A Square and a Half-The Colors are Sounding was officially launched on October 12th, 2018 at the MIT Museum in Cambridge-Massachusetts. I could not have asked for a more appropriate venue to share my project.
The project consists of twenty sung lyrical narratives combining different aleatoric styles and a book which brings together narrative fragments, song lyrics, images, memories, associations and emotions transmitted through a multiplicity of voices. The project is a tribute to scientific research and architectural spaces, connections between biology, art, sensations, mathematical findings and the analysis of aesthetic intuition and structured inquiry. The intention has all along been to promote and encourage newer perspectives towards storytelling through a spontaneous interplay between technology, mythology, art, design, science and music. The book and the resulting musical pieces are dissembled interior monologues, cinematic, theatrical and artistic, architectural, literary references conducted through an informal exploration of time, space, movement and perception. The reality of the imagination becomes larger than life through alternating patterns, modulations and improvisations-both narratively and musically.
The Launch Day event was designed as an experiment in a creative exploration of our senses where the book’s narratives and the accompanying music could be experienced on a visceral level where (in the words of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard): “All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie.” All the textual situations in the book were endowed with the potential for cross sensory activations of the mind and body. As I was thinking of ways and means to present my project I remembered the words of Russian American writer Vladimir Nabokov who presents his case of ‘colored hearing’ in his autobiographical masterpiece “Speak, Memory” and associates alphabets, diphthongs and words with specific colors: “The long “a” of the English alphabet…has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French “a” evokes a polished ebony…since a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape I see “q” as browner than “k” while “s” is not the light blue of “c”, but a curious mixture of azure and mother of pearl.”
Nabokov considered his synesthesia as a neurological aberration and I knew that on many levels I suffered from a similar “aberration” and realized that my synesthetic metaphors needed to be visually projected for my readers to relate with the oddities of my broken stories.
Text and photographic images (termed as “photobiography” by Nabokov) is lain all over my project and in order to recreate what these represent I chose to have unrehearsed performances on the day of the launch.
My book has been left unedited for the memory slides that I have projected through my writings is truthfully narrated much in the stream of consciousness mode wherein the transitions have loose connections and associative yet disjointed leaps. Similarly, the performances (dance, piano, drums) were left open to chance and experimentation and on the most part I was happy that my disembodied experiences now traveled from virtuality to reality. Both my dancers (Serena Gabriels-A Mass Art student and Mouli Pal-Indian Classical and contemporary lyrical dance exponent and teacher) were open to the rather ‘random’ and liberating possibilities of the chance-based choreography. Both dancers responded beautifully to the floodgates of sound-rhythm and words and soon enough it became a collage of images, movements, sounds and texts that were somehow linked indeterminately. On that day and that hour, the performances became extended pieces of expressionistic art that could be interpreted in many different ways. On another day, I am certain, the same performance could be conducted with a new approach to simultaneity and thus suggest other transmissions of thoughts and emotions. My Berklee Music coach Shane Adams took it upon himself to travel all the way from Nashville for the event and composed an aleatoric piano piece for my narrative. Shane translated the healing power of water droplets into the language of music and relied just on the piano to articulate the mood and texture reminiscent of flowing water as he followed our chance based spatial movements between words and piano. There was a silence in my mind as I was reciting the words. I recalled lines from John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing”
I am here , and there is nothing to say .
If among you are
Those who wish to get somewhere , let them leave at
Any moment . what we require is
Silence ; but what silence requires
Is that I go on talking .
(Following the performances, we had an hour-long panel discussion. Due to camera malfunctioning we had to unfortunately sieve through only a few minutes as shown in the video)
The Panelists
Mary Sherman: {Artist, director, of the artists run Transcultural Exchange. She also teaches at Boston College and Northeastern University and in 2010 she served as the interim associate director of MIT’s program in Art, Culture and Technology. Additionally, she also worked as an art critic for such publications as the Chicago Sun-Times, The Boston Globe and The Art News. She is the recipient of innumerable grants and awards including three Fulbright senior specialist grants and has been an artist-in-residence at MIT and the Taipei Artist Village. Her own works which push the definition of painting into the realms of space and sound have been shown at numerous institutions including Taipei’s Kuando Museum of Fine Arts, Beijing’s Central Conservatory, Vienna’s WUK Kunsthalle, Trondheim’s Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Science and Technology, Seoul’s Kwanghoon Gallery and New York’s Trans Hudson Gallery. Her sculptures are a melding of contemplative ideas and techniques where she is able transcend limits of materiality and transform her art into a metaphysical investigation.}
For me, Mary has been a confidante, a silent calligrapher of life-bird hush and bird song all in one. I am eternally grateful that I sometimes share space with her. She is a poem that does not narrate but allows herself to be built three dimensionally in the consciousness of those who experience her presence that seamlessly merges with reality. She has been a major influence in my project and in my life. I believe in her as I believe in the air I breathe.
