The Harking Sonata

The Harking Sonata is a typographic interpretation of a sound file. The sound was taken from the English accents archive of the British Library. It is a conversation that was held between an interviewer and six males. These people are part of a choir, therefore the project was based on music notation and music scores. The main idea is to reproduce the original sound of the conversation by a group of performers that read the sound sheets.

This project was made for the 2013 ISTD student award, it passed the assessment.

Comments made by the ISTD assessment "Good interpretation and typographic standards. Good layout and design.” “A well produced and realised final piece that demonstrates good control of typographic codes and conventions relative to sound.”

The project comes with 7 music books (typographic interpretation of the sound file) and a script book (the content of the conversation in a more readable layout)

The music books were made as concertinas, this way it can be read as double spread or it can be completely open to observe the graphic interpretation of the whole conversation.

The conversation is about local expressions, these are some of the expressions mentioned.

One double spread. The space of the paper was divided into 6 areas ( 6 speakers). In this page the main speaker is the top area, which is the director of the choir, then there are 3 more areas which are playing, they are laughing at what the main speaker is saying. At the bottom there is the time counter, to locate this part of the conversation in the original file. At the top you can see who is the main speaker and who are the secondary speakers.

Double spread, where you can see how the space was divided. In this spread 5 people are producing sound at the same time. The project is based on music sheets, therefore I tried to follow the music notation rules.

At the end of the music book there is the sound key. A set of typographic codes were created to evoke the different sound produced in the original conversation.