Image Correspondence #9

One of the super-early episodes of 99% Invisible, (Episode 3) introduced us to RjDj’s music apps. Using a smartphone platform, the apps augment a listener’s sonic reality through reactive music (real-time soundtracks that respond to environmental stimuli with prerecorded sonic scenes). In these two images I imagine what a sonically augmented experience might feel like – which is to say, heightened, if not completely psychedelic.

Photo credit: Kate Joyce Glow stick goggles, Abiquiu, New Mexico, 2011.

My work as a photographer focuses mostly on visual reality. Similar to reactive music, photography magnifies external and internal worlds, but does so through color, light, and scale, instead of sound. As we engage with the image, we arrive at a threshold where we can negotiate our experience of truth. In the episode, Robert Thomas, a composer for RjDj, mentions how adding a reactive music soundtrack to any experience has the effect of “seeing an inner beauty in everything.” I relate to this as an image maker. Witnessing and capturing a certain light on something can reveal a beauty you might miss otherwise.

Photo credit: Kate Joyce Luminous Field by Luftwerk, Chicago, Illinois, 2011

Reactive music, unlike photography, is saturated within the listener’s environment. Not only is it another perspective to consider, but also an experience to perceive.

Special thanks to Orla O’Sullivan for her help with this week’s image correspondence.

Kate Joyce is a Chicago based artist, architectural photographer, and the first image correspondent for 99% Invisible. Every two weeks, Joyce will release new and original work for specific episodes. She’ll also comb through her archive to find previously made photographs that are already in thematic conversation with current and past episodes. “I’m curious to see how audio will shape image and image will shape audio and what that will mean to telling stories about design over time,” Joyce says.

Now You See It  is a photography project of 99% Invisible. We’d like to create a public dialogue by offering our listeners a new way to interact with our show, as well as their own immediate environment. The project includes the Image Correspondent Residency with Kate Joyce, and ongoing photo assignments for listeners.

We want to see what you hear! Submit your images to our Flickr Group, or email them to [email protected] or put them on Instagram with the hashtag #99PI. We’ll be curating and presenting our favorites on our Instagram and Tumblr.