Justin Pape

Colony Collapse Editions
Design, Innovation, Merchandise
2021 - 2024

"How do you turn a musical release into a sculpture? How can you make it an object that can be enjoyed in a different way when not being played?"

As a lifelong collector of music, I have always been curious why in every physical format, we store music in our homes in the same way. Like books, filing them away to only see the spine for when we choose to engage with them. In its current state, physical music is only really being consumed by "collectors" so why don’t we blur the lines between music and the art object?

Colony Collapse originally began out of the desire to put out a record by a musician I had been working with for years, but after a pause, it was reborn in a new form. At its core, it is a way for me to collaborate with artist in a way that I have not seen executed, and have been wanting more of. It is a way to take the inspiration behind creating music and letting that dictate the physical materiality of the release. It is a way to turn something that would normally be filed away, into an object of display that has its own life beyond being just an album.

With each release, I take the inspirations behind why an album was made, where it was made, and the background of the person/people making it, to develop a material specific to that story. From there a small sculpture is made of this material making the physical release of the album an object that can live on your shelf in a way that most music can not. Through these explorations I am able to use one of the biggest influences in my life, music, and let it contribute to my work in new and inspiring ways.