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.