the interesting part, it’s an interesting challenge for our exchange. Now we are saying that you would do the design when maybe you think that we should do the design. And this question of the exchange and the bartering is also still there. M: No no no please. E: Maybe on the inside there could be the design from S, and on the outside a less designed cover, but both taking the same strat- egy. Or using the idea of the self-refexiveness, and inspired by your typography project, but our attempts at design and your design, almost mirroring each other. M: And would we really copy and paste the design by S, or? E: Yes, but without S telling us how. M: Trying to be designers? E: Yes, like the game where you copy another persons drawing, where S starts and I do a version, and I pass it to M, and then that becomes the cover. M: Yes it sounds interesting and exciting. I fnd this con- versation exciting, from the question of who is the we, to the changing and shift- ing of roles. Perhaps at the beginning I was projecting too much of a classic notion, like you were saying, but I’m really happy about what you just suggested, yes, I’m open. E: It’s funny because the screen has just gone black and we can’t see you, I feel like I have to have the graphics of you. M: Have you been think- ing about the assignment, or what bartering means, or implies, or have you not thought about it yet so much? Maybe we can all say what we think bartering is? E: I was just thinking - what we’ve been talking about, I mean I’ve talked about it with you and with M, about the projection of you as the expert and, just in the frst part where M says that the inside should be relatively neutral and the idea that for you, I would assume, or from what I know of other people who work with typography, the idea of design being neutral is a fction. M: Yes, yes. E: But also there is an aim in design that it should be in some cases as undistract- ing as possible. So the idea is that something should be very easy to read and not distracting to the eye. I think it is an interesting challenge to think within the boundaries of the as- signment that you have. Te last time I spoke to you S, you were saying that you weren’t sure if this would work in relation to the as- signment you’ve been given, because of the time, and the amount of time that you thought you needed, and the time that this would take. M: Just one note, on neu- trality, it’s because of ig- norance, I mean the whole thing is about experimental music so if you want to experiment with the format in any far out ways, total freedom, and excuse my ignorance. E: I just think it’s interest- ing that when we think about our own practice we would scrutinize the form and the means of produc- tion, but when we project to another person, engaged in another kind of practice, like design, we don’t bring the same amount of critical thinking. But that’s Noise & Capitalism Cover by Emma (E), Mattin (M) and Sara (S) Is it possible to try to make something, to capture some- thing in design that trans- mits the relations produced in making this cover? I am struggling with this process of transfer and transla- tion, but I can also see that simply writing down the questions is not so interest- ing, it isn’t an encounter of the sort that I think we have been feeling. M asked me if I would be interested to write something for this book in the summer, but at the time I didn’t think I could, I had a feeling of not being qualifed or not aligned to the project in a way that was strong enough for me to embark on writ- ing a text. Part of the reason as I understood M’s asking was around a question of gender, and how for him there was not so much rep- resentation of bodies other than male identifed bodies writing in the book. I had been involved in an exhibi- tion called ‘Her Noise’ at the South London Gallery in 2005, which in some way sought to approach some of the relations of Noise and Experimental music and gender. I am curious about how displacements of subject positions occur, and what an invitation implies spatially and over time. I had actually forgotten about the earlier invitation. Now M and I are both together in New York, in this new situation. We are fnding a way to work together and share this time in what I think is a very interesting way. M asked me if I would like to make the cover for this book, I have been procrastinating. I received an email from S about an assignment she Noise & Capitalism was given at school, she is studying Graphic Design. S sent me the work that she and Brit Pavelson made, it is a book that tells in both the text and layout, what are the conventions of book design and layout. I thought it was connected to M’s proposal, so I showed him and we both really got a lot of en- joyment from this. I spoke to S about working on the cover design for this book, and S was interested. I am interested in how to work together with friends, and how this work- ing together can sometimes be problematic, and other times really important since it decompartmentalises the things you talk about with some and not with others. I prefer to assume that someone will be inter- ested in talking about ideas, although I haven’t always done this, quite often I have compartmentalised my work and friendships because I feel self-conscious or un- generous perhaps. I started to project that S would be able to make the design since this is the thing she is studying. S and I have talked about this as a problematic relationship for her. In her school there is an emphasis on a profes- sional career and this is not so important to her. She has moved away from close friends in Sweden to be at this school in Amsterdam, and often feels unsure if she made the ‘right’ deci- sion, although she doesn’t really believe that there is a ‘right’ decision. We didn’t talk about it for a while, and then we did. Ten S was set an assignment at school as follows: Work for Work, Graphic Design 2nd semes 02 Noise & Capitalism