Communal Hat is an interactive mural about community made by of a team of artists for the 6th floor for the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center. These Community hats, wallpaper and performance were designed and created as a hive mind and can be explored in infinite ways both through action and installation.
Lead Artist: Lindsey Whittle
You Adult Team: Kayla Baker, Lura Bentley, Anna Collopy, Gray Draper, Ella Emanuel, Marin Emanuel, Connor Enxel, Carter Ferguson, Wyatt Guthrie, Adam Hale, Hailey Hampton, Grant Kelly, Grace Kessen, Eli Rossi, Isabella Salter
Organized by Shawnee Turner
**Original Music** By Adam Hale
More specific details about the project below!
Unveiling and Opening Performance
Images in Gallery shot by Lindsey Whittle (scroll through)
Images in Gallery shot by Chris Luessen (scroll through)
We really developed the language and design of this project as a group. This project was very multi-disciplinary and I was so impressed with how bravely each young adults embraced all the elements of this project. Which Is why I wanted to show off their hard work in these process photos/videos.
Rehearsal!
Process and Sketching!
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Mural Process:
*Digitally Printed Wallpaper: Each young adult made (individually and in pairs) a custom digital print in photoshop at the Cincinnati Public Library, which became the wallpaper (foundation) for the interactive Communal Hats. Each young adult picked an image or artworks from their own creative archive that represented community. All of those images were put into a shared folder and each young adult or pair could chose any of the images in that folder to to make their prints. Using the same imagery pool for all the prints allowed for visual themes and a more united content. All of the prints were printed stickers made at the Cincinati Public Library Maker Space.
*Farbrication of Communal hats: We invited each young adult to choose between structual hats (EVA foam) or fabric hats. Having sturctual hats allowed for more surprise and variety within the interactive hats. All of the hats were made with or covered by ripstop nylon. We choose this material for it's bright colors and durability, but also because it's the material flags are made from. Flags are symbols that represent different comunities and we thought this material was relevant to overarching concept of community. Each young adult working with the structure hats designed their own shape from our group ideas around community and sculpted it with foam. The fabric hat group devided into objective and non-objective ideas of community. They worked in small groups and individually to make their own designs. We decided as a group how to bring them all together.
*Performance Score: On our first day of meeting we all discussed ideas around community. The young adults demonstrated their deep thinking by each of them brainstoring and sharing ideas that define community, as well as visual and action elements that represent community. We used that generated information (see below) to develope our "Performing Comunnity" peformance score. Anyone can interpret or make up their own score when interacting with the comal hats.
The music for the perforance was composed by Adam Hale: "I was trying to create something that sounded smooth, and peaceful. Something that brought out a lot of emotions, and made people want to come together. It was meant to be very free flowing as well, I wrote the chords beforehand, and then played according to whatever emotions I was feeling. "
Scroll through below gallery to see everyone's digital print designs-
Student designs of Communal Hats!
Group notes on community generated on day one used to develop performance score:
