Suzanne Ciani

CIANI/ORKEST

Rebeka Arce is a Grammy-nominated creative director, designer, and lecturer based in New York City. Her work explores the intersection of narrative, culture, typography, and visual systems for brands that include NASA, Apple, Sony Pictures, Columbia Records and RedBull. We spoke to Rebeka about reflecting the tension, movement and exchange between electronic and orchestral music through innovative print production and geometric form.

Hello. Please tell us about the brief and commission.   Rebeka: The commission resonated with me immediately because Suzanne had been an inspiration to me for a long time, not only because of her music, but because of the conviction and independence she has maintained throughout her career.

I’ve always been drawn to her point of view and to the fact that she developed such a singular voice in a field that was overwhelmingly male at the time. There is a strong sense of conviction in the way she has built her practice. In interviews, she has spoken very openly about the resistance she encountered as a woman studying composition and electronic music, including being told that women had no place on the podium. She also describes discovering electronic music as a form of freedom and independence: a space where she could create her own language without having to ask for permission.

The brief for CIANI/ORKEST was relatively open. At its core was the dialogue between Suzanne's Buchla electronic instrument and the 50-piece Metropole Orkest. Rather than representing these as two separate visual worlds, I became interested in the relationship between them: what happens in the space where they meet, respond to each other and influence one another.

That became the conceptual starting point for the artwork.

How did the music inspire the creative process?
Rebeka: What I responded to most in the music was the dialogue between two very different entities: Suzanne’s electronic compositions and the orchestra. There is a constant sense of call and response, tension, movement and exchange.

Rather than assigning one visual language to the electronic and another to the orchestral, I became interested in visualising the space in between them, almost the body that is created through their dialogue. That space isn't empty or neutral. It is an active third element, constantly being shaped and transformed by both sides.

The geometric forms became a way of giving that relationship a physical presence. Their position, scale, proximity and overlap create different degrees of tension, as if the two forces are continuously pushing and pulling against one another while also transforming each other.

This is what led us to the lenticular print for the cover (pictured below). I didn't want the lenticular to simply create an optical effect. I wanted it to embody the idea of this relationship being in constant flux. As you move around the cover, the configuration changes, so neither side of the conversation is ever completely fixed. The image is always somewhere between one state and another.

In that sense, the movement isn't just happening within the artwork, it is created by the relationship between the elements and by the movement of the viewer. The cover becomes a physical representation of that ongoing exchange.

What did you research when developing ideas for artwork?Rebeka: I was looking at ideas around liminal spaces, duality, transformation, translation and the relationship between two distinct entities.

One territory came from Julie Mehretu's paintings and from feminist avant-garde practices, particularly the idea of liminal spaces and what happens in between defined territories.

Another explored negative space, black holes and dualities — presence and absence, attraction and repulsion, two forces occupying and defining the same space.

I also explored alchemy, shields, heraldry and insignia, thinking about symbols as containers of meaning, visual forms that can represent identity and relationships.

Another territory focused on transcription and translation. I looked at John Cage's graphic scores, John de Cesare's work and the Rosetta Stone as a transcription artifact.

I also looked at the radically direct, restrained and literal approaches of artists such as On Kawara, John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha. This opened up another question for me: how could the artwork feel like a milestone within Suzanne’s career while remaining fundamentally in service of the music? I wanted the artwork to have enough presence and clarity to give the record a sense of significance, but without becoming louder than the work itself. The artwork needed to create a strong visual object around it, while ultimately leaving space for the music to remain the central voice.

Please share an insight into the design development.