The Future Happened:
Designing the Future of Music
The Future Happened is an exhibition that examines how design and art deepens our relationship with music.
[ view the exhibition ]
The Future Happened is an exhibition that examines how design and art deepens our relationship with music. Exploring how design can be key in sharing our stories and amplifying our power to make a difference in the world. Examining innovation and technology that enhances connections and opens doors, reinforcing our capacity to spark change.
This exhibit was built over the course of the COVID19 Pandemic starting April of 2020, collaborating remotely from across the world to make it happen. Such an amazing team and a such a wild year.
Curation Team
Lawrence Azerrad – Lead Curator
Ruby Savage – Curator
Floyd Hall – Curator
Marlon Fuentes – Curator
Lawrence Azerrad – Lead Curator
Ruby Savage – Curator
Floyd Hall – Curator
Marlon Fuentes – Curator
Production Team
Sarah Panzer – Producer, Associate Curator
Christian Pugsley – Lead Web Designer, Producer, Developer
Harika Adivikolan – Education Initiative Author, Producer, Web Designer
Omar El-Sabrout – Exhibit Text Author / Editor
Seetharaman Subramanian – Web Production
Daniel Karaj – Web Production, Lead Interview Editor
Oriana Ren – Graphic Design
Sarah Panzer – Producer, Associate Curator
Christian Pugsley – Lead Web Designer, Producer, Developer
Harika Adivikolan – Education Initiative Author, Producer, Web Designer
Omar El-Sabrout – Exhibit Text Author / Editor
Seetharaman Subramanian – Web Production
Daniel Karaj – Web Production, Lead Interview Editor
Oriana Ren – Graphic Design
MODA
Laura Flusche, Ph.D. – Executive Director
Veronica Klucik – Exhibitions Manager
Ross Landenberger – Marketing Manager
Support
Aileen Farshi – Social Media
Austin Aubry – Interview Editing
Ayana Enomoto-Hurst – Interview Editing
Blue Hominy : Hadley Bazemore – Public Relations / Publicity
David Pugsley – Technical Drawings
David Onwukeme – Interview Editing
Kevin Lee – Interview Editing
Marco Da Re – Interview Editing
Thomas Pugsley – Interview Editing, Music Production
Laura Flusche, Ph.D. – Executive Director
Veronica Klucik – Exhibitions Manager
Ross Landenberger – Marketing Manager
Support
Aileen Farshi – Social Media
Austin Aubry – Interview Editing
Ayana Enomoto-Hurst – Interview Editing
Blue Hominy : Hadley Bazemore – Public Relations / Publicity
David Pugsley – Technical Drawings
David Onwukeme – Interview Editing
Kevin Lee – Interview Editing
Marco Da Re – Interview Editing
Thomas Pugsley – Interview Editing, Music Production
Posters printed for the exhibition
Designing the Future of Music:
the initiative.
“Designing The Future of Music is an LADdesign authored and led multi platform initiative that challenges graduate design students, designers, makers and the public to reimagine how we connect to music in a digital age. It’s a program that stands at the intersection of futures literacy, cultural and social impact and the universal power of music.
“Taking the form of academic workshops (at the Design Futures Lab at California College of the Arts, as well as the Global Innovation Design (GID) program at Dyson School of Design Engineering, Royal College of Art, Imperial College London) a museum exhibit (Museum of Design Atlanta) public events and books, the program draws on the contemporary practice of speculative design, demonstrating how initiative outcomes can be used to amplify the social power of music and the music experience, redress imbalances in the industry between makers, providers, and listeners, and the provocation of more meaningful and authentic creative experiences for the public, the artist and designer.”
– LAD Design
I was lucky enough to take part in the Future of Music initiative during my time at the Royal College of Art / Imperial College London while pursuing my Master’s in Global Innovation Design. In the lead up to organizing for the museum exhibition, I was able to participate in 2 of the design modules that focused entirely on the conceptual future of music. How it would look, what we could do as listeners, and how that could affect the music industry as a whole. For more details on those projects and their place in the museum exhibition itself, see the links below..
Shape
Synk
GID x CCA: Designing the Future of Music
Museum of Design Atlanta
(MODA)
I was asked by Lawrence in early 2020, as the COVID19 Pandemic was ramping up, if I wanted to be a part of the team that would design and build the first ever entirely digital exhibition to be put on by the Museum of Design Atlanta. We worked remotely over the course of the year to plan, design, execute, and launch the exhibition in April of 2021. Working with over 40 different independent exhibitioners from around the world, the Future Happened: Designing the Future of Music was a celebration of all things music and technology, with interactive experiences, interviews with the artists and designers, and a live concert series held entirely online over the course of the first few months the exhibit was open.
Promotional list of featured artists and exhibitioners
Design
Our goal throughout the course of the design process was to find a way to encourage visitors to explore. Unlike in a physical exhibition where visitors are free to walk and wander around the space, websites can be fairly limiting with only one screen to see at a time. And when our overarching goal was equally showcase all of our exhibitioners, this challenge became our main focus to solve for.
Our solution was a combination of guided experiences through the content, following one of a select number of themes: Healing, Power, Community, Tech, Timeless, and Atlanta. Each theme contained a collection of artists and exhibitioners from the entire group, but many exhibitioners overlapped categories and themes which helped take visitors across from one side to the other.
Additionally, I designed the homepage to be a collection of tiles filled with images or text, one for each exhibitioner in the exhibit. But with the help of a little bit of code, each time a visitor lands on the homepage of the site, the order of the tiles is randomly assigned, giving you a different view everytime you hit the page.
Process snapshots
The Dungeon
Aside from the website itself, one element I’m excited to have left my mark on was the design of the Dungeon Family’s page within the exhibition, an experience built to help tell the story of the family behind some of the biggest names in rap history. Check it out for yourself here.
“Imagine a dank crawl space in an unfinished basement.
Any one will do.
Should be dusty, pretty dark, and definitely cramped, even just for a couple of people, no? Now picture that imagined space as the launching point for one of the most celebrated collectives in American music in the last 30 years—The Dungeon Family.
After being forced out of an apartment in Southwest Atlanta because of noise complaints, Rico Wade, his mother, and two sisters moved to a small house in the Lakewood Heights neighborhood of Atlanta, where Rico set up the basement as a makeshift recording studio. That space—The Dungeon—provided a home base for Wade, Ray Murray, and Pat “Sleepy” Brown to coalesce as Organized Noize, and served as the foundation for musical family ties that grew to include Parental Advisory, OutKast, Cool Breeze, Goodie Mob, Joi, Backbone, Witchdoctor, and Big Rube; and ultimately extended to the likes of Killer Mike and Future.”
– Omar El- Sabrout, Dungeon Family, The Future Happened
This page was designed in collaboration with sound design studio One Thousand Birds, and my two younger brothers David and Thomas – David creating the architectural drawings for the Dungeon Family Home, and Thomas producing music to be used by OTB.
Conclusion
The Future Happened was a wonderful success with tens of thousands of site visitors, despite the challenges the world was facing during the pandemic, and MODA is planning to open a physical extension of this exhibit in Atlanta in the coming years.