Nostalgia: (kind of) A Book

What began as an experiment in translating music into something tangible became a more specific exploration into nostalgia and the many meanings of the word. Initially, I was drawn to how music can so strongly communicate emotion, and I thought about how (and if) it could be possible to use visual and physical means to communicate the same ideas in the form of a book. I decided on the theme of nostalgia to frame these audio visualizations and asked friends and family members to share songs that they felt fit their meaning of the word. When listening to these songs and deciding which ones to research further, I realized that each represented a unique facet of nostalgia. I became interested in these different meanings of nostalgia and how they relate to time, memory, and empathy, and wanted to explore these themes while at the same time reconsidering the limits of design and what constitutes a book. I experimented with many different processes of craft and image making to eventually land on these three visualizations included in this set, each inspired by a song, but independent from its source in its final iteration. The songs used as catalysts for these three visualizations were These Days by Wet, We Can’t Be Beat by The Walkmen, and More by Riz Ortolani.