Sound and Vision
Revealing our genetic makeup
Special Report: Sound and Vision
by Paulus Dreibholz
Grafix, June 2013
Sound and graphic design are inextricably linked in the fascinating and complex audio-visual world of Studio Tonne. Paulus Dreibholz talks Sound Toys and Music Hotels with its founder Paul Farrington.
“The visual image begins with an idea and moves towards the sensual. A sound image begins with the sensual and leads outwards towards ideas”—Jacques Barzun.
Studio Tonne stands for the interactive generation of sounds from graphics and of graphics from the sound. Paul Farrington, the man behind the Brighton-based studio, has developed a method of working that enables him to successfully create and interlink visual and audible environments. He is not simply blurring boundaries but sees the world of sound and the world of vision as naturally growing together and almost organically interlinked.
Being formally educated as a graphic designer, first in Liverpool and later in London, Farrington started to combine these two areas of stimuli from early on, making them a leading feature of his projects while studying for an MA at the Royal College of Art. One of these early explorations resulted in Audible Communities, an interactive installation in which the user’s sounds are translated into a graphic landscape. Another was Design for a Deaf Audience, which allowed Farrington “to look at the relationship between sound and its associated image and enabled me to make typographic forms of each individual sound”. The exploratory approach developed during the creation of these projects is still defining Farrington’s working methods today, he believes. “The laws of music and the laws of design I have always tried to ignore as they just get in the way of the creative response to a work—and I’d rather have something feel that it works than having it work as it is meant to.”
Both pieces could be seen as early versions of the Soundtoys which Farrington started to design around 2000 and which should significantly influence his future career. A Soundtoy enables a user to create his or her own music or sound environment using a graphic interface. Farrington particularly enjoys “how graphic icons can be moved around the screen and change the sound you hear”. Although called Soundtoys, they could be seen as instruments, which can be rewarding to play on various levels. There is a basic concept to them— and an instant reward—but, used with a little experience, they are capable of entertaining large audiences, as Tonne has proved during numerous gigs at Sonar, Barcelona, Ars Electronica, Austria, Barbican, London, and Experimenta, Lisbon.
“Within my music and my design, I am very fixated in systems as well as allowing the design to be organic and feel open. I like my work to be controlled, be it by a grid or a system (in music by bars, etc), then, once this grid is established, I like to move around it. It’s a simple process that seems to work very well for me. But this [connection between the changing interface and the changing sound] is also very important when playing live, as the audience gets to see a visual system for the music I am making,” Farrington says; which strikes a parallel with Brian Eno’s comment—after having experienced one of the Soundtoys, Eno said that these visual music systems “are the new music.”
But Farrington also makes sure that his Soundtoys are not only accessible to music fanatics. What is important is that everybody can use them. They are very inclusive projects which Farrington ‘road-tests’ on a very critical audience. “On the Depeche Mode toy [a more recent addition to the collection of Soundtoys] my four-year-old had hours of fun using the toy and drawing patterns. I find it very rewarding that she can use my toys—more so sometimes than when adults get their hands on them. Most of us are so used to techno gadgets, that we forget how to have fun with them. So when you give your kid something like the Soundtoy, they just play away.”
Soundtoys are an experimental combination of sound and vision but were not the end of Farrington’s quest as a graphic designer into music. After the Soundtoy album, which was released in 2002 by Bip-Hop, and included tracks mixed by Tonne as well as Hakan Libido, Scanner, and Si cut.db, there is now also music without vision. Under the Spanish label, Klitekture Tonne’s latest album was released in 2004. For Farrington, this is the perfect place for his music to exist. The album is called Lilium and was named after his first-born, four-year-old daughter Lily “as it quite literally took four years to make after she was born”. Farrington claims that the work itself has no deeper concept or idea behind it: “it’s just something that made me happy to create.”
This welcomingly unintellectual statement stands in sharp contrast to the project he is pursuing at the moment. The idea is the visual and conceptual integration of time into sound and vision. “I am very interested in time as a system as it is very fixed in its structure. Imagine taking this structure and designing programmes that work with the system of hours/minutes/seconds but attaching sounds and events that can move around this structure.” As a simple version of the grander one to follow, Farrington refers to Time:Tone, an application designed for Mute Records. “Time:Tone is designed so that it always plays music from Mute’s back catalogue—but does so in a manner that is very random. For example, I attached twenty-four sounds for the hour display, sixty sounds for minutes, sixty sounds for seconds, thirty-one sounds for months, sounds for years, etc. Hence every time the toy is launched, depending on the time and date, it will sound differently to the previous or the next time.”
Like a design studio—in the old sense of the word—should do, Tonne tackles other people’s communication problems with equal enthusiasm. On these lines it has been a steep learning curve for the small enterprise, having suddenly been asked to work for teenage idols like V23 or 4AD. “In my early days as a student all I ever wanted to do was to work at V23— they were my connection between the music I loved and the design I adored. I used to go and visit Chris Bigg at V23 and show my work. In the end, I went to the RCA to do my MA and found my own way of working. But now ten years later I’m working with Vaughan and Chris on a navigation device for a new 4AD site—so my dream has finally come true—but in a different route.”
These days Tonne is focusing its energies on a rather big fish. It was the persistency of publishing work touching both disciplines that eventually made Tonne’s name known to the big guns of the music industry. Next to established clients like the already mentioned Mute Records, Tonne also introduced Moby to his list. “Early December Mute asked if I—along with ten other design companies—would like to pitch ideas for this game for the new Moby album. Luckily the number dwindled down to three competitors but Mute changed the game idea to a full-blown website. The album was called Hotel and so I pitched my idea of a web application based on a virtual hotel, which is used as a game, and won. It is a twelve-week project where every week we announce new floors and new rooms that have new content.
