Hasta La Ideas

During the lockdown, industrial designer Michael DiTullo is essentially producing a free series covering first-year ID student lessons. These are the post-Foundation drawing basics we were all taught as sophomores, just without the tuition fees.

In this “How to Use Layers in Any Digital Sketch” video, DiTullo covers the six stages:

1. Rough sketch

2. Tight linework

3. Flat color blocking

4. Textures

5. Shading

6. Details and highlights

For her collaboration with VDF, singer-songwriter Beatie Wolfe has written an essay about the power of music to transform lives, particularly during difficult times.

Titled The Art of Imprinting in the Digital Age, the essay explores the notion of how to make music more tangible at a time when it has become a digital commodity, as well as discussing the importance of storytelling and ceremony in music.

The Art of Imprinting in the Digital Age

Hi, I’m Beatie Wolfe, an artist and innovator and I create new tangible formats for albums in the digital age. I’m also co-founder of a research project looking at the power of music as medicine.

I first met Dezeen’s founder Marcus Fairs during a BBC radio interview where he was ill and I had vertigo, and at that time I was about to open a solo exhibition of my world-first album designs at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which was a great life highlight and a huge honour.

So I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the subject of the power of music and art to us all. Perhaps especially in light of these times.

Opening story

I’ve always loved the stories of albums, the tangibility of records and the ceremony of listening. From the time I started writing songs aged eight and discovered my parents’ vinyl collection, I saw records as musical books, with the artwork providing the perfect backdrop for the music, and I loved opening them up and entering into the world of the album. There was also a ritual to the occasion.

From that age I started imagining what my album could look like, what it could feel like, what worlds I could create. When it was time for my first album to be released, it was a very different era with the digital replacing the physical. So I thought about how to connect the two and that’s what my work became centred around. Reimagining the vinyl experience but for today.

Art is core to our humanity

Why was this so important to me? Because music IS core to our humanity. We are a musical species more than anything else and music imprints on the brain deeper than any other human experience.

I believe that there are three things that allow something to go deep, to stay with us and forever change us. These are tangibility, storytelling and ceremony.

Tangibility as in a physical art form or space to explore. This could be a record jacket or the world’s quietest room. Anything that grounds us in our present reality through a physical touchpoint.

Storytelling in the broadest sense of the word, the ability for the artist or creator to tell a story through their work that can engage the imagination and transport us.

And lastly but perhaps most importantly: Ceremony, the space around and within the experience that allows us to go deep, to be fully immersed.

I believe that these three things set the stage for the music and allow it to imprint. Imprint so that every one of these experiences becomes a part of who we are and what we carry with us. This doesn’t just apply to music but to everything and anything that helps to reconnect us with ourselves and one another. It’s these experiences that keep us alive inside.

What threatens these values today?

Tangibility, storytelling and ceremony had always been part of the physical music listening experience and were just some of the things we lost when we moved to digital.

The digital era created access, it presented solutions but it also created an idea that we could fast track a lot of what defined us as humans to begin with and without the true cost or value reflected in the process.

Music now floats around in its intangible sphere along with everything else that sits there: news notifications, calendar alerts, social media. Everything occupying this same superficial stream of information that infiltrates our day-to-day lives, bombarding our sensory systems until we are numb, overloaded and fatigued. Music, and art, have become part of that constant background chatter and we have forgotten why they are so much more.

There is a fine balance between what needs to be innovated and what needs to be preserved. So how do we reconcile the value of music and art today with an industry that has decided that albums are obsolete and singles need not be more than jingles; forgotten as easily as they are created? The opposite of imprinting.

Looking to neurology

I found part of my answer in neurology. The great late Oliver Sacks studied the power of music extensively and grounded what a lot of us feel intuitively about music, in science. In Musicophilia, his book about music and the brain, Sacks documents the impact of music for every neurological condition from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s, autism to schizophrenia, showing how music is a remedy, a tonic, an orange juice for the ears.

