Makayla Hsieh, Symphony No. 5 by Ludwig van Beethoven
Concept and Design
Beethoven constructed Symphony No. 5 when he was almost deaf. Losing the ability to listen is highly detrimental for a musician, but Beethoven is still determined to pursue his musical passion as he continued to produce famous musical compositions after he became completely deaf. Though Symphony No. 5 is well known for the first ominous verse, you can actually hear a more hopeful tune as the music proceeds. The concept of this piece follows this hopeful tune to convey a positive connotation.
This piece is created with different modifications of the letter “C” in Adobe Illustrator. I used Gestalt Theory to conduct a cylinder-like pole on the top and bottom of the composition. One can see the cylinder through the closure and proximity aspects of the Gestalt Theory. There are four arrow-like patterns shooting upwards in the middle of my piece as if it’s trying to charge out of the cylinder while there are smaller arrow-like patterns trying to push it back down. This indicates the upbeat tune and positive connotation of the symphony. Reflecting from One Black Square, I wanted to add structure into my piece instead of having it spread out. I hoped that the viewers of my work can follow the flow of my work.
Process
Besides the cylinder structure, I had a very different design at first, as seen here.
However, I changed the composition since I had technical difficulties with Adobe Illustrator as my free trial expired during the lockdown. Since I didn’t save my original work onto cloud, I still wasn’t able to make changes on my existing after I made my payment. Once I restarted, I thought the arrows shooting upwards conveyed Beethoven’s message more accurately than my original design. As I was playing around with the features, I discovered the eraser tool and decide to use it for the poles so the design wouldn’t be as dull. I ended up cutting up the “C” into small shapes so the viewers can use closure to tell that it’s a “C”.
I learned from the mid-critique that designers should introduce an element more than once to restore balance and give the viewers more room for interpretation. Therefore, I made sure that my elements collaborated with each other smoothly.
Conclusion
If I had more time to edit, I would look into creating other elements to convey my message instead of excessively repeating the same elements. I would also make more drafts since there is always more than one way to convey the meaning of a music piece.
