A Short Pause
This week was probably the most stressful week I have had since I started working on the final year project. My consultation was Thursday morning and as I walked into class
I had my experiments and ideations ready but somewhere in my heart I had my doubts that continued from the last few weeks but I just took it as me still looking for my momentum.
I was honestly just not making as much progress as I expected myself to be making. During my consultation Andreas started to explain how Interactive Media Artists have worked hard
to diffrentiate themselves from being put under the design practice label and that it is not part of design. He suggested I can maybe move it to Interaction Design and as much as I understood
the feedback considering I also had my doubts I just did not feel very good since there were only 4 weeks to final submission for this semester. I conveyed how I understand his feedback
but dont wish to abandon sound since I had spent a lot of time experimenting with it and also just really wanted to work with it. He helped me make tables and investigate the many design
fields where this could fit in be it their traditionally or mordern.
I went home and after researching I decided to work with Interaction Design. While reading the books on sound, specefically "Designing Sound" by Andy Farnell I remembered
suggests sound begins as oscillatory patterns travelling through materials before becoming audible. I also remembered reading Christine Sun Kim, a deaf artist's interview on how she
trasnlated sound to vibrations and how sound doesnt just enter through our ears but our bodies. I found that so interesting and came across how Haptics and Sound are share
the same frequency but are rearely designed together. Best example being Apple's taptic system, even if the phone is on mute we feel our phone's are ringing through the vibrations.With this and some other
topics i went to class on friday and pitched it to Andreas as my direction. Thankfully, he also agreed that this is a more intersting direction so I started to read and also designing based on this.
Workshop with Brian!!
I said before that this week was the most stressful but at the same time I would say that the friday was also the most fun I've had. I love music, I listen to all kinds of
instruments, I love all kinds of genres and languages people make music in and I will always be excited to learn more about it. This is also why I chose to work with sound in the first place!
We went down to the studio in the basement, and the space itself already shifted my mood. They the warm lighting, the equipment, the sense that something slightly magical
happens there too was so COOL. We started the session by talking about how musical notes are ultimately abstractions, and how systems of sound are constructed.
We learned about Karlheinz Stockhausen and musical serialism, and then musique concrète, which became the foundation for modern sampling. It was interesting to see sound framed
historically rather than just technically.
We also got to try the theremin (which felt like conducting electricity with our hands), watched Brian patch and play different synthesizers. Throughout the session, we
listened to classics by Pierre Schaeffer and Bernard Parmegiani people and names I had heard before but never actually listened to . Hearing their work in that
studio made their ideas about sound feel much more alive and physical.