And I realised that there was no greater application of music than this: using music to reconnect us with ourselves and one another when nothing else could.

A seed was planted in the back of my mind and when I found out that my grandmother had been diagnosed with dementia I decided to take my guitar with me the next time I visited her and play her some songs… because why not?

Orange juice for the ears

Watching my grandmother transform from agitated and confused to joyful and at ease with just a song moved me so deeply. Then I decided to play to my father-in-law at his care home in Portugal and when the home director asked if I wouldn’t mind playing to everyone in the ward with dementia and Alzheimer’s, of course, I agreed. Realising that my songs would be unfamiliar to the residents and that no one in the home spoke any English (except for my relative) I was expecting a nice ambience at best.

However, as I played and saw people waking up, clapping along, even dancing in their chairs and becoming visibly reanimated from the music, just as Sacks had described, I realised that something much more important was happening.

And then the director informed me in the 10 years he had been there it was the best he had seen the group.

Something was crystalizing into view. What if music’s power was so strong, so interlinked with our own sense of self and wellbeing, that with even the memory component removed it could be a tonic, a remedy, a “way in”. What if it was the music and not the memory making the magic? In Musicophilia, Sacks had theorized that “music does not have to be familiar to exert its emotional pull” but he had not tested this. I had seen the tip of precisely this and wanted to see how much deeper it went.

The research and charity

Inspired by this insight, back in the UK I began the Power of Music and Dementia research project with the Utley Foundation in 2014 with the intention of recreating what had happened naturally in Portugal but this time with the right controls in place and the caregivers and doctors monitoring the residents. I went into care homes all across the UK and performed an original set of my songs while the residents were monitored both during the live performance and the weeks following as they listened to the same songs on headsets.

The results were amazing. Both memory and communication were improved during the duration of the project and I witnessed some of the most profound reactions to music I have ever seen. Reactions that imprinted on me forever.

I watched David transform from a catatonic-like state to dancing. And Anne, who had not spoken a word in seven months, halfway through the performance broke into song. Every one of these breakthroughs felt like the most vital link in the chain of our understanding about what moves us, what restores us, what makes us uniquely human.

What began as a small research study in the UK was suddenly getting global attention and I found myself sitting with the world’s top neurologists and researchers as they picked my brain on the subject. And all because I asked a question; not as a doctor, but as a musician.

Today music for dementia is becoming a global movement. The charity, MusicForDementia2020, (established out of my project) is now actively working to get music in all care homes in the UK by the end of this year and I continue to work with them as an ambassador.

Keeping alive inside

So what did this teach me? It taught me to celebrate the experiences that keep us alive inside, that remind us of why we are here in the first place. At a time of more access than ever, how can we retain a sense of value? How can we choose to carve out deeper, more ceremonial, moments in amongst the noise? How can we protect those endangered experiences that become our touchpoints, that shape our emotional sensibility, our identity, our wellbeing and create vast canyons and reserves in our very being?

We realise the importance of these choices when we realise the intrinsic value of music, and art, to us all as sentient beings. When you have witnessed the power of music as medicine in this pure and concentrated way, which cannot be staged or fabricated. It either works or it doesn’t. When you see what music can do, when even language and memory are removed from the folds; see how the first few notes evokes a smile, a hand twitch, instantly, effortlessly, and this builds and grows and it’s just them and the music. No tangible memories, no time and place. Just them and the music.

And suddenly the brain opens up like a flower, gently unfurling, presenting new pathways you never believed were there… until you realise that music is a necessity for those living with dementia because music is a necessity for every one of us.

