Hollow Graphic features eleven musicians’ spontaneous interpretations of abstract photographs as graphic musical scores. Because of their non-conventional mode of creation, the scores lack certain fixed aspects of traditional musical notation, such as measures and note values. However each pattern’s position in relation to the lines of the staff is universally translatable. The colors, textures, shapes, and other aspects of the image are more ambiguous, leading to the varied interpretations among the musicians.

Through a more intuitive system of dictating a note or chord’s tone, progression, or duration, these “graphic scores” deconstruct traditional musical notation and suggest an alternative, multisensory mode of interpreting a photograph. The scores are presented as light boxes and holographic projections with corresponding audio and video of the musicians’ performances. Sound is paired with image to illustrate a new musical semiotic system while simultaneously invoking synesthetic experience in the viewer.

My work combines the everyday with the surreal to expose overlooked and unlikely connections. This is inspired by my synesthesia, an involuntary merging of the senses, which breaks normative systems of classification, by forming seemingly random associations.

Light Box Videos

Viewing Box Videos