Project. Hearing
Type
Purpose. The
objectives of this project are to discover new relationships
between typographic form, space, and structure; and to understand
how dense textures of information can be clarified to create
more coherent communication spaces.
Assignment. This
project will introduce conceptual analogies between acoustic
and visual space. Since typography is a visual representation
of our spoken language, you'll explore the visualization of sound
and music by creating a typographic map of acoustic space, based
on the translation of a short segment from a piece of music.
The most important fundamental concepts to understand are harmony
(unity and variety), hierarchy (contrast and structure), and
rhythm (time and motion).
Using SoundEdit, extract and analyze a short segment
(about 12 words) from a selected piece of music. The actual duration
that you extract depends on the tempo of the music. The segment
must include at least one voice (text) and one (additional) instrument.
Using Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, or Quark XPress,
create a typographic translation of the selected segment, based
on a visual grid that represents pitch on the vertical axis and
time on the horizontal axis.
As a road map is a diagram of geographic space, your
translation will be a typographic map of the sounds within an acoustic
space. First, consider how you might represent each of the properties
of sound (amplitude, duration, pitch, and timbre) with typographic
elements in a visual space. Throughout the process, think about
the interaction of sounds, the hierarchy of instruments that produce
tonal clusters, harmony through variations in density or texture,
the hierarchical structure of space, the dynamics of rhythm and
motion, and the concept of scale (distinct yet related intervals
of pitch and time).
Format. 15 X
5 inches (38 X 13 centimeters)
Time. 4 weeks
(16 hours)
Related Items. Hearing
Type (PDF, 42 KB)
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