Artist overview

“Musical weirdo and visionary” Beatie Wolfe is an artist who has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN Women role model for innovation and held an acclaimed solo exhibition of her “world-first” album designs at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Named by WIRED magazine as one of “22 people changing the world,” singer-songwriter and innovator Beatie Wolfe is at the forefront of pioneering new formats for music, which reunite tangibility, storytelling and ceremony to the album in this digital age. In this vein, Wolfe has created a series of world-first designs that bridge the physical and digital, which include: a 3D theatre for the palm of your hand; a wearable record jacket–  cut by Bowie/Hendrix’s tailor out of fabric woven with Wolfe’s music – and most recently an “anti-stream” from the quietest room on earth and space beam via the Big Bang horn.

www.beatiewolfe.com

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Architecture students collaborated with a women’s group in Morocco to design and build a community centre out of stone and earth in the village of Ouled Merzoug.

Two volumes of granite and adobe brick sit at the intersection of two shortcuts, one leading to the village centre and the other to its schools.

Called Women’s House Ouled Merzoug, the centre is a place for women in the village to gather and share their work as craftspeople with their community and visitors to

Building Beyond Borders, a group of architecture postgraduates and academics from Universiteit Hasselt School of Expert Education (UHasselt SEE) in Belgium, created the project with the Association des Femmes d’Ouled Merzoug (AFOM).

Women’s House Ouled Merzoug sits on a slope above a gully that channels water from the Atlas Mountains to the palm groves of Marrakesh during the rainy season.

The two volumes are positioned at an angle to each other. One faces the village’s main square, the other the schools and football fields.

These orientations mean that one building has views of the sun rising over the mountains, and the other of it setting beyond the river,

Entry is via a communal space between the two wings. One building houses the Atelier des femmes, a workshop for spinning and weaving where AFOM can hold lessons and meetings.

A boulangerie commune, or communal bakehouse, is located in the other building. Women gather here to bake bread and pastries to sell and to share meals together.

Each building opens on to its own private garden. The workshop garden has a sink and a bench for washing and colouring wool, and the one next to the bakery has a cob oven – a wood-fired oven made from earth – that the women designed and built themselves.

As part of their research, Building Beyond Borders chose materials that could be acquired locally and sustainably, working closely with local craftspeople.

Granite rock dug out from the surrounding hills forms the outer envelope of the two structures, and adobe bricks made of earth form the inner walls.

The roof’s span was determined by the maximum size of the beams of eucalyptus wood that can be bought from the local market, and the timber is thatched with reeds that grow nearby.

Local woodworkers crafted the doors and kitchen counters from the same eucalyptus wood. Stairs rendered with clay lead up to terraces on the flat roofs of the single-story centre.

The women of AFOM wove the curtains for community centre, and the lamps and ceramic objects that decorate the exterior where made by their local potter.

Next to the centre, the bare rocks of the gully have been forested with trees by the women and their fellow villagers to form a garden. A terraced garden with stacked dry walls built next to it is designed to slow down the rainwater when the gully floods to minimise erosion.

Using local rather than imported materials is important when building in places that are best suited to the harsh desert climate of Morocco. In the Moroccan town of Aknaibich, local workers collaborated with a pair of Belgian architects to build an extension to a school.

Photography is by Thomas Noceto.

Project credits:

Client: Women’s Association of Ouled Merzoug (Association des Femmes d’Ouled Merzoug (AFOM))
Design and build: Participants of Building Beyond Borders postgraduate certificate UHasselt, 2018-2019: John Silvertand, Hannah Van Breen, Arnaud Goossens, Auranne Leray, Margot Lambrechts, Eline Hoftiezer, Tinne Beirinckx, Kjell Keymolen, Aurora Fanti, Sofie Van den Velde, Jolien Bosmans, Martina Petrosino, Giulia Ventre, Emily Haest, Miki Z, Biniam Hailu, Alice Chang, Dany Depuydt
Project initiators and academic tutors: Academic team of the UHasselt postgraduate certificate Building Beyond Borders and BC architects and studies
Team of local workers: Abdelaziz Agoram, Mohamed Oualla, Abdelhadi Arifi, Abdelkbir Sayah, Bouchaib Darai, Hassiz Kassimi, Abde Sadak Agoram, Mehdi El Finti, Allal El Finti, Abdelkarim Kassimi, Abdelwahid El Finti, Rachid Esmali and women of AFOM

