Blacknacular
interactive Poster
An interactive experience that pays homage to Ed Fella. The poster is made on sixteen sheets of paper and arranged in a grid fashion similar to that of the drum machine in front of the poster.
The subject matter of the poster relates to Ed Fella's Fascination with what he calls "American Vernacular", in other words, hand painted signs and things of that nature. I decided to explore this same notion, but within black American culture. I focused my research on the certain type of hand painted lettering found on the sides of many small businesses in the neighborhood I grew up in, mainly on the sides of liquor stores. Thus cultivating what I called the "Blacknacular". I drew an entire alphabet of these letters so that I could be able to to mimic it well on the final outcome of the poster.
The user approaching the piece can hit pads on the drum machine in front of the poster to reveal music reflective of the four time periods of Ed Fella's life the essay embedded within the poster composition talks about. Each has a different mood and feel. The final four tracks are reflective of my personal feelings about Ed's work.
At the same time, the user is allowed to hit multiple pads at once whenever they want, so they're able to create new musical compositions out of what is already there.
No computers were used to create this project whatsoever. The poster was completely hand drawn and colored, and each of the sixteen music tracks were sampled from vinyl records, arranged, and composed on an Akai MPC 1000 drum machine. The MPC 1000 does not count as a computer.
Listen to all of the music from this project here.