key influences

There were a few things I wanted to avoid within this project, these include the use of literal motifs relating to music such as depictions of the instruments/people associated with the music in question. This is because I feel it is quite a cliché and stale way of approaching the subject matter with very little meaning to it.

I was immediately drawn to artists that creating work in response to music rather than simply to illustrate it. The work of Ed Cheverton immediately came to mind given how in the big heads talk he gave in first year(2015) he talked about how jazz music is the biggest influence on his work despite no immediate motifs relating to it being present in his work. Instead you can see its influence in his compositions which often have a loose, erratic feel to them with an intuitive feel to the placement of individual elements.

 

The work of Stephen Carley also helped inform my initial approach to this project. Much of the work he has produced in the last 5 years has focused on how to visually interpret things in a non literal way whereby he uses lines, textures, shape and general mark making to represent the world around him. His work seemed even more relevant given his recent audio maps projects whereby he created visual work in response to music producer’s/sound artist’s work and then in turn got them to respond to his images.