Gold Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design · 2021
Muse Conceptual Exhibtion
- A' Design Award 2021 Gold Winner in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design
- Awarded April 15, 2021
- CLIENT: Michelle Kason
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 60,971
- Verification code 9AF1A31CF8 · Verify this award
About Muse Conceptual Exhibtion
Muse is an experimental design project studying the musical perception of the human through three installation experiences which provide different ways to experience music. The first is purely sensational using thermo-active material, and the second display the decoded perception of musical spatiality. The last is a translation between music notation and visual forms. People are encouraged to interact with the installations and explore the music visually with their own perception. The main message is that designers should be aware of how perception affects them in practice.
Michelle Poon's Muse Conceptual Exhibition represents a distinguished contribution to contemporary graphic design practice, wherein the visual identity system for a museum exhibition transcends mere informational function to embody the very philosophical inquiry the exhibition explores. The work engages with traditions of Swiss modernist typography while introducing a distinctly contemporary sensibility through its treatment of letterforms as autonomous compositional elements freed from conventional linear arrangement. The scattered disposition of the exhibition title—each letter occupying its own spatial territory—suggests the fragmentation inherent in perceptual experience, visually manifesting the accompanying text's assertion that "Perception is ineffable. We know more than we can say." This integration of form and concept demonstrates sophisticated design thinking wherein aesthetic choices serve communicative and philosophical purposes simultaneously. The chromatic restraint, limited to the most essential contrast between black letterforms and white ground with subtle grey tonal whispers, achieves an atmosphere of contemplative refinement appropriate to the institutional context. Secondary graphic elements—the ethereal circular form and the vertical bar motifs—function as visual poetry, suggesting musical notation, architectural elements, or perceptual phenomena without declarative specificity. The designer's masterful deployment of negative space invites the viewer's eye to move across the surface, discovering relationships and constructing meaning through the act of looking itself. The work's installation within its urban architectural context, captured in this environmental documentation, further enriches the design's resonance, as the cool grey stonework and geometric window frames create a sympathetic visual dialogue with the poster's modernist sensibilities. One might consider how the experience of encountering this work mirrors the exhibition's thematic concerns: the gradual perception of scattered elements coalescing into comprehensible form, the interplay between what is shown and what remains implied.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Muse is an experimental design project studying the musical perception of the human through three installation experiences, two sensational and one logical. People are encouraged to interact with the installations and explore the music visually with their own perception. We try to understand how people understand music here.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The exhibition is proposed to be in Hong Kong Museum of Art Gallery 4. It includes three installations which is 2m x 2m x 3m each for two of the cylinder exhibits (the Senses and Shades) and three tables for the third interactive exhibit (the Table).
There are also a set of printed materials, such as poster, brochures, printed and digital tickets, which align back to the exhibition brand. - Tags
- exhibition, music, perception, visual communication, graphic design, experiement, conceptual
- Production Technology
- Thermo-active fabric for the Senses.
Acrylic Tiles for the Table.
Antalis Skin Paper for printed matierals. - Design Challenge
- Research part:
With the current situation of coronavirus, I could not provide an extensive performance that surrounds the participants. This makes sensing spatiality less specific than in under a real performance as participants could only rely on their imaginations while listening to their headphones.
Creative part:
I stuggled to code or turn raw data into infographics or coded graphics. The topic of 'musical Perception' digs very deep into human psychology and it is somehow hard for anybody to understand the final deliverables. I developed a many possibilities before coming up wth using simple and minimalistic approach to code the raw dats collected. - Project Duration
- The project started dwith the research stage from September 2019 to January 2020, and the execution stage from January 2020 to June 2020.
- Operation Flow
- We perceive an object through sensations from our body and also our logical mindset which make sense of the sensations. Yet the channels for perceiving music is not limited to our ears only, but our eyes which see the performance, our hands and our bodies which feel the bass beat and frequencies. These information collected from the senses are sent to our brain to construct meaning and perception paved in to help making sense of the information collected.
- Research
- Readings:
Perception is ineffable. Any written language on the earth failed us in fully communicating perceptions. Perception could be sensed and understood, but not necessarily be spoken. This situation is even more significant when it comes to music as music is often known to be ‘expressive’, ‘intangible’ and ‘free flow’. Music is something that could not be 100% translated to verbal communication. Music is so vague that perception plays a really big role on how we feel and are moved about it.
Musical Experiment:
A group of audience were asked to finish a set of doodles while surrounded by a group of choral performers. From the results, it is understood that human focus on differences and similarities, ups and downs, stable sounds and changes, as well as flat tones and big contrasts. Human always try to find repetitive patterns in a song, which is a reference of what we have always been exposed to. - Inspiration
- The name ‘Muse’ is taken from the inspiration of Greek mythology. The Greek goddesses of art & music are the Muses. They are known as one entity, though there are actually 9 of them and each is unique in their own way. Its resonances with the concept of perception as perception could be understood universally to some extent, though still unique among each of us.
- Image Credits
- Michelle Kason
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Michelle Kasom, 2020
Colors of Muse Conceptual Exhibtion
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