In search of a new editorial and business model for my writing, I stepped out of my comfort zone and took a critical look at the [music] publishing scene to conceive, co-create and produce a print and digital publication. With its original editorial stance, design and distribution network, the publication immediately landed on the international scene alongside the established voices and received press and reprint requests from a variety of outlets. Here’s how the whole project came together from concept to completion to personal reflection.

Publishing HIGHWAY Magazine

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;"><strong>Project Overview</strong></h2><p style="margin-left:0px;">The DC Listening Lounge is an audio collective of sound artists in the greater Washington, D.C. region. For the last thirteen years, the group has collaborated with the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden for an, “annual exhibition that features multi-sensory art and thought-provoking creative opportunities produced by DC-based artists as well as national and international contributors.” I worked with the DC Listening Lounge and Hirshhorn public engagement team to produce a graphic identity for the 2019 edition of this exhibition. For the last two years, the Soundscene exhibition has continued to break the record for single day attendance at the museum.</p><h2 style="margin-left:0px;"><strong>Processing the exhibition’s theme With limited resources and a complex network of contributions and partners amidst the existing workload the organizers and curators face, there wasn’t much time to come up with a visual design to represent the exhibition’s theme.</strong></h2><p style="margin-left:0px;">In early discussions with the sound collective’s lead organizers, I shared my intention to dodge any typical word art associations with the exhibition’s title, “Amplify,” and assured that while we were pressed for time, quick ideation sessions would be fruitful. I initiated a few solo ideation sessions and worked to translate the show’s theme in a way that would match the concept of the exhibition and be fluid enough for print, digital and motion formats. As I began to think about “amplification,” a series of initial thoughts led me to equate the presented artists and their audio-driven works as amplifiers of meaning. I framed both entities as gestures— the act of creating the artwork and the act of broadcasting the work — and continued to reflect on how much of contemporary human experience is sensory-driven. What I found all of these diverse art works had in common was the use of amplifiers to, of course, actually propel their sound or intended meaning to the listener or participant. This seemed as “functional” as it was “conceptual” and seemed to provide space for creative application. The more I thought about amplification, I took a deeper look at what makes the analog technology work in the same way we wonder what makes an artist create the work they do. When we experience art, are we not tempted or prompted to discuss and consider the thinking behind a particular artwork, or chosen mode of expression? At a perhaps deeper, underlying, functional level, the amplifier serves to amplify the artist’s signal, or gestural intent, and I became curious as to how this transpired. When I researched the early circuitry and schematics of amplifiers (circa the early 20th century), I found these diagrams to be simplistic, reductionist and conceptual frameworks and plans for not only mass production but also future understanding. One line of thinking I kept returning to and testing was: if the circuit boards in their essence were blueprints for the reproduction and further transmission of sound, then they were neutral and contained systems that allowed for unknown spontaneity— that is, the sound or here in our case: the art. This unknown spontaneity was much like the human energies passing throughout our cities and I couldn’t help but see the site of this activity (functional, grid-like) as a microcosmic structure of a city with pulses of energy passing through its lanes. With these thoughts down, I felt the circuitboard was a good direction to explore.