What for is a happening?
With the idea of hosting a happening i intended to combine a houseparty (with only a few people, maybe 15-20) with creation.
I’d like to give space for enjoying the day or the weekend with other people that have simmilar interests and to use the time to work, experiment or/ and talk together and with one another.
In my mind this event consists of different activities. Music production, photography/ experimental filmmaking, painting/ drawing, cooking, eating and drinking.
Best would be to have one huge room for all of this but to keep it feasible i would need to use the apartement i’m living in because there are no empty places in Stuttgart that would be easy to use or affordable. For this reason it makes only sense to partition the activities and let them take place in different rooms of the flat.
Thinking about which room would be the most suitable for which activity photography and experimental filmmaking should take place in the hallway because its the biggest rooms of all. There you can set up lights and scenes. People would walk through on their way to the toilet and balcony but also always get in contact with each other and the medium there. In contrast to the ones working on music production. The most suitable room for this would be my room. In there is a table with a huge screen and a computer with production software, studio monitoring speakers, an audio interface, an electric guitar, synthesizers and a lot of audio and midi cables for all needs. And you can really concentrate on the production there without interruptions because its a seperate room.
Painting/ drawing should take place in the kitchen and also hallway because there is a sink and water in the kitchen and its the most social room. The atmosphere in there will be much much relaxed and bright.
The balcony should act like a room to get a creative break and enjoy some sunlight and fresh air, speak in peace to others. Im feared it will be crowded with people smoking but at least all will talk alot there.
Design
I first thought about liquids flowing in a glitchy way with some text interfering as a poster for the event and also an illustrated, animated szene of two people sitting on the balcony talking. For the musical aspect of the events i wanted to make a video of close-ups of played instruments, turning knobs and pushing sliders with some little animations of colorful blobs flowing on top and music played underneath.
A problem for me here was that the styles of the design ideas are so different and complex on them own that it would be very difficult to let them belong together in a understanding way.
Words words words
After some research on happening i realised that this is the clearly the wrong word to describe the event im planning. I stumbled over the word “Fluxus” and instantly realised the consistency with my event. It describes a modern process of finding new ideas a while working on it and to create a new, more creative way of living. Happening are more like performance art and most of the time include an audience.
Also Fluxus, which consists of flow and fuse, perfectly fits my first ideations for the design.
(Forward Festival Identity, 24. Februar 2017, https://www.pinterest.de/pin/836332593275660163)
Inspired by this poster for the Forward Festival which i found on Pinterest while researching I decided to make a similar approach instead of the glitchy shapes and masked texts I thought of at the beginning of this project.
The abstract, organic shapes in contrast to the structured informative background in black and white formed the perfect juxtaposition for my topic Fluxus.
In addition to this I tried to invert the concept by combining structured, geometrical shapes with an organic looking font but it didn’t turn out as expected. I tried different architectures and also some of my own photographies to show the photographical part of the event but most of the time drifted away from the concept I developed after changing the event from Happening to Fluxus.
(Korea Now,
https://www.pinterest.de/pin/836332593275661259)
With this experience I also decided to drop the music video and the balcony scene to solve the problem I had from the very beginning: not finding any consistency.
The Manifesto written by Georges Maciunas gave the final hint for the title of my event: Flow and Fuse.
To really show the process of flowing and fusing I came up with some animated forms in pastel colours moving on top of a white surface with black font.
I liked the shapes but the interference wasn’t big enought so I added some shine to it making it more 3D and also show some overlapping.
For the text I tried many different compositions, fonts, sizes, orientations and distortions to get the result I wanted. An incisive design that really expresses the two different ideas of creation: Flow and Fuse.
I “fused” the Letters of the title together and stretched out a part of the word “Flow” to show the impact of work and in particular this event.
To “cover up” the 3 dimensional aspect of this assignment and finally show the musical facet I wanted to design a cassette cover. The cassette functions as an invitational card (props to Lisa Winstanley), shows all the important information like the adress on the inside (found no asset for this) and also has some music on it to be a kind of memento.
(Cassette, Secret Birds, In Hex)
This cassette design also inpired me to limit my colourpalett to two colours only.
Finally I gatherd all the important information necessary for the event.
Design:
Casette Design – Invitation
Poster
Flyer
Animated Facebook Banner
Motion Graphics Poster
Information:
What? – Flow and Fuse
When? – Summer 2019 August 17.
Where? – Stuttgart, my commune
Who? – friends and art interested, friendly people
Flow:
organic, lightweight, fluid, moves in a appealing way, constant,
Fuse:
merge, weld, at least two different „things“(Semiotik) fuse together
Function, Meaning and also Design gets fused together by creating coloured, flowing forms that devide and combine again and a writing which letters are fused together but get also stretched and leave the image area.
Moodboard
User
The people i’d like to meet on this event are art interested, open-minded people around my age. Experienced and with a sense of style so participants can share ideas and push each other to different results. I hope to create a temporal space to find others for a sensible collaboration even beyond that event.
