It was like turning a bucket of sand. The sensory media was made without planning and by using my combined visual and auditory senses. The usage of visual media to create sound is inspired by the work of Christine Sun Kim. Sound can be felt through vibration or direct auditory perception and all the diverse spectrum in between. Her art piece is able to be listened to, even with a lack of musical media. This is similar to the silent films of the early 20th century, where the audience hearing and not-hearing were able to listen. (Kovalik) I am pursuing a slightly different type of media, one that is accessible to both visual and auditory impaired individuals. Dr. Leonna Godin describes the blind as being able to see the “invisible truths” (Godin, 29) and can hear what the seeing person cannot. They pay attention to more differences. How different will the experiences be for a deaf individual in comparison to a blind individual? This multimedia piece explores the auditory and visual experience by forming an improvised video based on the cognitive and imaginative feeling of the music. The scenery and appearance of the video shift as the music shifts. The music chosen, Free Jazz by Ornette Coleman, does not have sheet music and was improvised in front of an audience, it is ordered chaos; the recording of the videos is raw and is purely based on what I was feeling for that specific part of the musical piece. I hope to create a visual experience that can be seen by both seeing and blind people in addition to an auditory experience that can be heard by the hearing and the deaf. How differently would a hearing and seeing person experience only hearing this piece in comparison to only seeing it?

Bibliography:

Kovalik, G. L. (1992). ‘silent films’ revisited: Captioned films for … – dcmp.org. Described and Captioned Media Program. Retrieved April 14, 2022, from https://dcmp.org/learn/static-assets/nadh211.pdf 

Godin, M. L. (2021). There plant eyes: A personal and cultural history of blindness. Pantheon Books.