</p><h2 style="margin-left:0px;"><strong>Working with the idea of amplifier circuitry</strong></h2><p style="margin-left:0px;">Looking at a few early amplifier schematics, I began to consider if we could make the poster and flyer represent a simple mother board with the exhibition title within a lined drawing. This felt like it could be a quick and practical solution so I tried to come up with a circuitry-style approach to the lettering for the exhibition and began to test out a few ideas. As I began to experiment with the lettering and overall idea of these letters working within an amplifier schematic, I worried the thin lines of these line-drawings would be difficult to see from a distance and not get enough visual attention. For the graphics to take on an additional sense of fluidity, I also had to consider applications in multiple media formats, such as the wayfinders and motion graphics so I began to reconsider my efforts in this direction. After producing a few draft ideas, I was ready to share the circuit board concept with the team at an initial check-in with the event organizers. After some discussion the early designs were voted against on the grounds of readability so I went back to iterating on my mental model. This led to a reduction of the amount of clutter, realizing we didn’t need to show too much of a circuit board, and this led to an isolated, circuitry-inspired text graphic with thicker lines. Echoing trails were added as to help bring the idea of amplification to life. The trails on the word also served to represent the unique sound signature, or resonance, of each work in the exhibition. In addition, separate iterations of these typographic trails could be useful in generating unique backgrounds for the wayfinders, descriptions accompanying each artwork. Through subtle iterations of these trails on the exhibition title graphic, exhibition goers would be able to recognize which artworks were part of the exhibition and navigate through the different floors of the museum. Further, thinking in terms of translating the graphic into motion, these trails could be animated for more engaging promotional gifs in the digital space and serve to provide added recognition for visitors upon entering the exhibition, thereby reinforcing a thematic sense of place and presence for the show. After another check in, the reduced and bolder graphic and echoing trails were approved, I was asked to tweak the graphic into an opaque background to serve as a template for the descriptions and dimensions of each artwork. I also worked in After Effects to produce some additional animations that would serve as GIFs for the client’s respective social media channels with the hope of increasing the number of promotional posts for the exhibition. <img src="https://admin.ademas.work/uploads/Soundscene_12_Artwork_Description_Variations_768x288_4ba7f256b4.jpg" alt="Soundscene-12-Artwork-Description-Variations-768x288.jpg" width="768" height="288"> <img src="https://admin.ademas.work/uploads/Soundscene_12_Twitter_Header_f041db9415.jpg" alt="Soundscene-12-Twitter-Header.jpg" width="800" height="270"> <img src="https://admin.ademas.work/uploads/Soundscene_12_poster_48cdfadd6a.jpg" alt="Soundscene-12-poster.jpg" width="792" height="1224"> <img src="https://admin.ademas.work/uploads/soundscene12_decal_1823134975.png" alt="soundscene12-decal.png" width="800" height="480"> As we wrapped up this creative sprint, the team realized they also needed a simpler, bolder icon for wall appliqués so visitors would understand which artworks in the museum were part of the temporary exhibition. This simpler icon would also be useful for making t-shirts to identify volunteers and would need to also be stencil-compatible. Learning these shirts would be made the night before the exhibition, I made a simpler, alternate graphic for the exhibition so visitors would know which pieces were part of the two-day exhibition and who they could ask for information. <img src="https://admin.ademas.work/uploads/soundscene_volunteer_photo_41843799e4.jpg" alt="soundscene-volunteer-photo.jpg" width="800" height="332"> <img src="https://admin.ademas.work/uploads/soundscene_12_tshirt_stencil_1_13ad54df5e.jpg" alt="soundscene-12-tshirt-stencil-1.jpg" width="800" height="400"></p><h2 style="margin-left:0px;"><strong>Putting it all into practice With a series of quick graphics created, it was showtime.</strong></h2><p style="margin-left:0px;">The crowd was in a long line outside, volunteers wore the shirts and were ready to welcome and guide the crowd through the multiple floors of the exhibition. In practice, the reduced visuals worked, volunteers were easily identifiable and the deep yet vibrant blue of the way finders and exhibition signage helped visitors navigate and establish a sense of location throughout the museum. Up until the Yayoi Kusama exhibition (2017) SoundScene held the record for the most visitors in a single day and remains one of the busiest shows for the Hirshhorn with over 10,000 visitors coming over the two days.</p>