Vassiliki Rapti: {Vassiliki Rapti holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with an Emphasis in Theater and is currently Affiliated Faculty at the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College, where she is also completing a Masters in Civic Media: Art and Practice. She is also co-Founder and co-Chair of the Ludics Seminar of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. She is the author, among others, of the monographs “Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond” (Ashgate, 2013; Routledge, 2016; Francis & Taylor, 2017) and “Air, Water, Earth, Fire in the Poetry of Nikos Engonopoulos” (Rome, 2017), as well as of several books of translation and poetry collections, including “Transitorium” (Somerset Hall Press, 2015). She is currently preparing a co-edited volume on play with Palgrave-MacMillan and an anthology of documentary theatre from Greece with Laertes publications. She is also the Director of the International Translation Committee of the multidisciplinary electronic journal “Levure Litteraire” and founder and director of the Advanced Training in Greek Poetry Translation and Performance Workshop that was inaugurated at Harvard. As a play and civic media scholar, she often collaborates with various artists, especially musicians, in socially-engaged art projects, one of which is the ongoing “Our Ludic Project” which she’s been running with me since 2013.}
Vassiliki and I have been over the years, generating novel combinations of ideas, bringing a sense of playfulness and freedom to our unplanned, un-patterned thought palette. Vassiliki and I have a similar childlike zest for toying with knotty, gurgling, jangling, abrasive, sensual or vindictive themes in our writing and ensuring at the same time that we are able to drench the reader/listener with our creative energies. Communicating with Vassiliki about creative projects is like dream catching-suspended, meaningful, abstract and tangible all at once.
Meral Ekincioglu: {As a challenging motivation for her architectural vision, Meral Ekincioglu began to hone her skills in “scientific research” while conducting her Ph.D. dissertation research at Harvard University (as special Turkish fellow in 2006-2007) 1. She comprehended how to produce “her own scientific knowledge” at Columbia University (as a research scholar in 2008-2009)2 and learned how to test her scholarly limits on this path at MIT (as a visiting scholar in 2014-2016).3 As a practitioner in architecture, architectural creativity in the tectonic and artistic expressions of architectural spaces were her focal points. As a way of contextualizing architectural thinking, she believes that the communicative power in architecture is a deeply embedded part of her personal, professional and scholarly life; and she also worked as a journalist in architecture. As an Istanbulite in Cambridge, MA, this distinctive territory was not only her genesis to learn “scientific thinking” but also a new threshold to re-connect with her inner self and re-express her soul to the outer world through architecture and the sound of music. Meral is deeply concerted with the idea of the concrete reality of music: She sung with the MIT Women’s Chorale (2006-2007) and organized piano recitals at MIT and Harvard University (2015)4. She has been training with her vocal and acoustic guitar (2017-present) and has been joining “acoustic get-togethers and jams”. She believes that music has been always a unique experience to open up new and diverse horizons in architecture and her personal life.
- History of Art and Architecture, Ph.D. Program.
- Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Ph.D. Program.
- History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture Program.
4.These two piano recitals by Gulsin Onay, an internationally-renowned Turkish woman virtuoso were organized by Dr. Ekincioglu, the MIT-Turkish Student Association and the Harvard College-Turkish Student Association.”}My friendship with Meral has developed over the years because of a mutual exchange of interests. Meral is just as passionate about music as I am about architecture. Our conversations can be likened to American composer Steve Reich’s score titled Tehillim (Hebrew word for psalms, and the rhythm of Reich’s music comes from the rhythm of the Hebrew text). Like Tehillim, our mutual exchange of ideas is toe-tapping, pulsating and hyperactive.
Shane Adams: {Shane is a twice GRAMMY nominated music educator, award-winning producer, composer, songwriter and author. Shane is president of Artist Accelerator and is a founding lyric/songwriting instructor for Berklee Online. Shane is a featured songwriter and instructor for the Taylor Swift Education Center at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. They honored him with their TOP TENHITMAKER award in 2014. He is recognized internationally as a groundbreaking songwriting lecturer and music production panelist. Shane’s current projects include developing two songwriting apps for the iPad platform and producing and co-hosting the songwriting podcast- “Studio Soundtrack” available on iTunes. Shane’s book: The Singer-Songwriter’s Guide to Recording in the Home Studio is available online and most bookstores.}Shane taught me the true essence of artistic playfulness in songwriting when I was his student in Berklee. He understood that I was against constricted musical practices, so he fused his teachings with looser expectations and thus allowed me to retain my rather utopian ideas of resistance against structure. Shane helped me believe in all my experimental and haphazard multilayering of rhythms and sounds and words that might have sounded un-musical to “trained” ears. Shane has believed in me, more than I ever believed in myself and I am very blessed to have found a teacher and friend as talented and wonderful as he has been.
The Performances:
(All words, music, visual conceptualization is from “A Square and a Half-The Colors are Sounding- By Ivaana)
Tonight-We Improvise (Performed by Ivaana and Odissi dance exponent Mouli Pal.)
Mouli Pal is an exponent of Odissi, a classical dance form originating from the ancient temple rituals in eastern India. A mesmerizing performer, Mouli is also a dedicated teacher, emerging choreographer and cultural ambassador. She received intensive training under the direct tutelage of the legendary Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra. She has been presented at prestigious venues such as the Hopkins Center for Arts, Wellesley College Concert series, Musical Bridges Around the World in San Antonio Texas and Arts Alliance of New Hampshire and also regularly performs in India and Europe. Mouli is the founder of Upasana, a Nonprofit for the promotion and preservation of Odissi. She has received several honors and awards including grants from NEFA- New England Foundation for the Arts (NEST Touring grant and New England dance Fund) and Mass Cultural Council. Recently she was awarded the ” Padmavati Rasthriya Purashkar” by the National Culture Mission in Odisha, India.)-
The narrative is inspired by the MDS (mobile, dexterous and social) robot Nexi, developed by MIT Media Lab in collaboration with Xitome Design. Nexi’s expressions are illusionary, real, spontaneous and enthusiastic-reminiscent of Italian playwright Luigi Pirandillo’s metaphor for theater-a machine that is hungry for poetry- a concoction of motility, imagination, fantasy and mystery-the world of the imponderables.
