The Visual Score Project is a graphic design experiment on similarities, bipolarities, representation and meaning, acquired when both our hearing and visual senses are mobilized. In a fewer words, it is an exercise on visualizing music.
It is based on the Orlando theme, a novel written by Virginia Woolf. 1928. A sarcastic, explosive, revolutionary piece of writing. Then, the book becomes music. Orlando Travel Mode by the Greek composer, Adonis Mitzelos, a progressive byzantine rock album, initially originated to dress up with unspoken tension, emotionality and flow a theatrical performance of Orlando, presented in Athens Greece in 2014.
The challenge is to create a distinctive visual language, of letters and original imagery, that manage to convey the content, action, atmosphere and emotions of the music and the Orlando theme.
The designs aspire to be original, demonstrate a consistent internal logic, be music-specific, conveying the message of a soul travelling in time, the bright side and the darker side of the journey.
Virginia Woolf writes in Orlando that we are all made of diamonds and clay, rainbow and granite. The Visual Score Project focuses on two selected tracks from the album (not yet released) and attempts to capture the feeling of her words in visual forms.
The first one is the homonymous title track, Orlando Travel Mode, a composition that works as a meeting point between the Western music tradition, classic and contemporary, and the Byzantine world. It is arranged in a progressive, vibrant manner, integrating electric guitar with Cretan lute, classic guitar, violins, cellos, soprano (Marianthi Sontaki), chanters choir, percussions, synth and bass. It is written in a 4/4 meter, based on the Ionian mode and keeping a constant moderate tempo of 120 beats/min.
Its graphic notation, titled Diamonds and Clay conveys information on the composition and the arrangement as well, having a coherent internal visual logic, messaging motion and tension. The color palette is based on the color correlations of the 27 notes that make up the basic melodic line. The colored radar works as a reference to the rainbow (optimism and life) and also to an eternal loop. It was developed by studying color and music note correlations based on frequencies. The 27 notes of the core melodic line and their duration were accurately visualized.Different instruments are indicated through colored rays, following a specific color key (blue for classic guitar and Cretan lute, red for electric guitar, yellow for bass/drums). The outer circle is a time reference to the duration of the track. It uses Roman numerals (as opposed to modern numbers), reminding the composition’s progressive nature. The choir and the soprano are indicated by a straight forward typography, in an effort to keep the basic logic as clear as possible. A short key is provided on the graphic notation in order facilitate understanding.
The second track is a cover of Henry Purcell’s wonderful piece, When I am laid in Earth, taken from Dido and Aeneas. It is arranged and performed by the composer himself (electric guitar) and the soprano Marianthi Sontaki. The imagery, titled diamonds and clay, conveys this darker feeling of Orlando theme and signals the end of the journey: a journey that lasted for three centuries. The shiny diamond, organic at its outline, contrasts with the gloomier background, messaging the precious value of life (and death). Time is indicated on an outer circle with Roman numerals (a reference to the previous graphic notation) and also through a solid geometrical diamond shape, numbered with contemporary numbers, coexisting within the circle, the same way the old and the new coexist in the music composition and arrangement.
Finally, a third visual, made of a dandelion and its tender blowing stalks is embracing both core themes: diamond and clay, rainbow and granite. This imagery, titled the journey, with its motion and flow, is supporting the eternal journey of the soul, in an ethereal, whimsical way, with an optimistic feel. The yellow color contrast is sharp and vibrant, almost electric (signaling the rock character of both chosen tracks). The yellow form is a distant reference to the distinctive neck ruffle of Orlando.
Imagery was originally developed for this project by observing nature and objects around everyday life. A candle light holder was turned into a diamond. Rose petals and dandelions were transformed to a yellow ruffle neck and eternity symbols. Background texture in the rainbow and granite graphic notation is a granite floor.
A self-negotiated project, undertaken through my course of studies at IDI, L6_tutor Ella Goodwin.