I worked with the DC Listening Lounge, an audio collective of sound artists in the greater Washington, D.C. area, to create and produce various print and digital and motion graphics for their annual exhibition. 

SoundScene Exhibition Design at Hirshhorn Museum

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;"><strong>Project Overview:</strong></h2><p style="margin-left:0px;">Over the years I have researched, interviewed, written and produced original articles for an international list of respected and forward-thinking arts &amp; culture publications including: 032c (Germany), The Wire (UK), Pitchfork (USA), Noisey/VICE (USA), Dazed &amp; Confused (UK), Neural (Italy), Mono.kultur (Germany), Bauwelt (Germany), Too Much (Japan), The Japan Times (Japan), Revista METAL (Spain), Tokyo Art Beat (Japan), Smith Journal (Australia), Digital in Berlin (Germany), TheInternetWork (Australia), The F de C Reader (Japan), Ping Magazine (Japan) and Spana (Sweden). Clippings (clockwise):<br>(1) Article on cult Japanese men’s fashion magazine HUgE for 032c.<br>(2) Feature article on the history of neon lights in Tokyo and energy usage after the Tohoku earthquake for Too Much Magazine.<br>(3) Interviews with Japanese star architect Ryue Nishizawa as well as an exclusive with international street artist BNE for Papersky Magazine.<br>(4) Exclusive, first English, feature interview with cult Japanese band, Boris for Pitchfork.<br>(5) Online article on photographer Glen E. Friedman’s latest monograph for 032c. Currently I am working on long-form written and video pieces for HIGHWAY Magazine and 032c.com. A supplemental list of published articles located in older print editions or expired hyperlinks.<br>• Pacific Exhibition Catalog (Los Angeles, May 7-28, 2011). Contributed essays on three artists Atsuhiro Ito, Ujino Muneteru and Daifu Motoyuki. Funded in part by Scion Cars, the exhibition was curated by Michael Thorsby and Antonin Gaulthier.<br>• 032c Magazine #20, Winter 2010/2011. An excerpt of an interview with architect Kazuyo Sejima printed in 032c (<a href="https://032c.com/">https://032c.com</a>). Also in this issue, an essay on the presumably enigmatic and seemingly ever-dynamic Japanese fashion magazine for men, HUgE.<br>• Papersky Magazine, November 2011. Papersky published a portion of my interview with prolific street artist BNE. A portion of the discussion was on graffiti but mostly centered on his then recently-formed BNE Water Foundation.<br>• Noisey.com, August 2011. Contributed a concise profile on Japanese band Nisennenmondai for Vice’s music vertical as it started up (in addition to other ideas for their new editorial team at the time).<br>• Bauwelt Magazine, Venice Biennale of Architecture Special, August 2010. Contributed articles related to SANAA principal architect Kazuyo Sejima’s ‘Road to Venice’ as (the first woman) curator of the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2010). My essays covered the work of SANAA graduate and nascent visionary architect Junya Ishigami (Golden Lion Recipient 2010), theorist and author of several titles Taro Igarashi, as well as comparative approaches to the photography of works by SANAA through juxtapositioned interviews with renowned [German] photographers Walter Niedermeyr and Sebastian Mayer.<br>• Dazed &amp; Confused, February 2009. An exclusive and rare, main feature eight-page interview with Boredoms frontman Yamataka EYE. We were fortunate enough to spend a whole day together at the artist and musician’s residence for what became his first interview in over eight years. This piece also featured a two-page appendix on then-emergent gallery The Magical Artroom and some of the artists represented alongside of EYE. The gallery has since closed and the former director operates under a new name, ‘Island’ in North Tokyo.<br>• The Wire #294 August 2008. Along with profile article on Japanese artist Atsuhiro Ito, I co-produced and directed a video of the artist performing with one of his self-developed instrumental units. The video was cut specifically for Wire’s website to support the experimental nature of the content. Also in this issue, I contributed a review of the first-time collaboration between prolific Japanese avant master Keiji Haino with renowned producer and musician Jim O’Rourke.<br>• Papersky Magazine. Quintessential Japanese travel quarterly printed translated versions of my multi-page interviews with renowned artists and cultural practices the likes of which included: Pritzker Prize winning architect Ryue Nishizawa, Shinro Ohtake, Daido Moriyama, Tommy Guerrero and more.<br>• Spana, April 2010. An article on the city-wide exhibition, New Tokyo Contemporaries for Swedish publication.<br>• Revista METAL 2010. Print and digital feature interviews (High Places, Telepathe, Tanlines and more) with emergent pop acts for the Barcelona-based, fashion-driven magazine.<br>• Papersky Reporting in Mongolia, September 2009. Headed to Mongolia with a photographer to cover the environmental work of an ambitious NGO active in the Horquin Desert of Northern China. The story ran in Japanese print magazine Papersky with the title, From A to B: Shenyang to the Horquin Desert. Eight pages, 2009. Two photos from the article here. The trip was sponsored by Timberland Boots.<br>•Neural Magazine 2008 - 2011: Various contributions, in print and digital form, to Italian-based, highly-respected (I myself am quite the admirer) media-art and culture title Neural. I wrote about various media-art works in exhibition and in practice.<br>• Pitchfork Magazine, April 2008. First major Interview with breakthrough Japanese avant-rockers Boris.<br>• Dazed &amp; Confused online, July 2009. Dazed ran one of the numerous interviews I’ve done with post-kraut rockers Nisennenmondai.</p>

Wrote and produced various articles for an international list of forward-thinking arts & culture publications across print, digital and video formats.