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The latest collaboration in a year-long collection celebrating the 60th anniversary of the iconic design

Combining German engineering and British craftsmanship, the first 1460 boots were released by Dr. Martens on 1 April 1960—and named for that date. The intended customer was working-class men with very physical jobs, but by the mid-’60s an unexpected adoption took hold: musicians and style pioneers began wearing them, making a statement on the importance of how utility and aesthetics co-exist. This year Dr. Martens celebrates this legacy with their 1460 Remastered Series, collaborating with 12 pioneering brands with whom they have long-standing relationships—and releasing one collaboration per month. Each partner was asked “What does the 1460 mean to you?” and they responded to the brief with a design that celebrates the legacy of Dr. Martens and adds their own signature twist to the classic boots. This month sees the brand reveal their latest with long-time collaborator Yohji Yamamoto.

Yamamto and the others collaborators were deeply familiar with the inception story of Dr. Martens boots, which begins back in 1945 when a skiing accident led Dr Klaus Märtens himself to seek out more comfortable shoes for his injured foot. He asked a friend and mechanical engineer Dr Herbert Funk to help develop a boot that featured a more comfortable and lighter air-cushioned sole. The pair searched for a shoemaker to help bring their vision to life, and found the Griggs family who had been making boots in Northamptonshire, England since 1901. The Griggs took a leap of faith and signed an exclusive license to manufacture the boots.

The original Dr. Martens advertisements were aimed at police officers, postal carriers and factory workers. The bright yellow advertisement offered “AirWair with Bouncing Soles” that provided unprecedented comfort. It ended with the statement: “a most pleasant experience for the much-abused foot.”

By the ’60s, The Who’s Pete Townshend sported them as a symbol of his working-class upbringing. During the ’70s, they became a punk favorite. Viv Albertine of the Slits wore hers with a dress. Eventually, Dr. Martens were worn by ’90s grunge icons like Eddie Vedder. A 1994 advertisement for the brand read, “Only tattoos last longer.”

Along the way, there have been collaborations with Vivienne Westwood, Jimmy Choo, Hello Kitty, and Lazy Oaf. Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto remembers wearing a pair in 1981 and has collaborated with the brand for over a decade. On 25 April, Yamamoto’s 1460 Remastered Series boots are released.

The boots’ smooth black leather upper are laser-cut with Yamamoto’s spider web pattern and his signature is embossed into the tongue. The laces are decoratively woven into an antiglare spiderweb with yellow stitching and gold-topped eyelets. While decorative, they embody Yamamoto’s knack for blending the traditionally masculine and feminine, and celebrating nonconformity.

The 1460 Remastered series began in January with an A Bathing Ape, who responded with a signature camouflage print. In February, Belgian fashion designer and current Prada creative director, Raf Simons revealed a smooth black leather iteration with nickel rings—inspired by the New Romantic scene of the 1970s and his attraction to mid-century design. Then, in March, a three-way collaboration paired the skate culture style of Babylon LA with the minimalism of BEAMS Japan. Inspired by the rude boys of the 1960s, their version features a double-stripe of BEAMS’ signature orange.

Eight more 1460 designs are poised to be revealed this year. But from high-end fashion collaborations to DIY customization, Dr. Martens remains a symbol of rebellion and non-conformity. For several decades Dr. Martens has stayed true to their design philosophy while adapting to changing styles—the result is a utilitarian product that’s as relevant now as it was 60 years ago.

Images courtesy of Dr. Martens 

To kick off today’s VDF collaboration with Beatie Wolfe, we’re exclusively streaming the online premiere of the singer-songwriter’s documentary Orange Juice for the Ears: from Space Beams to Anti-Streams.

