Nat Rosa
MAGCD Musings

Category: Methods of Investigation

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Methods of Investigation

Investigation – Development

Following the third week of feedback, I decided to develop the idea of scoring the soundscape as if it were music, creating my own notation for each sound.

The initial experiment fell short of my expectations, but allowed me to realize that I was missing the most important part of the soundscape: silence. Showing the silence in between each sound gave the work structure and allowed for legibility.

Furthermore, I became aware of the importance of showing sound in the way that it is experienced, rather than the way that it is intellectualized. That is, when a plane passes overhead it registers as a plane, not as a collection of sounds (whirr, roar, whine) like I had been working with. 

Creating a notation for the physical sound itself (airplane, footsteps, passing car) gave the work the context it lacked. 

Finally, arranging the sounds in a circle with 60 spokes (one for each minute in an hour), created a structure that was both repeatable and easily understandable, resolving the ambiguity that had plagued the project from the beginning.

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Methods of Investigation

Investigation – Written Response

For the Methods of Investigation project, I chose to create a visual language that would tell the story of the auditory soundscape of my home, street and neighborhood, as heard from the inside of my home. The final iteration of the project is a collection of gestural symbols that seek to communicate how specific sounds feel when experienced, as well as snapshots of the most common modulations heard in my neighborhood, depicted through a series of intertwined gestures.

My choice was initially inspired after reading Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, in particular the chapter titled The Street. The meticulous process he uses to describe the layout, style and topography of his street, is one I tried to emulate when listening to, and transcribing, the sounds I heard. “Note down what you can see,” says Perec. If “nothing strikes you. You don’t know how to see.” (Perec, 1997, p. 50).

Breaking down the common into parts to be interrogated became itself a method of investigation that encouraged me to actively absorb the sounds I heard, yielding a rich tapestry of tones, pitches and intonations that I had thus far been entirely inure to. “Make an effort to exhaust the subject…Force yourself to see more flatly. Detect a rhythm,” Perec’s words guided a dynamic and comprehensive methodology that in turn led me to a more nuanced understanding of how sound behaves and how difficult it is to communicate the experience visually (Perec, 1997, p. 51).

As I experimented with different methods of visualizing the sounds collected during my research, I read Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage, and was intrigued by his discussion of the difference in perception and between literate and pre-literate societies. “The dominant organ of sensory and social orientation in pre-alphabet societies was the ear – ‘hearing was believing.’ The phonetic alphabet forced the magic world of the ear to yield to the neutral world of the eye. Man was given an eye for an ear.” (McLuhan, Fiore and Agel, 2001, p. 45).

This discussion encompassed the thematic core of my project. Deconstructing sounds and creating a visual language based on the feeling they evoke, made it necessary to employ both senses to understand what was being communicated. In essence, hearing was seeing was believing. The work was a response to McLuhan’s question, “Whence did the wond’rous mystic art arise, of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes?” though rather than painting speech, mine was an attempt to paint sounds (McLuhan, Fiore and Agel, 2001, p. 48).

In combining the methodical approach outlined by Perec with the thematic content discussed by McLuhan, I sought to explore the potential of a visual language to evoke the experience of sound. Though the outcome remains somewhat divorced from its intended objective, I hope to have captured some of the spirit and quality of the source inspiration.

Reference List
McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q. and Agel, J. (2001) The medium is the massage Hamburg: Gingko Press.

Perec, G. (1997) Species of spaces and other pieces: Georges Perec. Translated from the French by J. Sturrock. London: Penguin Classics.

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Methods of Investigation

Investigation – Final Outcome Feedback

The feedback I received on the final iteration of work proved that I had not quite achieved my proposed goal. The collection of marks was closer in tone and purpose than the symbolic alphabet I had presented in an earlier version, but without context it remained too opaque and ambiguous.

To clarify the work it was suggested that I circle back to the typographical experiments of earlier iterations, and combine the gestural approach with typography. References were made to comic books, where typography often visually takes on the quality of the sound being communicated, and thus could serve as a guide to orient a new version of the project.

Another suggested approach was to create a timeline of the soundscape using the symbols, in order to paint a more complete picture of the aural space I was attempting to evoke. In this same vein, I was pointed towards the work of John Cage and encouraged to look to musical notation as a format that could anchor the development of the work.

However I decide to move forward, it was pointed out that I needed to think more critically about what each symbol or gesture was conveying, and ensure that a literal interpretation of the work was possible.

Going forward, this feedback will inform a further rendering of this project that I hope will synthesize the elements that work and clarify those that remain cryptic. The goal will be to bring specificity to the abstractions I have created, and in doing so design a legible visual language that evokes sound in a compelling manner.