Various Magazine Contributions

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;"><strong>Project Overview:</strong></h2><p style="margin-left:0px;">When one of our DJ friends was operating a pirate radio station out of his home (circa 2013) in NW Washington, D.C. I suggested the addition of a talk show or two alongside the DJ sets. In a freewheeling and creative spirit, he agreed. Together with my co-host, a notable archivist, storyteller and former professional skateboarder, we set out to interview notable figures in the regional skateboard scene as part of a roadmap to deliver a print publication and push towards a public exhibition on this particular topic. We were already having never ending, deeply-coded conversations of this nature so why not record and broadcast our plans and process while spreading the word “on the air.” Eventually, the show grew out of our friend’s home and hit the streets, recording on location at spots embedded in the DC skate world. Somehow, people started showing up to the live recordings and they became gatherings, “hang outs” and even Q &amp; A sessions. After a few months the radio station ran its course and our talk show went on hiatus but our conversations around the project continued. Then, surprisingly, people began to ask us to bring the show back (weird, right?). After much deliberation and discussion around the conditions of how we were going to bring the show back, we decided to pitch a reboot of the show to Full Service Radio at the Line Hotel in the Adams Morgan neighborhood. For the next iteration of this intimate and raw storytelling project we agreed to a shortened format from around two hours down to forty-five minutes so we could be accepted into the Full Service Radio schedule. In doing so I decided to shift my role into the production and editorial background so as to guide the narrative towards our end goal of a publication and eventual exhibition about skateboarding in the nation’s capital. Although we found it difficult at first to work within the shortened time frame, the show has received technical and logistical support from this new broadcast hub and my co-host and I have been very grateful that we were able to keep the show “raw” and outside of a compromised or restricted space as well as have the opportunity to reach more listeners than before. The show is still simply titled Skate Talk and continues to focus on skateboarding’s tango with architecture, art, geography, local lore, urban exploration in pre-internet times, friendship and how skateboarding has impacted the creativity and careers of our guests in D.C., Maryland and Virginia (and beyond). So far, we’ve been able to highlight a diverse cast of characters ranging from chefs, musicians, artists, designers, entrepreneurs, professional skateboarders and who knows— Spike Jonze and Pharrell were once local skateboarders in our area and I have no doubt they would give a clear and direct answer when asked about skateboarding’s influence on their own creativity. Our involvement in this increasingly-collaborative project is a simple and creative way pay our debt to ‘Skateboarding’ for facilitating our exploration into creative and artistic realms in which we found friends and contemporaries who have never stopped encouraging each other to stay creative, find meaning and lastly, to optimistically and fearlessly: “go big.” Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the Full Service Radio program inside The Line Hotel has been put on hiatus and while we discussed remote broadcast options, my co-host and I decided to put the show on hold once again. Currently we are discussing new plans for recording the show in-person again and that will be published when the time is right.</p>

From pirate radio to a boutique hotel lobby comes a radio show re-examining Washington, D.C.’s rich skateboard history through the perspectives of creativity, personal growth, community activism, architecture, urbanization and exploration. When the grit met the shine it was ebullient and raw, and while we thought about going lightly scripted, the running joke was that the plug was going to be pulled at any moment.

Washington, D.C. Skateboard History for Full Service Radio at The Line Hotel

<h2 style="margin-left:0px;"><strong>Project Overview:</strong></h2><p style="margin-left:0px;">When I contributed an article to Wire magazine’s “Cross Platform: Sound in other media” section, I co-produced a video of experimental musician Atsuhiro Ito performing his one-of-a-kind instrument. In all honesty, describing the abstract and raw nature of Ito’s experimental work in addition to the sonic expressions he performs through a printed article was very, very challenging. While I— as well as the magazine’s editors— felt the text was replete with descriptive and stylistic explanations of how Ito conceived, created and harnessed his “instrument,” we decided it was a good idea— amid our expanding transmedia environment as it was in 2008— to put an accompanying video on the magazine’s website. To further demonstrate Ito’s “stroboscopic shower of white light and varying waves of sound that come from the device,” as I wrote in the article, the video piece was produced together with the photographer of the story, Sebastian Mayer, along with the support of videographer Sebastian Terre. Together with Ito-san, I arranged and supervised a session for us to film prior to one of his performances in Tokyo. Thereafter, we put together a nice edit of the session. The strong, bright and highly-dynamic visuals and sounds of Ito’s work really shone through on video and served as great extension of the story, taking it to another visual and sonic level for magazine’s international readership. The video appeared on the Wire’s website in conjunction with the release of Issue 294 (August 2008).<br>Unfortunately, the Wire has since redone their website and this video piece is no longer online, however, here’s a photo of Terre in action capturing Ito at work in addition to a tear sheet of the article here below. The photographer and I decided on this location for a number of semi-obvious reasons but this particular location (one of Tokyo’s condensed, vertical parking garages) did connect with a theme I discussed with Ito over a series of interviews we did: these fluorescent neon light tubes are everywhere— offices, inside neon lights and behind illuminated signage, as well as in parking garages so if you are using this everyday object to create music and sound and sculpture, does this make you a new kind of contemporary folk musician? I’ll leave it there as something for readers of this site to think about. Fun little side story: after this article was published, a friend curated an exhibition in Los Angeles and included Ito’s work along with an invitation to perform. So enthralled with Ito’s work was this curatorial team, they then commissioned Ito to perform in the Mojave desert for an original, theatrical film piece. I’m not sure where that video ended up but one thing I know for certain is that once people experience and engage with Ito’s work [in a live setting] they’re not the same afterwards. As I wrote in the article, “What seems like a piece of standard lighting from a Japanese office generates a shower of luminescence and sound that can leave a listener with visual hallucinations of hitherto undreamt-of colors and patterns.”<br><img src="https://admin.ademas.work/uploads/Atsuhiro_Ito_The_Wire_copy_1a_07f21f48a6.jpg" alt="Atsuhiro-Ito-The-Wire-copy-1a.jpg" width="845" height="800"></p>

Describing the abstract and raw nature of Atsuhiro Ito’s experimental work in addition to the sonic expressions he performs through a printed article was very, very challenging so I co-produced an accompanying video for the Wire Magazine’s website.

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