The documentary, which has never been streamed online before, will be available free to Dezeen readers for the duration of Virtual Design Festival.

The film premiere will be followed at 1:00pm by an exclusive preview of Wolfe’s forthcoming environmental protest piece Red to Green, and an essay by Wolfe in which she explores the power of music to improve the human mind and ease the suffering of people with dementia.

At 5:00pm UK time Wolfe will conduct a live interview with Dezeen founder Marcus Fairs, followed by an exclusive performance of her music.

Wolfe “pioneers new formats for music”

Commissioned by the Barbican Centre last year, the 30-minute Orange Juice for the Ears documentary explores the work of Wolfe, a singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles.

The Barbican Centre described Wolfe as “a singer-songwriter of raw acoustic indie channelling Leonard Cohen and Elliott Smith, Wolfe also pioneers new formats for music.”

Directed, shot and edited by Ross Harris, the film premiered at the Barbican Centre in London in October 2019, followed by an industry screening in Los Angeles. The film was commissioned as part of Barbican Centre’s Life Rewired season, which explored how artists are responding to rapid technological change.

“With the season investigating the impact of the pace and extent of technological change in our culture and society, and looking at how we can grasp and respond to the seismic shifts these advances will bring about, there are few artists who exemplify this exploration as much as Beatie Wolfe,” Barbican Centre said.

Music “can lift us out of depression”

The film’s title comes from a quote by the late neurologist Oliver Sacks, who explored the relationship between music and the human mind.

“Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears — it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear,” Sacks wrote in his book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain.

“But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more – it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.”

Born in London, Wolfe has pioneered new ways of combining music with design and technology. She released her debut EP, Burst, as an iPhone app in 2010, making her one of the first artists to explore the potential of apps as a format for musicians.

Pioneer of new musical formats

In 2013, her debut album 8ight was released on vinyl, in book form and as the “world’s First 3D interactive album app”.

Her second album, Montagu Square, was recorded live at 34 Montagu Square in London, which was at various times the home of Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Recorded in the room where The Wind Cries Mary and Eleanor Rigby were written, the album was accompanied by a “musical jacket” created by fashion designer Michael Fish, who dressed rocks stars including Hendrix, David Bowie and Mick Jagger.

Intended as a way of recapturing the lost emotional connection listeners used to have with vinyl album sleeves, the tailored jacket contained near-field communication (NFC) chips that allow tracks from the album to be played when a smartphone is held up to the garment.

Album recorded in “world’s quietest room”

The Montagu Square album includes the track Take Me Home, an instrumental version of which was used as the soundtrack for the Virtual Design Festival launch movie.

Wolfe’s 2017 album Raw Space was recorded in Bell Labs’ anechoic chamber, a room described as “the quietest room in the world”.

The album was released as the “world’s first live 360 AR stream”. The album later became the first to be broadcast into space via the Holmdel Horn Antenna.

The Raw Space album was later issued as a set of NFC-enabled business cards, each of which was designed by a different graphic designer.

Solo exhibition at V&A

In 2018, London’s V&A museum hosted a solo exhibition of Wolfe’s work titled The Art of Music in the Digital Age: a series of world-first designs.

“Beatie Wolfe presents a series of album innovations that explore how technology can be used to recapture a sense of storytelling, ceremony and tangibility for music in the digital age,” wrote the V&A about the show, held as part of London Design Festival 2018.

The documentary artwork is by Kizzy Memani of ArtCenter College of Design.

About Virtual Design Festival

Virtual Design Festival runs from 15 April to 30 June 2020. It intends to bring the architecture and design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances.

We will host a rolling programme of online talks, lectures, movies, product launches and more. It will complement and support fairs and festivals around the world that have had to be postponed or cancelled and it will provide a platform for design businesses, so they can, in turn, support their supply chains.

To find out what’s coming up at VDF, check out the schedule. For more information or to join the mailing list, email vdf@dezeen.com.

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