A table with four sub-installations of tactile graphic scores, a headphone for audio playback, and a printed sound caption is put. The setting is cozy: the table is located adjacent to a sofa with a dog lying on top and a bookshelf. Photo credit: Curb Appeal Gallery.
Embodied Music Club
Reimagining a music and listening club
How does music emerge after the end of ableism, audism, sightism, and colonizing & authoritarian music practices? Through Embodied Music Club, visitors experience tactile, aural, and visual music-making through tactile graphic scores, audio, and sound captions. All the media provide spaces for different ways of listening and indicate a chain of access from the tactile scores to the audio interpretations and the sound captions. This work activates the whole body as a listening tool, centers the body in music-making, and champions empathetic-inclusive experiences that situate music in shared listening and complex interspecies relationships.
Four visually diverse people interpret the tactile graphic scores: Andy Slater (a blind media artist & composer), Leyna Marika Papach (an interdisciplinary composer with presbyopia), Daniel Furuta (a musician with myopia), and Cahya Haniva (a ‘normal-sighted’ non-musician).
Work metadata
Year created: 2023
Medium: heated ink printing on paper, regular ink printing on paper, braille printing on paper, standalone audio player, and headphone
Cast
Concept: Jay Afrisando
Audio interpretations:
Andy Slater (a Chicago-based blind media artist, composer, and teaching artist)
Leyna Marika Papach (an interdisciplinary composer from Japan and the United States who has presbyopia)
Daniel Furuta (a musician and a researcher at the University of Minnesota Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering who has myopia)
Cahya Haniva (a nonmusician and a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota Family Social Science with a ‘normal’ vision)
Tactile graphic designer and sound-captioner: Jay Afrisando
Scores and captions printing: Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired and Minnesota State Services for the Blind
Exhibition
is sound is tactile is visual is sound is (solo exhibition), Curb Appeal Gallery, Chicago, IL, US, 14 October - 11 November 2023.
Sound Scene 2023: After the End, Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, US, 3 - 4 June 2023.
A tactile graphic score containing a line moving from left to right to left to right, down to the bottom. The line contains different shapes and weights, from continuous to broken curves. Photo credit: Jay Afrisando.
A tactile graphic score containing four sub-images. Each image shows bubbles of various sizes, medium rough grains, smaller grains, and horizontal pointy lines. Photo credit: Jay Afrisando.
A tactile graphic score containing 12 sub-images. First row: spiral, heavy short lines and dots, bouncing lines, and an aloe-like shape. Second row: Outer and inner circles, 3-row tiny circles, connected shape of heavy lines and dots, and a wavy line. Third row: a thin-to-heavy curve, a stack of lines, dispersing and clustering grains, and another stack of lines that looks like a fence. Photo credit: Jay Afrisando.
A tactile graphic score containing 12 emojis in simple shapes. Photo credit: Jay Afrisando.
A tight-angled closeup shot of a tactile graphic score. It prominently shows a series of small vertical bars, a black rectangle, and some black arrowheads. Photo credit: Jay Afrisando.
A tight-angled closeup shot of a tactile graphic score. It prominently shows bubbles of various sizes. Photo credit: Jay Afrisando.
A tight-angled closeup shot of a tactile graphic score. It prominently shows a stack of two different-sized circles on the right, a swirling line on the left, a series of dashes and dots, and three rows of many small circles further back. Photo credit: Jay Afrisando.
A tight-angled closeup shot of a tactile graphic score. It prominently shows some emojis, including a smiling face, a dizzy face with X eyes and a black-circled mouth, another smiling face with tightly-closed eyes, and a smiling face with an open mouth. Photo credit: Jay Afrisando.
Audio Interpretations (excerpts)
Sound Captions for the Audio Interpretations (full)
Score 01
Andy Slater (voice):
[a robot bee flies around your head,
bumping your head, hitting turbulence,
then whooshes like a rocket, and finally stings!]
Leyna Marika Papach (violin):
[a vibrating ribbon stretching, zigzagging,
whirling, skygliding, fracturing, whining,
fragmenting, then diminishing]
Daniel Furuta (cello):
[a car racing. crashes. engine failing.
starting again. engine low rumbling.
struggling. low rumbling. becoming a monster.]
Cahya Haniva (voice):
[a roller coaster of lalalalah lah
doo boo doo boo doo laaaah la la
too too toot boo roo boo roo broo la daaaaaah]
Score 02
Andy Slater (voice):
[high-speed cooking:
boiling bubbles and chopping,
poured sauce, repeated tasting,
intense sizzzzling, finished]
Leyna Marika Papach (violin):
[thin howling wind,
wind mourning.
leaves spinning, then falling]
Daniel Furuta (sleigh bell, celesta, glockenspiel):
[happening simultaneously:
a jingling tree and
random stars popping up]
Cahya Haniva (voice):
[a playground: tink-tink-tink boom
boom BOOM BOOM—doozzzz-citroozzz
droozzz dooroozz—chweeheeeheee—
shsss hzzz shsssss BOOM boom boom]
Score 03
Andy Slater (voice):
[city noise: wailing cable, vehicle horn, buzzing,
bus door fizzzz, window knocked 2x,
slurrrp, zzzzz…zZUB! SH-SH-Sh-sh-sh,
motorbike starting, slurrrping iced cube]
Leyna Marika Papach (violin):
[like walking to avoid laser beams:
at times shivering, unsteady, firm, tight,
wobbly, shaking, trembly, easy, easy, … jump!]
Daniel Furuta (cello):
[cartoonic chase: twisting run, bouncing, swirling cord,
dragged door, slo mo scream, panic hiding, nosy hunt,
gotcha, scared, knock and bang!]
Cahya Haniva (voice):
[baby talk: sirene, boo boo hum, swelling, arrow whizzz,
another sirene, babywalking, spinning, another sirene,
whoosh, another spin, whoosh, puffing]
Score 04
Andy Slater (voice):
[falling hmmm. falling daah. low grrr. soft huh.
gasping oohh! short hahaa. softer huhumm.
weak hrrrrrrrr. faint huhm. loud belly laugh.
curly troll laugh. four whistles.]
Leyna Marika Papach (violin):
[changing music: upbeat, simple. dashes, declining.
rough, rapid. rising, short.
slight pause. rising & pulsating. slight pause. fall off.]
Daniel Furuta (gendèr):
[stepping notes: muddy. clean. sharp. clean multiple.
sharp-soft. very sharp. clean. sharp-sharp-soft.
sharp+clean. sharp and soft-to-loud]
Cahya Haniva (voice):
[raised hmmm. flat hehee. raised uhmm. low hmmm.
wavy hmmm. laddery hmm. laugh heeheehee. hoooh!
calm hmmm. wavy weeeee. wavy boommm.
curly hmmphoohmmphoohmm.]