A state of mind • Melody Loveless
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Morris Adjmi Architects
November 6th • Lower Manhattan
In a time where construction cranes are as ubiquitous as clouds in this city and cartoon-like skyscrapers shoot up in the sky to wrestle out for the best views, finding new building structures that fit into an iconic NY context while simultaneously inspiring us is unfortunately few and far between. Morris Adjmi Architects walks that tightrope, creating some of the most creative iconic architectural undertakings in the city over the last 20 years. From their own words:
Morris Adjmi Architects (MA) interprets the forces that shape our cities to design buildings that are both contextual and contemporary. MA’s collaborative, research-based approach has helped establish the firm as a leader in the revitalization of post-industrial neighborhoods and historic districts with commercial, residential, and cultural projects that are imbued with a distinct sense of place and purpose. Morris Adjmi established MA in 1997 following a 13-year collaboration with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Aldo Rossi. On that strong foundation, he built a practice inspired by the arts and by new technologies that is recognized for its thoughtful engagement with context, creative use of materials, and sophisticated designs.
Melody Loveless is a multi-medium Brooklyn based artist who is currently focused on the practice of live-coding music. From mathematical to ethereal, Melody’s work transforms the DNA of most all of our intercommunication interfaces before our eyes. Melody has performed all over New York and Internationally and often fuses education with technology and the arts.
Melody’s 360 residency took place on a perfect crisp autumnal day. Lyle Starr, Director of MA Art Services, and his team proved to be superlative hosts. Melody’s reflections take the lead from here:
My 360 minutes residency at Morris Adjmi Architects was a curious yet fruitful time for me. I came into the residency with no specific goal in mind except for expanding my current livecoding audiovisual performance set, practicing, and sketching ideas. What I thought was going to be a time of long-periods of making ended up being a contemplative day for me.
I initially heard about this residency from Emily Garfield, an artist friend and former 360 minutes resident. My previous artist residencies have been for long durations overseas so I was conceptually drawn to the idea of trying to allow myself a residency in my home city and in the middle of the week. Is this actually possible? Will I be able to create anything? How does my state of mind affect my perception and creativity? How does this redefine my perception of a residency? In between working, I found myself returning to these thoughts throughout the day.
For this residency, I decided to focus on my livecoding practice, which involves me manipulating code to effect music and/or visuals in realtime. Throughout the day, I practiced music in Sonic Pi and created visuals in Hydra with images that I was associated with the day, like the Morris Adjmi website and Revit, a modeling software that I learned about from someone in the office during lunch. An especially lovely aspect about the day, was the kind hosts and random people I met from Morris Adjmi. Lyle, Jasper, and all of the other people I met from the studio seemed genuinely curious about my work and were welcoming from the moment I came in. It reminded me of how new spaces can allow you to build new connections and of the surprises and newness I could find close to home.
Sketch that Melody made during her residency using Sonic Pi
Instagram: @melodycodes
Afterthoughts: New York has always been a place where buildings hold our relationship to both utility and beauty; to the past and to a changing future; to the effects of gentrification and the opportunities of a boom. The stone and brick giants of last century are now dwarfed by glass and cement. But the old landmarks we now cherish were once despised for being new. The city will never stop changing, and part of its very culture is to lament the loss of what once was… But what is lost and what was there before? And how does it still define the underlying patterns of what came next? What do we memorialize, tear down, recreate? Who decides and what about those who don’t get to decide? In our undertaking to find spaces all over the city that would nurture creative work in unlikely spaces, we’ve taken the super elevators up and the crumbling stairways underground to find the whole of this city. And we celebrate creativity that works with old hand wisdom as much as new technologies. New media art like Melody’s that makes music from source code before our very eyes and architects who help design this city, like Morris Adjmi, with a sense of place and purpose, are bridges into the future - with all the responsibility and opportunity that entails. And the more they can be in dialogue and convergence with each other, the more likely we’ll all want to live in the future they’re helping create.