“The project was an absolute dream. It is also so exciting because Tonne came up with a big part of the content. Like the piano soundtoys that you download and just play away (like a hotel pianist does). Or the game/toy called Sonic Draw—where you get to draw a picture that makes sounds— when you have finished your drawing you can submit it to the hotel art gallery where Moby will judge the best sonic drawings so you can win a prize etc.”
For Farrington, it is the variety of opportunities of the ever-developing Hotel building site that keeps him on his creative toes.” There is a Hotel radio and TV, morning newspapers, the piano bar, the gatherings and guest books around the pool area, games and many more things and a lot of freedom from the client. I think the project has gone so well with Moby as he is just the right person to inhabit such a place—if you think of Robbie Williams, I don’t think Robbie Hotel would feel the same.’
Considering Farrington’s daily working schedule, which is interwoven with helping Mags, his girlfriend, tucking in their daughters for a nap, or freeing a few hours from the screens to see his older one performing in a ballet, one can appreciate his obvious talent for multitasking. It enables him not only to successfully juggle his private and professional life, or client-based and self-initiated projects at the same time but also the two worlds of sound and vision.
The final artwork measures 3 x 2.5 metres and has been created by routing shapes, several layers deep in white acrylic.
Design development
Perhaps it was this experience that created the interesting paradox that exists in his work. A man obsessed by creating and recreating systems, Farrington also has a real love of chance. The former, of course, peppers his life and work—most notably in the Soundtoys, his love of minimal German electronica music, and a new project based around measurements—while the latter tends to creep in uninvited. Take his practice’s name, for instance. Originally called Ton—meaning ‘sound’ in German—he discovered he couldn’t get a Hotmail address, so it became Tonne and, in his own words, “it just stuck really”. Likewise, he confesses as we take a tour through his portfolio that he never prints out any of his poster or CD cover artwork to check it, saying merely, “I kind of know what it feels like.”
It might also explain the hint of vulnerability that lingers in his make-up. This isn’t a designer completely cocksure of his own genius but one who, I suspect, constantly questions the validity of what he’s doing. As his experimentations in music and graphics began to take shape, for example, he was asked to participate at more and more festivals. This led to one of his tracks being put on a compilation album on the French label Bip-Hop, which, in turn, prompted an invitation to work on an entire CD for the Mute label. Yet the way he tells it gives you the impression that somehow the whole thing was a huge mistake. After all, he seems to imply, he’s not really a musician, just a chancer from Ellesmere Port with a computer. Then there was an epiphany. “One day I just thought music is art so you can just do exactly what you want really.” Inevitably, though, as the workload in the studio has increased and his family has grown—Farrington has two small children—so his musical output has declined.
This self-deprecating streak may also shed light on why he’s also continued doing conventional graphic-design work, such as his music-festival posters for the ICA’s Sonic Concrete and Norwich’s Hybrids. Farrington himself offers a more obvious justification. “The reason I do the print work is that I have a love of printing and paper and texture and ink and varnish.” It also, he says, comes as a bit of light relief from constantly doing websites because “it goes through another process—it goes to a machine—and it can change”. “
You know the way the ink sits on the paper or the way it’s cut. And when it’s printed it’s finished,” he adds. “The thing with websites is they just continue. The amount of sites we do where the clients want to be able to control them when they’ve gone live. Now you do a website and not only does it have to look and feel right, it has to be managed by the client. So you have to create some sort of structure underneath it.”
This professed wariness of internet design hasn’t prevented him taking on some high-profile projects, though, most notably the Hotel site, launched to coincide with Moby’s album of the same name. Taking his cue from the title, Farrington decided to build a virtual hotel, so when you register you’re given a room number and your name is added to a virtual guestbook. Facilities include a tennis court where you can play a set of pong with Moby and a VIP area complete with disco. There’s also a chance to make your own music in the Sonic Draw area. Here Farrington cut Moby’s tracks into pieces, giving each a separate colour. Then you can dip into each hue as you would a tin of paint and scribble on a piece of virtual canvas—the twist, naturally enough, is you don’t just see the daub, you hear it too. When finished, it can be saved in a Take Hart-style gallery. Like much of Farrington’s work, Hotel is witty, informative (if you really must know all about Moby) and, most importantly, intuitive. Not surprisingly it has gained a bit of a cult following.
Next, the studio, which now includes a junior designer and an intern, will be concentrating on revamping its website and researching a book on how things are measured. Farrington will also be collaborating on a new performance project based around the notion of time to be staged in Sweden which will include the musician Hakån Lidbo, the choreographer Asa Unander Scharin and filmmaker Anders Weberg. You fancy this is the tip of a pretty considerable iceberg, however. Farrington may have been inspired by the likes of Vaughan Oliver but he occupies an interesting position as part of the generation that is bridging the gap between new and old media. And it’s a place that could provide some interesting opportunities. After all, as his portfolio proves, designers wanting to work with the music industry can no longer rely on CD or album cover art commissions. Instead they have to get more inventive. The new challenge (once the ubiquity of the iPod becomes tedious and the novelty of the technology itself wears thin) will be how to make downloads visually stimulating. As Farrington points out: “iTunes is the biggest download thing for music but it’s so sterile. You can store the music on iTunes but what does it look like? A record collection is very physical, it ages.” Farrington believes that the way the studio works is beginning to change. Rather than reacting to commissions, he wants to create products and take them to people—if designing a digital download library that ages with you is the first result then I think he’s on to a winner. Nice one, mate.
Microscope slide made by Charles Ford and John Hammerton
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