Vibration

Vibrations

Instead of the exploration of the purity and peculiarity of the sound, this week’s material’s focus is on the vibration, or to be more precise, the visualization of the vibration. 

I really enjoy reading the Hearing Essay by Glennie. In the last week’s essay, I put forward the idea that sound and vision coexist harmoniously, but I really appreciate Glennie’s description that hearing is about touching. Hearing is about feeling the vibration of the air and this gives a new trait to sound. Sound, therefore, has become something produced and transported in the form of vibration, received by the ear, processed by the brain to leave a picture in your head, and eventually gives you direct feelings, feelings about hearing. Being a profoundly deaf musician, Glennie is offered the ability to directly learn more about this process. Maybe the concept of interpreting the way how deaf people hear would be an intriguing topic for NIME.

The Black Hole Horizon by Kubli, on the other hand, is a great way to show this concept. I like the method used to illustrate vibrations caused by sound waves by bubbles, which allows the audience to directly feel and see what they are listening to right now. We are able to get the shape of the sound by directly perceive the shapes of the bubbles. This led me to think more of the visualization of the sound waves. Using bubbles shall be a brilliant idea, and I am wondering whether using powder can yield similar outcomes. Perhaps piling powders in advance onto the speaker and then perform the music will also get some dramatic effects, which is something I wanna try this week.