Is this Singing?

“When I discovered PCA and the MFA in Transdisciplinary New Media, I was completely captivated by the program. I found the various backgrounds of the teachers and students to be quite interesting, and it presented me with a great opportunity to learn from others.” Leonor Tapia MTMN ’23

Leonor Tapia, Masters in Transdisciplinary New Media ’23 student, writes about her design, “In my project for the creative and technology course, I used pre-Columbian Chilean vacijas as input to make them “come alive” with augmented reality. According to a recent study, these vacijas may have served as a form of shamanic chanting score, suggesting that despite their inanimate nature, they may be encoding music and spiritual psychedelic experiences.”

When we asked Tapia what excited her most about her project, she replied, “What I like about my project is the opportunity to interpret this theory in an evocative manner, and hopefully encourage others to reawaken interest in these archaeological items, which have been forgotten and ignored by the Chilean public for far too long.” As exemplified in the images here, she explained that “the goal of the design was to see how the jar’s structure may be altered by referencing the sound waves released during singing, particularly the monotonous and hypnotizing music that this civilization is said to have produced.”  The image of the sound waves is interpretation of the sound based on the pattern on the vessel of antiquity that Tapia chose to work with, “…which, according to Paola Gonzalez’s theory, could represent music, specifically singing.” The image below (left) is a conceptualized design by Tapia that combines the sound waves with the shape of the original jar.

We asked Tapia what inspired her to study at PCA all the way from Chili? she told us, “As a designer, I was looking for a way to study something linked to art without having to be an artist, and technology and collaborative work have always fascinated me.”