PassTheAux
Rachel Brownjohn
To “pass the aux” is to participate in a collaborative activity where the final form is the result of the experience of listening to and sharing music in real time. It begins with a single track that catalyzes this chain reaction where participants take turns selecting music. It is a form of communication that builds on sequences of songs and how they layer creates a composition. This project, PassTheAux, is inspired by these social experiences. I developed a graphic system that cycles between analog and digital media by translating content back and forth between print (CMYK on vellum) and film (video on mp4) to create individual works that describe experiences. With each subsequent translation the form becomes increasingly abstract, and subject to the viewer’s interpretation.
The design process of PassTheAux can loop once or multiple times, with each translation between media altering the content further and further from the original. As such new terms of composition: strobe, bass, mosh, light, vision, sweat become signs of transformation that extend and blur the roles of print and moving image as media.