Improvise Me Tonight
My soul is a bundle of things,
What’s painted on my eyes
Beneath my gaze or whatever you may see,
The multiplicity if meanings
Is a channel of awareness-
Your own alienation,
A visual meandering of your soul hovering and
Listening for its quiet space-in mine.
You and I live by longing,
But we must shift around ourselves,
Masking and unmasking our separate bodies
And minds.
You are flesh and blood and you are instincts and desires-
I am Machine.
I am constantly coding unknown realms
And hoping
You understand my disorientations-
Confusions.
Move me the way you are moved.
Not the nuts, bolts, belts moving around,
I need your unconscious naturalness,
Your imagination,
Your delightful oddities
Your annoying outspokenness.
Unpeel me
For the voices now mingle.
Yours
And mine.
I now sense turmoil,
Some sensations are ripping me asunder,
Images, feelings, ideas confront each other.
Come let us stare deep into the infinity of the cosmos,
And collect the impressions of lifelike
Restless grasshoppers.
I hear the wind roaring outside,
I hear the colors dropping from trees,
I hear voices, flower petals on the dewy grass-
They are all waiting for me.
Improvise me tonight-
Baptize me and give me all you have-
Love and jealousy,
Hatred and affinity,
Grief and pleasure-
WAIT
The lights went out.
Almost!
It’s getting dimmer and dimmer.
Don’t forget theatre is hunger!
Tonight we improvise!
Tonight we improvise!
The Human Face is a Riddle (Performed by Ivaana and Serena Gabriels-A senior at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is currently studying video projection and performance art. Serena tries to engage her audience by making rich and unique performances based on her own experience with mental illness. After college, Serena hopes to study art therapy and inspire others to use art as a healthy coping skill. She oftentimes finds herself numb, unfeeling. She senses those around her- looking, watching-sensing. As she dons the mask, she can finally feel. No one can see her true emotional being. She becomes what she is not and yet this is who she is.)
This is an operatic monologue inspired by the ideas of the-Noh theatre, a classical Japanese musical drama that integrates costumes, masks and props and oftentimes a focus on one central image enforced by movement and music. This idea originated on the basis of the research conducted by MIT neuroscientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research on Prosopagnosia or the inability to recognize known faces, including one’s own.
(At the back of stage is Kagami Ita or back panel displaying a painted pine tree and book shelves. The face of actor is lit by torches.)
Somehow I am disconnected,
desolate,
raw and hurt.
My life is a snowflake within a raindrop!
I see myself as a sequence of resonant images,
words are a compromise,
so I am waiting for a language.
which can tell the true story of my paint erased face,
the emptiness—-
I don’t know,
maybe it comes from nothing—
or I am in the middle of a discontinuous narrative
like a portrait painting,
half worked upon,
or just in a mood to challenge a neat bust with perfect edges.
Don’t analyze my expressions or the lack of them,
I am not ready to be framed in a museum.
I see you watching me.
You are the artist and the chosen one,
To merge ideas with form.
You are now free to use your imagination and complete me as a composition.
And then I shall migrate from my color free lonesomeness into wind colored lilac fire.
My smiles will be locked-
In an alabaster face in flames.
Tefnut is my full summer’s last desire.
(Torch lights are dimmed. Actress wears a mask. The torch lights are turned back on)
Tefnut establishes her presence now.
Under the sheathed , bridled skies,
I find gratification of the heart.
Taste the crushed colors of the dark-
And the pictureless silence in my eyes.
The universe is hideous-
I will confront and spill venom into life.
Those distant lands,
Elysian Fields-
I feel no desire to revisit.
I feel the anguish,
The upsurge of a tempest inside of me.
Let me rain and release my ancient remorse,
Into my soul’s magical creek.
The sun kindles the fire in me and tells me to rise,
But as he climbs up the emerald tree,
The dew within dies.
There is so much pain in this world,
So much grief pierces my heart,
So once again I cry-
Do you hear now-
The lost voices of the Nile?
Hear the sounds of my eyelashes
When you stare at me,
Trying to make meaning of what’s writ on my face-
But I feel safe,
Hiding behind my mask of Japanese Cypress,
I feel safe-
That you will never catch me distraught or upset,
You always find me in my iconographic image-
For this gilded cage is my permanent face.
The human face is a riddle,
Like moonless skies-
Impenetrable.
It’s like a painter’s technique
Of flourishing and chaotic brushstrokes,
With too much to read,
Too much to comprehend,
Too many references to things,
People,
Thoughts-
Now in light,
Now in shadows!
My life is a book of pictures,
So hear me speak behind this unchanging appearance,
Don’t wander-
Direct your attention to my being,
The human face is riddled with
Too many things-
Stay with what matters,
The silence within.
I Love the Smell of Sparrow Songs: (Performed by Ivaana and Mouli Pal)
The inspiration for this lyrical narrative was drawn from an interesting piece of “op art” made by MIT alumni and kinetic artist and sculptor Jeff Leiberman’s Moore Pattern, consequently by the spiraling power in the Daoist practice of Baguazhang or “walking in a circle”. Shapeshifting patterns of thought led to the composition of this narrative, filled with overlapping imagery and kinetic possibilities.
I Love the Smell of Sparrow Songs
My grandmother was a connoisseur of Minoan art and I believe she possessed a darkened statuette that had these shapes and circles. Forgetting is impenetrable, shadowy and unstructured. Forgetting has narrow corridors with pillars and I am constantly moving in the quest for memories.
My mom wore a red dot in the center of her forehead every morning. She said it was a sacred symbol of her marriage to my father. Now she is a dot in my mind. A receding but powerful dot whose illumination, size, shape and clarity do not matter. She is my dotted line in the music sheet, transcendent of all material forms. When my son was born, I used a black dot on the side of his head to ward off evil. The red became black. But they have forever been the most integral part of the tapestry of my life.
