Shuffle: Rhythm of the City

Back when the latest in Top 40 music always hit the airwaves without the help of Youtube and iTunes, people would turn on the radio and listen to their favorite tunes, picking up every word in the lyrics to imagine a story being told by a narrator, from Madonna to Michael V. Shuffle somehow have managed recreate that kind of pre-millenial hobby into a visual art form of sorts.

MMAExhibit-ShuffleWeb05

The exhibit took place last December 12 to 14, 2013 at the LRI Design Plaza in Nicanor Garcia Street, Makati City where the first of this term’s exhibit line-up also took residence, Ctrl+Z. It features works from 17 students graduating from the College of Saint Benilde’s pioneering AB-Multimedia Arts programs. It is led by the fierce and always fabulous Sir Jesse Lazaro, who also oversees another exhibit that’s currently ongoing as of this writing, Literal.

Shuffle

Shuffle

Although the exhibit itself was not big of a majestic production compared to the more big-budgeted showcases of the other MMAPrtfol classes, Shuffle did make most of whatever limited resources it has and create something that’s just as spectacular and amazing.

The concept taken from the idea similar to that of Synesthesia, wherein music took the form of art. But in contrast to that earlier exhibit, the former took the concept to a more grounded idea. As the title of the exhibit suggests, every featured artwork represents a song that the average Magic and RX listener would hear and play on their mp3 players. What’s awesome is that they took it to another level wherein they even created an in-theme game for visitors to play with. The mechanics of the game is simple but the graphics that came with were really pop-ish, an ideal “eye-candy” that could hook both young and old to play just for fun.

I also like their sort of “shrine” that pays homage to the music players of past decades: the boombox, the jukebox, and a shelf stereo, just to name a few. It’s quite cute.

Over-all, I think Shuffle was able to achieve what it needed to accomplish with its chosen concept given its modest budget. Also, even though they weren’t well prepared ahead of time, they were able to let visitors inside the venue past the announced time which is really nice.

 

 

 

Share this post