Transliterate: Music Box

Transliterate (Bye Bye Berlin, I’ve Become a Butterfly) is an interactive, mixed-media work that translates a deeply personal migration of identity into sound, image, and gesture. Conceived in Berlin through informal dialogues about synesthesia and abstraction, the piece functions as a transliteration device: wooden-box stages map realization, liminality, and incorporation.

Music strips—punched by hand while listening to Arooj Aftab’s Vulture Prince—carry both holes and drawings that record an embodied response to rhythm. Passing through the box, these strips produce music as they cross the liminal zone. The work becomes a self-made therapist, transforming dislocation and melancholy into a ritual of sound and healing.