Animācija — Katrīna Sadovņikova

Designer and architect Anna Līva Traumane is the co-founder of the studio onlyonly and, together with a number of other young designers, participates in the recently opened exhibition Home Ground, which can be viewed in the afternoons at Sporta Street 2, Riga, until the end of August. In the column Nice Touch Anna talks about ways to continue discovering new things.

Nice Touch Editorial August 9, 2024

«I believe that curiosity is the driving force in new discoveries, and in my creative practice I tend to look for viewpoints outside my field of activity. A nice touch that helps me achieve this is Radiolab, perhaps the most unique radio show ever, born in New York in 2002 as a space for experiments in public radio programming. Scientific discoveries, political and philosophical questions are interspersed with people’s everyday experiences and stories. Due to its experimental nature, it resembles a work of art, subverts the format of traditional radio and also provides an unprecedented audio experience.

The episode that I have listened to several times is Touch at a Distance. One of the stories depicts the scandalous premiere of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913 and the revolt of the unruly audience under the influence of the dissonant chords. Events in the brain make us look for recognizable patterns and reasons why we like or dislike something, and this makes me think about my own creative processes.»

The design studio onlyonly, which Anna founded in 2020 together with Harijs Vucens, looks for radical solutions that enrich people’s experience in their work. onlyonly works interdisciplinary, combining contemporary culture and ideas of architecture, design, scenography and art, and personal observations.