26/07/2021
The Talking Heads. Completed For Project Crescendo
My first contact with Crescendo was when I was approached on Instagram in January by Miss Nanda Soe, the project’s creative director and connoisseur of demiurgic ideas. She liked my art (if we want to attribute my work to art) and found my doings intriguing and encapsulating. She asked if I wanted to be part of creative endeavours: Project Crescendo. Photography & videography based art exhibition inspired by music featuring five Immersive album worlds, five-album recreation covers and five conceptual short films. These albums being Blonde, Magdalene, Demon Days, Melodrama and Mm..Food. I was fascinated, to say the least. In only a few short paragraphs and a brief project outline, I was bought and sold into the realm of Project Crescendo.
During these early stages, many other creatives from across the region and beyond were also becoming part of the Crescendo brand. Nanda and her accompanying multi-talented enchantress, Project Producer and best of friends London Hawke were migrating across the numerous creative disciplines, picking up intuitive minds and capitative souls to join the Crescendo crew. People were hearing the word, but they weren’t seeing it- well, not yet anyway.
It was here as a designer that I was tasked to develop the visual identity of the Crescendo exhibition. We could not wait for the final artworks that were months in the making to be completed, we needed some visual stimulus now. Something to inveigle crew, and more importantly, the public’s interest in the project and give them an idea of what it could become.
Often related to sound and music, a crescendo is defined as the highest point reached in a progressive increase of intensity. I wanted to take the definition away from the literal and more into the metaphorical. Without writing an etymology on music and the way it transcends our being and place, I wanted to communicate the way music fuels us in the many ways it does best. An increase of intensity till reaching the highest point of self-actualisation. A crescendo of thought, imagination and self-expression.
The Talking Heads are many things. They are expressions that are formed through and shaped by, music. They are just 4, of infinite enunciations of what we ascribe music to be. They are, if you will, a crescendo of emotions. Of thoughts, feelings and ideas.
I don’t tend to attribute my work directly to the influences of previous artists, illustrators and musicians, however, I am not ignorant to the ascendancy they have brought not only to my work but my process, my intuition and my resolve. After all, there’s a joke that everything is stolen from somewhere these days and I’m not one to disregard that. So instead, I will tribute this to a few names. While being used individually to promote crescendo, it was always intended for the heads to come together in a 2x2 grid. Visually sharing a close resemblance to many pieces in popular culture, but in particular, to one of Crescendo’s album worlds: Demon Days by Gorillaz. The partnership of Blur frontman Damon Albarn and infamous comic artist Jamie Hewlett is a real-life amalgamation of my own personal journey through the arts. A combination of my childhood idolisation for the graphic medium of comics and illustration, and my adult love of music, film and performance. The title Talking Heads is an explicit tribute to the American new wave band of the same name. The past and present works of David Byrne is a staple piece for what not only a good musician, but a creative mind is and should be. The Heads’ music interspersed components of punk, art rock, funk, and world music with avant-garde sensibilities and an anxious, clean-cut not seen before to audiences. Well, according to their Wikipedia anyway. I would like to believe the Talking Heads of Crescendo is the same, combining elements of different genres of music, disciplines of art and influences of inspiration to achieve something not seen before.
The Talking Heads are many things. While they may not visually represent Crescendo, they embody its message and communicate its ideas. They are a tribute, reflection and admiration to the many creative minds who have brought these six months of art-making together. Some who I’m sure have not only reached levels of actualisation not seen before but have made new experiences and connections with others that they will value for life. They are expressions of my frivolous and nonsensical self. They are finally an accolade of appreciation to Nanda and London. Who, while having led this project, has conducted leadership in a way that lifts everyone to their most fluent potential. To a point where we are all equal in the creative journey that has become Project Crescendo.
Jaspart x
