“Synergy”
Score created by Muskan Arif + Chelsea Mo
Music composed and performed by Adrian Avendaño
Artist Statement – Chelsea Mo
For my graphic score project, I approached it in an abstract shape to represent synthetic pop/lo-fi. I was inspired by the various images shown as a reference by Giorgio and had little to no experience diving into those styles. The choice for bold simple colours was to guide the eyes along the piece better, and there were no previous sketches for this piece, all improvised. The medium is acrylic paint and was combined with Muskan’s piece in photoshop as a supporting background, as the piece overpowered her soft lines and I wanted to melt my piece with hers.
Artist Statement – Muskan Arif
I started my piece by making three strokes on Procreate, without listening to anything, and stared at them for a while. I then approached Keith’s idea of listening to music and then freestyling over on my piece. It was very much improvised. I started with the three strokes first because I wanted to incorporate a sense of air, freedom, to my piece. I was listening to a few Disney classics, the sense of nostalgia was what kept me inspired throughout this assignment. We brainstormed our ideas prior and came up with how we wanted to combine nature and geometric shapes. We collaged our pieces and we had multiple options to go with. We chose the one we submitted in particular because we found it to look the most pleasant; personally, the empty spaces in the piece were what expressed the feeling of nostalgia best.
Artist Statement – Adrian Avendaño
Researching the concept of synergy primed my mind to view the score as an atmosphere/realm rather than a series of independent events across a linear timeline. The electronics were inspired by the ethereal, dream-like quality of the colours and overall texture of the image. I recorded some samples from my analogue synthesizer that I dropped into a granular synthesizer to create/perform an evolving drone. The gestural shapes like the circles, rectangles, lines, and smoke-like clouds were interpreted on the drum set. I performed with mallets to emulate the softness of the shapes, occasionally bowing the cymbals inspired by the cloudiness and smooth lines. I wanted to generate an immersive sensation that allows for reflection and appreciation of the synergies that inform our daily experience.
This edition of the One-Page Score Project was led by Giorgio Magnanensi as a collaboration between Vancouver New Music and students in Keith Langergraber’s online ECUAD Foundation 165: Core Interdisciplinary Studio course that took place in summer 2020
