Journal Project 3

In Musica Practica, Roland Barthes argues that music should not be reduced to theory or passive listening but instead should be understood as an embodied, felt experience. When he writes, “Beethoven’s deafness designates the lack wherein resides all signification,” he is pointing to a deeper truth: that true meaning in music, and by extension, in art, is not in technical perfection, but in presence, tactility, and the emotional grain of expression. Barthes sees Beethoven’s deafness not as absence but as a condition that makes music more physical, more tangibly intelligible, something felt in the body rather than just read on a score.

This idea resonates with my final project, where I collage fragments of old photographs into new compositions. Like Barthes’ concept of musica practica, my process is tactile and interpretive — I manipulate found images with my hands and digitally reconfigure them into something expressive. I’m not preserving the "original" meaning of the images; I’m letting them speak in a new voice, one shaped by memory, intuition, and mood. In this way, my work echoes Barthes’ call for an art that is lived, not just analyzed.

There is also a public/private tension in my process. The photos I use often come from anonymous or personal archives — moments once private, now made public in collage. But through recontextualization, I blur that boundary, inviting viewers into an intimate, embodied experience of history and meaning — not unlike hearing the grain of a voice in music.

As a final project update, I am still in the process of collecting different elements of different images and isolating them on photoshop.  Additionally, I am gathering inspiration and using this inspiration to guide my vision for my final project.