This exhibition attempts to illustrate the intersection between anti-mainstream musicians and how they depict their music through promotional graphics, uniting sound with visual expression. Through materials from the University of Minnesota Libraries' Minnesota Underground Music Archive, affordable production methods, such as Risograph, screen print, Xerox, pen and ink illustration, and collage, are explored in detail, analyzing the aesthetic nuances that these techniques offer.
Low-Fidelity Design: Making Techniques from the Minnesota Underground Music Scene
Exhibition Dates: January 28 – May 13, 2023
Goldstein Gallery, McNeal Hall
Guest curator, Calee Cecconi, explores promotional design produced by local musical acts at the turn of the 21st century. This exhibition attempts to illustrate the intersection between anti-mainstream musicians and how they depict their music through promotional graphics, uniting sound with visual expression. Artists gain total freedom of expression by producing pieces like these in-house—often literally with collaborative making in their homes. Artists might choose production methods for ease of access, as a statement against mainstream production and capitalism, to eliminate digital screens and make by hand, or purely for artistic expression. Through materials from the University of Minnesota Libraries' Minnesota Underground Music Archive (MUMA), affordable production methods, such as Risograph, screen print, Xerox, pen and ink illustration, and collage, are explored in detail, analyzing the aesthetic nuances that these techniques offer.
Housed in the Andersen Library Performing Arts Archive at the University of Minnesota, MUMA was formed in 2013 by local collectors Tim Carroll and Liseli Povlika. This community-driven archive is a unique assemblage of publications, publicity, photographs, recordings, and ephemera documenting Minnesota's independent, punk, and underground music culture from 1950 to the present. Its archivists are dedicated to the collecting and preserving of materials associated with the Minnesota music scene of the past, present, and future.
Cecconi connects personally with the aesthetics of the work in this archive. Formerly the design director for advancement at the College of Design, Cecconi uses many low-fidelity methods in her work. During undergraduate studies, a broken laptop and limited access to design software led her to experiment with techniques like collage, hand lettering, and Xerox copying. Currently a visiting assistant professor at Hamline University and a faculty member for MCAD’s Master of Graphic and Web Design program, she brings her experience as a graphic designer to interpret MUMA’s unique objects that embrace inconsistency and the spirit of making.
Join us to learn more about how Minnesota musicians utilized non-digital, or low fidelity, media to convey the individualism of their music.
