Mountain

Intention

My motivation for the piece was simply to take one of my favorite songs and try to capture its essence in geometric form. I translated Grimes's song "Realiti" into physical form based on some of the imagery that forms in my head when I listen to the song. My goal was to create the feeling of of surreal-ness that is created with the lush instrumentals, and also to evoke the imagery and feelings associated with the chorus of the song -- 

"Oh, baby, every morning there are mountains to climb
Taking all my time
Oh, when I get up, this is what I see
Welcome to reality."

Product

The final product is a suspended black origami hexahedron. I folded it from thick sketch paper (Strathmore toned tan) and then used masking tape to wrap and secure it. I taped string to the hexahedron so that it could hang. Then since I don't have paint readily available I simply colored the whole thing with sharpie, so the final product is a rather glossy texture. Afterwards I photographed the object using a piece of printer paper as the background. The pink lighting was created by using pink post-its to create a sort of filter for my desk lamp. 

Approach

I approached the assignment by mostly thinking of the images and feelings that were evoked by the song, rather than the actual sounds themselves. I focused on the idea of the mountain and wanted to abstract it into a simple, triangular geometric form. I used the color black to make the form seem more monolithic and insurmountable. Finally, I used pink lighting to represent the both the light of the early morning, and also the light of dusk, because when I hear this song I always think of the feeling and vision of going on a night drive. For this assignment, I don't think I took inspiration from a particular artist or artwork, but rather drew from my whole "aesthetic" experience as well as my experience crafting with these sorts of items (gained through some stuff I did in high school).

Reflection

I think I accomplished my goal, but I realize that since things like symbolism and imagery are very subjective it's difficult to say whether or not the physical translation is an "accurate" translation of the audio. And since I did focus on only specific aspects of the song, and not much on the actual sound, I don't actually think my object can be recognizable as the original. I think if I had more time I would have added aspects to the project -- my original goal was to do a sort of diorama with more suspended origami items (like little stars), which might have helped to depict the audio a bit better.