In hindsight, I believe I could have chosen an investigation with more latitude to arrive at critical findings specific to my site. The work I have done thus far has been stimulating in that it has led me to reflect on the ways in which formal writing systems evolved, and just how difficult it is to visualize sound when the goal is an objective, literal interpretation rather than subjective, abstract sentiment. However, as a response to the specifics of the brief, I understand how it has fallen short of its intention and agree with the assessment of this iteration of the work.

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Methods of Investigation

Investigation – Outcome

Making the alphabet gave me the space to differentiate each sound in the way it felt internally. The next step was to marry that sentiment with the reality of the sound in the space I inhabited.

To do so, I went through the process of creating gestural marks for each sound on my iPad. This time, rather than a symbol I made a mark representing each sound as I heard it.

Armed with this new visual collection, I set about trying to build a narrative, however it proved too convoluted for anyone to follow without a great deal of explanation, so I settled for simple concepts instead.

An airplane flying overhead. A skateboarder rolling by. A passing car. A father coming home. The snippets of sound that make up the neighborhood crystallized forming waves of sound built in gestures that internalize the meaning and feeling of each modulation heard from my house.

The process allowed me to understand how to pay attention to that which had become invisible. Seeing the white noise that formed the background of my home created a new layer of richness to my lived experience. 

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Methods of Investigation

Investigation – Feedback II

The feedback I received in my second tutorial corroborated what I already surmised about my alphabet. It was not working. Most of the feedback interrogated why I had chosen lines and geometry, rather than abstract shapes, color or other pictorial representations.

The consensus was that the work was “a lot” and “trying to do too much.” References were made to more successful projects by artist Christine Sun Kim and the wayfinding invented for an exhibit at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris.

The value in going through the process was that I discovered it was necessary to document sound as it exists, rather than as I imagined it. In the same way that drawing from memory is much more difficult than drawing from life, it is virtually impossible to capture the essence of a sound unless you are hearing it.

Given this conclusion, I set about translating the idea of the semantic alphabet into gestural form, attempting to capture the aural experience in a more relatable visual manner.

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Methods of Investigation

Investigation – Feedback I

The feedback I received in my first tutorial confirmed my suspicion that I had a compelling subject, but had not yet landed on a winning investigative method.

Counting sounds lacked depth to make it interesting, and the abstraction of sound needed to be able to tie the conclusion to the premise. The typographical experiment resonated the most, and it was suggested I explore this space further to see whether I could flesh out a full narrative.

During this week I went back to the McLuhan reading The Medium is the Massage having been piqued by the idea of how prehistoric societies communicated using their ears, while writing turned our eyes into arbiters of truth.

I decided to explore the beginning of written history to understand how people first visually communicated sounds and concepts. This led me to Assyrian cuneiform alphabets, a series of triangles and dashes derived from earlier pictorial symbols depicting the world of the ancient Sumerians.

My work this week explored the creation of a semantic alphabet for the list of sounds I had gathered. Using lines and circles, I built a series of symbols that I felt captured the tonality or meaning of the sound it represented.

Once I drew all 53 sounds, I then attempted to write short narratives with the symbols.

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Methods of Investigation

Investigation – Experiments

My first experiment was counting sounds. Over the first week I created a grid comprised of 24 hours and proceeded to take note of the different sounds I heard to create an aggregate picture of a ‘day in the life.’

Cars, trucks, motorcycles. Sirens, people, airplanes. An angry cat. The soundscape became distilled into categories, and those categories into colored dots representing each sound. The process was tedious and I tired of it quickly. Counting felt meaningless. A collection of dots representing sounds, but what was I seeing anew?

Counting sound

My next experiment was describing sounds. I took note of the different types of sounds, breaking down the soundscape into words. Whirr. Thrum. Whoosh. Buzz. I then chose a typeface that felt representative of the word. Script. Sans serif. Italic. These choices became meaningful, and it felt closer to a new truth.

Describing sound

My last experiment was visualizing sound. I placed paper on different surfaces in my kitchen and rubbed the paper with a black pastel crayon. I then took those rubbings and broke them down into pixel patterns using my iPad, in the hopes of finding a way to express sound visually. The experiment yielded a glimmer of something, but was largely unsuccessful in communicating much of anything.

Visualizing sound
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Methods of Investigation

Investigation – Site

I live in Fulham, in a stock-standard terraced house. Two up, two down, enclosed on either side by another outwardly identical home. Across the street the houses are wider, one and a half of mine, but essentially exactly the same.

This shared space is not just physical, but also auditory. We share the same soundscape. And while visually I can identify my neighbors and neighborhood, the sounds are the white noise that have become invisible over the year that I have lived in this house.

I therefore chose my home as the site to explore for this project, and specifically, the sounds that make up the shared aural experience of this space.

In doing so, I am seeking a visual language that will tell the story of my home, my street and my neighbors. The operative question being: what does the soundscape of my home and street look like?