MUSIC This Text Is Prepared for The
DESIGN CHRONOLOGY TURKEY MUSIC This text is prepared for the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial ARE WE HUMAN? The Design of the Species 2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 years, 200,000 years by Alper Maral, Gökhan Akçura and Pelin Derviş with contributions by Tanju Eren and Barış Gün, and the support of Studio-X Istanbul translated by Liz Erçevik Amado, Selin Irazca Geray and Gülce Maşrabacı editorial support by Ceren Şenel, Erim Şerifoğlu graphic design by Selin Pervan WHAT ABOUT MUSIC?* The fact that music is a field of design is a proposition that can still by deemed odd, unfamiliar in Turkey, or more precisely in the Asia Minor – Middle East geography we are situated in; this field is either not taken seriously enough, belittled as trivial, “recreational”, dispensable, or elevated to the status of an elusive “feat” beyond earthly conceptions, practices with an enchanting label of “creativity”, or as is repeated also in many other cultures, considered worthy only as it is reproduced under the sanction of “primeval traditions”. And for this very reason, music, like many other disciplines, has only found the opportunity to shake this status quo and make somewhat novel breakthroughs with the –at times overtly vulgar—moves of Modernism. When we avoid reducing design to merely physical mediums and place emphasis also on its intellectual context, its abstract predicates—ranging from method to model, from imagination to the “artwork”—it would not be misguided to assert that music has been subject to a process which has gained momentum especially with the Republic, while its most primal moves can only be deciphered in the Tanzimat reform era, and that its reflections—products—have gained visibility again along the axis of this process.
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