Disruption - Sound & Vision

This project is concerned with exploring the boundaries of your own interests with the aim of encouraging you to develop a personal graphic language. Make a map of the piece of music you've chosen - There is no specific format for this project and you can utilise any media.

With the chosen song Superstition by Stevie Wonder, I had to find ways of mapping the song. I first started looking at the reasons I like the song, such as the 70s disco genre and the catchy melody, and I made a key for each of the factors: Genre, melody, lyrics and beat, creating a circular pattern - taking inspiration from 70s wallpaper.

Looking at different information to record, I listened to the song and recorded the presence of the lyrics throughout the whole song- at each second the lyrics stop and start. I then tried different ways of creating a time-line to represent this information.

I experimented with drawing to the song. I drew a continuous line to represent the speed, volume and presence of lyrics or instruments. For the lyrics I drew the line with scribbles to represent text and when the music became louder or faster the line became wider. I also worked out the speed at which the lyrics were sung. I calculated the speed of each line of the lyrics, by counting the number of syllables and dividing this by the time in which it was sung. 

I explored a number of methods of plotting information and I practiced different mediums including drawing, lino print, digital work and painting. The song is lively and jazzy, and deciding I wanted my map to reflect this, I combined my assortment of experiments into one collage that I then photographed. I wanted it to look busy and be full of information about the song. I did not want it to be too obscure but neither did I want it to be too explicit, so I tried to create a balance by just giving a hint at what it means. I placed a key at the bottom of the page to try and explain some of the abstractions, and I labeled the top of the page with the time to suggest the idea of the time-line to make sense of the graphs. I gave labels to some of the other maps for further explanation. I like the idea of this map being a puzzle - you are given a number of clues to try and work out the song. This piece of work possibly could work as a music poster.