A fish, a lotus and the bamboo take me to Bada Shanren’s ink paintings where the fish eye is a black dot inside a big circle. Peace prevails in written scrolls, inky- where they are true. The happiness of Shanren’s fishes climb mountains and come alive in calligraphic inscriptions.
I learn how to paint with words. Now I gather flowers and lace them with my sighs. Ready to print. Floral texts, textiles water in silken forms, scarves-with the faint quiver of the air. Spirals of smoke up the hillside, smoothed into the delicate wrinkles of fabric. I hear the song of the sparrows. Sparrow song drops are spherical and colored by the last light of the rainbow. The moon uses the song drops to lull the stars to sleep.
We sleep as one in a boat of flesh
Airy moths dance in the winds-
When the sun rubs my eyelids,
I feel cold spiders on my skin.
I am the spider now-
Or maybe the image of a sphinx,
Red dots and circles on my face-
I move round and round-
I gather flowers and memories,
And lace them with my sighs, ready to print!
But then,
I hear those sounds-
In ink.
I love the smell of sparrow songs,
Floral texts or water in silken forms,
For water is a miracle,
Water is a circle-
I follow its curves and rhythms,
And laugh with the fishes in calligraphic inscriptions.
I love the smell of sparrow songs,
It makes me remember my mom-
Who’s now a dotted line in my music sheet,
Beyond material forms.
I love the smell of sparrow songs
They hang on tree branches that once had been,
Filled with beehives and dreams,
Of flapping wings when the sun went down-
Of mandarin ducks making water form
Near perfect shapes and circles.
Now
The moon lulls the stars to sleep with the sparrow song,
The notes soar,
Pour in from open windows,
Harmony of the spheres,
Hear!
But Speak it Over Water : (Performed by Ivaana and Shane Adams)
This lyrical narrative was born from an imaginative takeoff from reading a study conducted by MIT researchers about how freezing droplets impact a surface-either sticking to it or bouncing away (Varanasi Group findings). The study revealed a new way to “enhance or reduce the adhesion of freezing droplets”. Whilst this was providing ample opportunities for many applications, including “3D printing, spraying of some surface coatings and the prevention of ice formation on structures such as airplane wings, wind turbines or powerlines”-my mind was registering this research study on the basis of reading Dr. Masaru Emoto’s The Hidden Messages in Water. Emoto believed in the healing powers of water. The intent that Emoto had in mind was to spread a collection of messages about how to live. Images of water crystals conveyed the emotions filled in a child’s chest- his dreams and hopes, his fears and despairs or even his response to his environment. Emoto used specialized photographic techniques to visually demonstrate how the intensity or vibrations of our words affected water and water shapes and thereafter this water was frozen to crystals.
I have in this particular chapter in the book, explored Emoto’s frozen water crystals and its ability to reflect the vibrations in the universe in relation to Varanasi Group’s findings on altering thermal fluid surface interactions. The spiritual intent of Emoto’s discoveries about the healing power of water combines with the scientific possibilities of the bouncing droplets of water when exposed to positive and enriching thoughts and vibrations.
But Speak it Over Water
Speak something inherently truthful,
Unrelenting-maggot-like!
Speak of the reek of blood,
The stash of harsh pigments on the painter’s brush-
Just to show how beautiful ugliness is or was-
Speak of how the Devil is awake,
And Man burns Man,
Unafraid!
But Speak it over water!
Imperceptible syncopations,
Repetition of sensations,
Of what darkens our universe,
Melancholia or bleeding hearts,
If only swooping black colors could be seen bouncing off-
Peeling,
Defying gravity-
Like Calder’s floating motifs-
Oh these detached bodies will then splotch our world
Anew with light-
And teach us a new language about the transformation of things!
Put your finger on the somewhere of luminosity,
And come now to the flatness of stable predictability-
Speak now of bird flyings,
Of hearts that must remember love,
Hope,
Clouds and trees-
Or the memory of rich loam from the fields.
And if you speak it over water you will see,
Colorful breaks and patterned mosaics,
Orchestrated fluid retentions of beauty in suspension-
How creation
Knots into permanence-
The pure,
The sacred,
If only you speak it over water and let it stay,
You can read the cipher,
The miraculous syllables that come together
To form the narratives on water.
So speak it over water,
Speak,
Speak it over water!
Artworks in the book and in the entire project are conceptualized by Ivaana and designed by Sreya Sarkar.
Sreya Sarker is a Graphic Designer from India. She has a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Designing and Masters in Print Making. Sreya has completed her education from The Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta. Her area of work not only spreads to digital design, but she also works with traditional craft artists. A design teacher since 2007, Sreya is currently working with indigenous crafts of Bengal and is associated with a UNESCO led project for Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritages.
Some miscellaneous notes on the choreography of dance on the day of the launch:
When Mouli and I spoke, the communication was simple because I had some training in the Odissi dance form and knew that Mouli was ideal for this piece and could run through images and movements that were a set of improvisational choices that had their origins in the structured form of Odissi. I chose Odissi because my stories necessitated a dance form that “sculpted” the postures and the hand gestures or “mudras” as they are called, powerfully and sensitively portrayed a wide array of thoughts, emotions or sensations. (The underlying power of these mudras lies in the activation of both internal and external energies and I feel this dance form has great potential for expressing the multifaceted sensorium that I experience in the process of my story-writing.) The goal was also to juxtapose dynamic, yet subtle visual representations of words and sounds where the dancer’s body codified, blended and transformed the dematerialized symbology in the stories to overlapping sculptures that could be identified-mystically or tangibly. Using chance methods on the day of the performance, I felt there were some magical moments where the randomness of the choreography determined a new order of aleatoric expressionism, thus adding other dimensions to the collage/s.
