Folk Songs Archive

A visual interactive archive that aims to document Egyptian folk songs due to a major lack in archiving the folkloric materials. It creates an engaging, valuable yet entertaining audio-visual experience between the audience and the songs through the interactive lettering cards.

The project focuses on visualizing folk songs of two different Egyptian environments; agricultural and coastal through Arabic lettering designs. The songs were collected from visiting each environment as well as recording some of them.

The difference between each area is depicted by envisioning the lyrics through Arabic lettering and turning each song to an illustrated piece from the original environment. This reflects on how the cultural environment influences the group to create their own kind of folk songs. The style of the posters focuses on analyzing their elements along with integrating them within the lettering designs.

In brief, the project imagines a new archive system. It also works on an experimental perspective for Arabic Lettering. The archive system depends on documenting the songs through merging the text (lettering designs) and sound (songs audios) together. That’s why the project can deeply relate to the second axis : State of Change. The archive brings the traditional folk songs and new technologies/ perspectives all together. It reflects on how valuable the word “Archive” is and the richness it carries, to be presented to the upcoming generations in an interesting way.