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I See Sound

Drawing sounds on paper

I came across a mobile application called “PHONOPAPER” which basically takes images and converts them into a rough sequence of sounds. The functionality and output seem quite basic but can be used to create some interesting soundscapes.

I stated to play around with my immediate surroundings initially to get a clearer picture of what the application was doing (Couldn’t find much information about the working on the internet)

Cupboard
Rug/Tiles
Stabilizer Box

The way this app seems to work is it takes a colored image and turns it achromatic to make things simpler and then assigns a value depending upon the levels of black/white.

Black = 1; White = 0; Greys would be numbers between 1 and 0. Sound amplitude increases going from 0 to 1.

Eventually, instead of taking pictures of surroundings, I tried to “draw” certain patters on paper and scan them to create specific sounds. The results being an audible representation of a visual object.

Apart from these soundscape, there were a few iterations where the sound created had an auditory sensation of a familiar image/situation.

Laser guns/Space
Spooky
Big Bang/Birth Of Particles
Desert Storm
Supernova

There did seem to be certain restrictions with this particular medium of work. Inability to use color, some different looking shapes have a similar sound signature, scanning is always from left to right(spiral shapes become ineffective).

It would be interesting to work with people who are familiar with music/sound design to perhaps create a refined version of this in the future.

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Think? How?

This action has been my attempt to understand and transition from a solution oriented thought process, to a more branched/abstract one.

The process was shaped in the form of an exercise in which I was supposed to take an image and keeping that as the initial inspiration, create rapid 2 minute sketches, each stimulated from the previous.

Initially, the first few sketches were rather a bit direct and more of scribbles than sketches. They were rushed since I was constantly paying attention to the timer and the next idea (while I was making the current) simultaneously.

As I progressed, the shapes started taking a comparatively “not-so-logical” identity. And progressively, a flow of “just making” without the intervention of thought began to take shape.

And a few more.

The key observations in the process of this action were that as the sketches progressed, the shapes became more “organic” in terms of thought. I won’t say they were random as every progression had its core idea extracted from the previous sketch/thought. Simply put, for me, every next sketch was less “obvious” in terms of inspiration from the previous.

In this comparatively smaller progression of 90-100 sketches, it would be hard for me to digest, if I take these “images” to my past self, that these are a product of my own thought process.

I feel that in this action, there was a combination of 3 key factors, working together, that targeted the thought to an abstract direction.

  • The physical act of sketching
  • Generating the idea of what to sketch
  • Time constraint

Time constraint, for me, being the most important element as once the flow was achieved, it didn’t allow me to snap back to the “logical” thought again. Conversely, my sketches organically started taking not more than 2 minutes to create even if I wasn’t paying attention to the clock.

The action doesn’t end here. This has been just the point, I believe in a very nascent stage of this process, where I decided to pause. In this sense, its a piece of work that practically has no end in time for me. The uncertainty of outcome is what will keep the process running as time progresses.

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Step Out and Look Wider

Exploring “Nature” ?

I live in a place which ideally won’t fit into the description of living “close to nature”. With the lack of freedom to explore due to current circumstances, I was a bit frustrated since I couldn’t step out and ‘explore’ nature for this action. It became increasingly difficult to reflect broadly upon the topic of ‘looking wider’ when the field of observation is limited to the 3km radius of just concrete structures.

Jalandhar City

But why is it that we have become accustomed to referring that which is made by human, as something outside nature? Was I not already exploring nature? To explore further upon the idea I decided to look into habitats of different organisms.

Beaver Dam (Natural)
Weaver Bird Nest (Natural)

An observation here was that as you move down the images showing various habitats, the structures seem to conform to the ideal definition of “natural”, with a sudden diversion as we start observing those constructed by humans. But I feel all of the examples shown follow seemingly complex methods of using natural resources to create the desired habitat. Then why is one considered more natural than the other?. One would perceive a mud house more natural than a brick house but the later is a mere consequence of shaping the mud and heating it to recreate the building component. There is nothing unnatural about that, rather, its a consequence of an organism playing with its environment to create ideal conditions. In that sense, what we refer to as unnatural is actually obtained from primarily natural sources. So what exactly is the root of reason why the ‘man-made’ is proving to be rather destructive?

The negative impact doesn’t necessarily emerge from the man-made object but from the inability to foresee its impact and what is it that we are potentially replacing in the process of creating. I would like to be optimistic about the future of how we live in collaboration with nature around us since we are beginning to take responsibility for the outcomes we have on the ecosystems. An insight that would have never emerged if our primary survival strategy didn’t understand the importance of existing in sync with what we define as “nature”.

What this action primarily added to my knowledge was how I needed to redefine and explore the idea of what is “NATURAL”.