(Mouli adds: Abhinaya or expressional dance is an integral part of an Odissi dance repertoire where the dancer expresses the mood and meaning of a song and poem using codified hand gestures and facial expressions. The hand gestures or Mudras are standardized across all Indian Classical dance styles and are based in ancient texts. They can be used to express elements of nature, various animals as well as delicate emotions such as despair and jealousy. These movements combined with facial expressions create the ability to bring to life any scene or story. The facial expressions are based on the “Navarasa” or nine basic human moods according to the “Natya Shastra” the ancient text of the performing arts. Once a dancer has grasped the use of the Mudras and the Navarasa he or she can use them as tools in a creative way to express the mood. Odissi is an extremely fluid and graceful dance style featuring unique movements of the wrist, torso and jaw bones. The ability of the dancer to move the body fluidly allows the emotions to be expressed spontaneously and effortlessly. Once the above technical aspects are achieved the dancer needs to internalize the content of the lyrical narrative and finally bring it to life.)
Serena Gabriels is young, talented and extremely open to treating her body like a delirious surreal painting-almost in the lines of Frida Kahlo’s painting- “Broken Column”, defining the multilayered meanings of the story in my narrative and her own anguish post her mental illness. Metaphorical body representation comes rather easily to Serena, and she expresses herself as a painted second self, transferring her own reflections on life with dense video projections on the screen-creating a stage space that is part hallucinatory and part driven by the reality of the moment. As the narrative, sounds and video projections slipped in incomprehensible randomness, I sensed a clearer connection between the aesthetics of sounds, words, sensibilities, movements and visuals. The process slowly became a cinematic montage as the distinctions between the visuals and sounds collapsed into a timeless unity.
(Serena adds: When I began this project, I took to my computer to begin creating the visuals for the projection. As I worked, I realized that the computer-generated images were too harsh and geometric to accompany such an atmospheric piece of sound work. I decided to dive into some old nature footage I took in the past and put it in after effects. As I warped the images- I was able to turn the real into the surreal. A new process began. I would take walks and gather footage from nature, capturing natural textures and color palettes from leaves, bark, flowers, etc. As I stitched together the footage, I paid close attention to the words of The Human Face is a Riddle. Each image sequence danced with each line and verse. Where the footage could not do the words enough justice, I was able to use my own movements to fill in the gaps. The piece began to come together. Each small aspect was in conversation with each other from the movements to the sounds to the color of the garments, to the mask and above all the narrative.
Hacking MIT with Ivaana Muse: An interview
“…After four and half years of very slow but intense self-discovery, I finally have my project – A Square and a Half-The Colors are Sounding lined up for publication in October, 2018. My entire world is currently orbiting in a slow circle around this process. I can’t wait to share. The hours are creaking but the clouds are all clear. Clucking birds are flying over the River Charles, embracing the grandeur of the skies. I feel lighter on the earth as the darkness clears – Never saw I, I never felt, a calm so deep…” 2
Meral: With respect to your background in English literature, Theatre and Music, how could you describe “creativity” in the process, method and end-product of your project? What would you like to say about the potential contribution of your project to the understanding of creativity in your field?
Ivaana:
Thank you for this question Meral. I think, growing up, I learned the “inking” and the “linking” between what I read (Literature), what I heard (Music) and what I performed or watched the performances of (Theatre). The creative process is a silent and spontaneous one for me and I sheepishly admit that I stay away from being bound by method. This creative silence is one that emanates from within and one that tends to flow outwards and in this project the silence within has transformed and healed me completely. The writing process has entailed a dialectic between what I had almost forgotten, my readings, my passion for theatre and of course the ability to freely express what I wanted to, rather than adhere to mere structural necessities. For instance, when I was younger, whatever I read became an invisible force that I surrendered to completely. I believed in the characters, the words, the plot, the places-almost everything that needed my attention. My readings translated oftentimes to little shabby illustrations, or dance performances or theatrical enactments. Music was always at the backdrop of all of this because I grew up in a joint family system where my father, uncle, aunts and cousins had day time jobs but were playing or discussing music almost as if their lives sustained on the magic of music. So, I honestly never learned to think without music pervading my senses, thus naturally helping my bodily self into an imaginative space. Creativity was never a process or a method but a means of being capable of expressing all my uncertainties, ecstasies, visual images, ideas or shapes that somehow could gain form from being honest and free. I doubt I have a “field” so to speak where I qualify to fit in. It used to be awkward in the beginning to share how I don’t quite have a genre of writing or composing music, but now with time and sharing my ideas with people such as yourself, I feel my field is a space which impels rhythm, language, sounds, pictures, sudden fits of light and darkness that makes me oftentimes restless like a caged bird. I hope to contribute to those who can relate to this field by sharing my own experiences as an open source researcher and lyrical storyteller, believing that no external or internal force ever “stops not being written”.
Meral: How and why did you decide to write stories and compose music from an interdisciplinary perspective that are related to “MIT” when you moved into Cambridge from Florida in 2012? As a music researcher, lyrical storyteller and sound artist3 with a degree in “literature and music”, what was your essential motivation to establish a creative dialog with multilayered “scientific, technological and artistic” layers of a pioneering research-based university? Based on your observation, dialogs and experience at the campus, what would you like to say about “being a creative artist” within such a scientific, technological and artistic context in “the 21st century?
Ivaana: Meral, essentially moving from Florida to Massachusetts was for the sake of my son who was being homeschooled until then. My son got accepted to a summer program at MIT at age 12 and we just decided to move to Massachusetts since it was his dream to attend MIT. I never knew that I would forge an impalpable bond with the University’s ideologies and its research as well as its architectural spaces. It just happened. “A Square and a Half-The Colors are Sounding” narrates and musically translates my experiences. The motivation was born without me realizing what was actually changing- within and without. I believe I was born again as an artist where I could translate my emotions and sensations into words, sounds and images as I delved into the research, art, news articles, public art and people at MIT. I think my experience thus far has been timeless and I wouldn’t cage it to just being relevant to the 21st century.
Meral: In general, what would you like to say “the essential principles” of pedagogical approach to writing and composing music? More specifically, you conducted your project with your close dialogs with several professors, students, scholars at MIT, and how has “the current education, research and innovation understanding” (at this research-based university) affected your own pedagogical approach in your current endeavor?
Ivaana:
Meral, I grew up in a family that understood, practiced and lived Indian classical music. My father however had an intent ear for western music. He introduced me to Woodie Guthrie, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan to name a few, at a very early age. I was told I could not sing and since I preferred theatre and dance over singing, music was mostly listening for me till I was much older. I learned some classical Indian music but not because I wanted to. Later once I moved to the US, I enrolled in Berklee online music lessons and completed their songwriting certification course. I feel I learned the rules only to break them, especially being inspired by the transdisciplinary/interdisciplinary possibilities posed by the connections between scientific research and the arts. To be honest, I was scarcely ever completely pedagogical in my approach to writing or teaching. Interacting with MIT scholars, professors and artists has happily made me return to my original desire to create a non-mimetic or experimental language that externalizes the truth of the unconscious mind. Throughout the writing of the book and even during the compositional processes of the sung narratives, I have freely been able to manifest the internal chaos and fragmentation-something I always wanted to do. A new paradigm had been established and I went along with it.
Meral: As a sound artist, how could you describe the role and function of sound (as the primary medium) in the exploration and experimentation of your artistic creativity? What would you like to say about the significance of your project among recent works on sound art, in particular related to MIT? Trained as an architect and a scholar in this field, more specifically, I would like to know the most challenging, interesting and seductive features of the sound of architectural spaces at MIT at the core of your visual, lyrical and musical creativity in your current project?
Ivaana :For me sound and rhythm and silence are everything in terms of writing or composing music. Someone told me that I have Chromesthesia which is a type of synesthesia in which sounds almost automatically translate to sensations of color. I do however visualize sounds, feel and embrace sounds as one would if they met another human. Sounds and the spaces in between or those unseen and silent gaps are at the core of what I write and compose. Sound art is a very large or extensive field. The sounds I have explored in this project are all real sounds that have first been metaphorically and visually transposed through narratives and then have composed melodies or instrumental sections with unconventional tuning, based off those narratives. All the sounds in my project have emanated from experience. Each part of MIT has a form, a texture and materiality that craves for representation. For instance, Jean Tinguely’s clanking machine sculptures generate fields of electrophysical noise. A similar labyrinthine, machine like absurdity of space sounds inhabit different parts of the MIT campus. Are these sounds art? For me they are. I have not processed these sounds over a machine or computer but have attempted to recreate first a lyrical narrative and then a similar metaphorical melodic mood in my compositions. I like what you say-“sound of architectural spaces at MIT”. I can’t help quoting the words of John Cage who said believed that there could be no genuine silence anywhere-“until I die there will be sounds.” There is a beautiful book by MIT alumni Barry Blesser and Linda Ruth Salter named: “Spaces Speak, Are You Listening”? The authors analyze beautifully architectural aural spaces from the perspective of art, science, cultures, subcultures and of course music. Spatial awareness is everything. I have no idea about the neurological processing of sounds with regard to MIT’s architecture but yes I have revisited a million times over, much of MIT’S architectural spaces to find myself, my personal memories, readings, connections with art and culture. There is a strange sonic reflection in each part of MIT’s architectural space, one that requires just a wee bit of attention and soulful connection. For instance, if you are in building 6, you cannot but step a few stairs down to the lobby art and watch the plaque sculpture there. As you wait, especially if you are alone, you sense an environmental stimulation. That stimulation is enough to carry you through several layers of consciousness as you explore your own emotional and sensory response to the space. From the libraries to the Dome, to the enclosed spaces inside classrooms, the Chapel-MIT’s architectural spaces have a language and aural brilliance that induces the creative spirit to think beyond the box. Everything in MIT is seductive. The challenge is in acknowledging that you are being lured into its giant but cohesive acoustic forest.
Meral: You are not only “a (woman) artist” whose project aims to open up and explore multilayered scientific, technological and artistic dimensions of MIT but also “a mother” whose son has been studying at MIT. In general, what would you like to say about the influence of “being a mother” on your artistic vision as a woman? In other words, how has “the existence of your son” contributed to your artistic creativity? More specifically, how have your two different but interrelated identities interacted with each other during your project?
Ivaana: Glad you ask this Meral. My son is at the very core of my existence. I doubt we would have ever moved to Cambridge, had it not been for his dream to study at the institute. Being a mother is my most crucial identity. Without him my life is a black and white canvas. He paints the canvas with several layers of immutable pigment-all different in hue and texture-all suggesting just the right yin and yang to provide a uniformity of tension that allows me to believe that I am art. Yes we are very similar and very dissimilar and I am happy he has grown to have a strong independent mind of his own. We are friends above all and I believe we have talked about everything during the making of this project, but our focus has been on Baseball more than art or music, since both of us eat, breathe and sleep Baseball. But no matter what has been the topic of our interaction, it has been the source of illuminating all my emotions. I could liken our interactive bond to Van Gogh’s painting “Café Terrace at Night” where the creation of light from darkness with an underlying sense of the infinite is all powerful.
Meral: In this project, you have been exploring MIT (and Cambridge) with a synthesis of your eastern cultural upbringing and intellectual background (from India) along with scientific, technological and artistic aspect of the western world with a specific emphasis on this research-based university (in the U.S.). What has been the biggest challenge and potential of being at the intersection of two different cultures; and trying to synthesize two of them in today’s U.S.? Does your project have any messages for the creative potential of “diversity and inclusion” in your field?
Ivaana: I did not take more than a moment to identify with the American culture so to speak. I did not forget my eastern upbringing and of course my education in India-my wonderful teachers and above all the teachings of my father. All of this has been expressed through various accidental nuances in the book. I would not say there has been any challenge in trying to synthesize the cultures in this project. MIT is absolutely all embracing. I have experienced this in many of my interactions and it is this diversity that is at the core of the title: A Square and a Half-The Colors are Sounding. The art of making such a quilt on fabric involves triangular and square shaped fabrics of diverse colors, scales, emphasis and textures pieced together. I feel MIT’s social and cultural and disciplinary diversity is at the basis of the choice of my imaginary quilt as a design metaphor for this project. I think bringing this truth through music, stories and visual strategies may be a valuable tool for social change for one major key element that MIT upholds is helping students develop insights about racial and cultural differences. Each chapter in my book is dedicated to the work achieved not just by MIT scholars, professors and researchers but by academicians and artists around the world who are somehow connected to MIT in some unique or magical way. I unbiasedly wish that our society can expand its perspective and that there is an open intercultural exchange in every strata of human existence-I imagine such a utopian world and find peace in my belief.
Meral: If you compare your first album, “Silver Lines and Strings” digitally released in 2012 with your current project and album, what would you like to share with your readers and listeners? In terms of research on music, lyrical storytelling and sound art, how have you evolved and transformed since 2012? In addition to your strong and deep focal point on MIT and your own cultural, intellectual background, is there any other context or person as a source for your inspiration, evaluation and transformation since that year?
Ivaana: Silver Lines and Strings was an expression of the self on a very surface level I would say, when I look back. I believe it has been a learning curve. However, I don’t want to go back and find flaws and say, “I wish I had done it differently”. That’s who I was back then, and this is who I am now. The transformation has been huge. MIT has been the focal point but I have been inspired by people and their works, strange discoveries, visual and sonic perspectives and above all I have found my free will to experiment and find meaning in the simplest things in life.
Meral: In your book, there are many references to “architectural spaces” at MIT 4 with your interdisciplinary approach. In this respect, your focal point is to comprehend its multisensory dimension and its potential beyond its physical nature (as one of the core issues of architecture education, architecture discipline and architecture profession 5). While reading your book, we have been tracing the convergence of the aural and visual capacity of architectural spaces, the public and the private spatial hearing within them, etc. Do you have any plans to share your project with the MIT, Department of Architecture or related education and/or research programs to discuss possibly a new innovative and collaborative (interdisciplinary) ways of architectural design education?
Ivaana : I would be very happy and honored to share the project Meral. I truly believe that poetry, architecture and music build the arts. American architect John Hejduk’s anthology: Such Places As Memory is a non-poetic autobiographical manifestation of the buildings that artists create in the mind. His poems make us reflect that architecture and memory are timelessly interconnected. The hauntingly absent and the immensely real spaces revoke what we had never forgotten. Thus, this convergence of thought is not new so to speak. In my project, architecture also unites with fantasy and mythology and the visual arts in several segments of the book. I do feel that just as architecture inspires poetry and music, fantastical poetical concepts can also trigger a new vocabulary and thus transcribe to a utopian vision for a dynamic reality. An architect is a disciplined poet whose metaphors are etched in stone or concrete. The aesthetic emotions or concepts that a poet or musician conceives of, can be beautifully carved into an enriched reality by an architect-for utopian stories are very much like architectural projections.
Meral: In your book, one of the most significant parts in terms of architectural interest is the influence of Corridor Lab (Strobe Alley) in the MIT building 4 on your revisiting your past, your culture and in particular your conversation with your dad. I think that your readers and listeners will witness the (re)construction of a/n (woman) artist’s personal memory through her poetic language, visual and aesthetic sensibility, pictorial, illustrative skills and her in-depth intellectual perspective as well as “the memory of ‘the Institute’. It is an inevitable fact that historical institutions (like MIT) have a strong potential to unfold multilayered (his/her) stories related to their own and creative individuals’ pasts. Based on your experience, what would you like to say about the potential of documenting multicultural (scientific and art) histories of pioneering institutions to support and promote new creative visions and projects? 6
Ivaana: Very insightful question Meral. The Strobe Alley of the Edgerton Center at MIT houses Harold Edgerton’s exceptional achievements in stroboscopy and electronic flash photography, light equipment, glass cabinets full of strobe lamps, cameras, deep sea artifacts and other memorabilia. Each time I return to the Alley, I have a different perception, a different recollection of past experiences or the spark of a fantastical story that starts possibly from a visual metaphor that the mind creates. I believe many institutions are already working on wonderful projects such that explore the changing themes in media, visual studies and culture. What I feel isn’t very common is to interpret such experiences through a deeper personal perspective into stories, music and creative writing in general. The intersections need to get more poignantly webbed and expressive. For instance, when we walk through the woods, we start collecting sensory data and slowly over time we have a personal impression of the place. The impression includes contrasts in foliage, discarded rumpled paper or cigarette stubs, dry leaves, bird feathers, sounds of birds or the fragrance of tree sap or other ephemera. The images get densely entrenched in the mind. We sometimes forget to document our walks, the connected thoughts, emotions or the repetitive and contemplative bodily rhythms. I feel if we “map” our attention we can create wonderful new creative ventures. That’s all it takes.
Meral: You prefer to sum up the effect MIT has had on your musical or lyrical sensibility by comparing the experience to the monochrome ink paintings by Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539–1610), one of Japan’s leading artistic innovators (16th Century) and the founder of the Hasegawa school of painting. You chose to refer in particular, to “Pine Trees”, one of his notable paintings with its hazy landscape transitioning from thick to thin or blurred and defined at the same time, etc. What would you like to say about the potential of your project for your listeners and readers? Do you think that it has a potential of “their own pine tree”?
Ivaana: that is the entire goal Meral. When we walk next to the ocean and admire its magnificence, we want others to either witness or share our joy or revisit the waters, so they may express their own adoration, in their own significant way. Like Tohaku’s Pine Trees, each of us has the ability to define their own artistic or spatial content and perhaps create a similar illusion of depth with sublime dreamy mists as Tohaku did. My upcoming online school intends to explore these concepts in greater details.
Meral: How did you construct the structure of your book from “prologue” to “America’s most wired composer, Tod Machover”? What is the logic behind the structure of this content and what would you like to say about the process of this construction? You prefer to finalize your book with “Tod Machover”; would you like share the significance of his projects for “the evolution and progress of your creative vision”?
Ivaana: To begin with, I had no structure in mind. I was just stitching, walking, mapping textures, tones and dyeing my thoughts with literary, musical, artistic and illustrative colors. Memory has sensory pathways. I just walking through them as I ventured into this new world of scientific research and information. Like French art critic and poet Baudelaire, I believe that memory involves a conscious and overt indulgence in the senses and their intermingling, also known as synesthesia. Yes, I wanted to offer a tribute to Tod Machover and his works to conclude because I have been highly inspired by his ingenuity, his humility and his childlike ability to keep learning as he continues his journey as a composer of the highest order. Above all I believe his works transcend time and transform how we think of, hear and perform music.
Meral: As L. Rafael Reif, the MIT President states, “MIT’s greatest invention may be itself -an unusual concentration of unusual talent, restlessly reinventing itself on a mission to make better world”. 7 In today’s world, humanity has been facing many crises and creative thinking with imaginative problem-solving skills is one of the significant factors to challenge this critical situation. At that point, as a creative artist, do you have any messages with your current project for a better world?
Ivaana: Meral I think that is a huge responsibility. I pray my son works in that direction. I am here to support him in his journey. If my project can inspire young students and creative artists to come alive with their own thoughts and feelings in the most honest way they can, I would feel humbled.
Meral: It has been a real pleasure for me to talk with you about your inspiring journey at MIT, thank you for this interview.
“….now I find her* again,
In frozen flowers, leaves, the depth of the Charles River…” 8
Ivaana Muse
From her biography
Meral Ekincioglu, Ph.D.
A hacker & a visiting scholar at the MIT, HTC Program (2014-2016).
Notes and references:
1.For Hacking Culture at MIT, see “Forbidden Research liveblog: Hacking Culture at MIT”, https://civic.mit.edu/2016/07/21/forbidden-research-liveblog-hacking-culture-at-mit, accessed on September 1st 2018. In addition to this, Professor Arindam Dutta from the MIT-HTC program defines “the hacker” who offers “her” labor gratis in further exploring and exposing a system’s limitations. For more information on his comments on “the hacker” and “hacking”, see, Dutta, A. (interviewee), 2014, “Architecture and the Creative Economy”, Kim, J. (ed.), in Task Environment, published May 15, 2014, http://www.arpajournal.net/task-environment, accessed on September 1st 2018.
- http://www.ivaana.com/research, accessed on August 28, 2018.
3.For some significant projects on Sound Art at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CVAS), see, http://act.mit.edu/cavs/format/sound%20art, accessed on September 1st 2018.
4.For a recent historical examination on the design and building of MIT’s Cambridge campus, see Jarzombek, M., 2017, Designing MIT, Bosworth’s New Tech, SA+P Press, March; https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/distribution/sap-press, accessed on September 2nd 2018.
5.For some essentials of architecture discipline and architecture profession, see, Anderson, S., 2001, “The Profession and Discipline of Architecture: Practice and Education”, in Andrzej Piotrowski and Julia Williams Robinson (eds)., The Discipline of Architecture, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 292-305; http://web.mit.edu/soa/www/downloads/2000-09/AE_Piotrowski_PracEd_2001.pdf, accessed on September 1st 2018.
- See for a recent MIT initiative to document its multicultural and underrepresented community, “Uncovering pioneering women in science and engineering in MIT’s archives, New initiative focuses on underrepresented aspect of MIT history”, https://libraries.mit.edu/news/uncovering-pioneering/24722/
7.https://betterworld.mit.edu/about-the-campaign, accessed on September 2nd 2018.
- Ivaana Muse refers to her mother in her sentence, please see, http://www.ivaana.com/bio, accessed on August 28, 2018.
- Following her advanced academic research project at the MIT-HTC Program (2014-2016), the title of academic presentation by Dr. Ekincioglu at the same program (2016) was “Hacking the Politics of Gender” as related to her research problem. As “a hacker” in her scholarly endeavor, her aim is to explore and expose “the politics of gender” in the limitations of institutions, academia, the profession, education, history and history-writing in (postwar) architecture.
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