Author: Evan Matthew Xie

Description

Our audio project is called “Splish Splash” and revolves around a water theme in which the user is instructed to hover over any side of the screen to hear different water sounds that are composed into a melody. By hovering over all sounds, the user will hear beautiful noises that are made up of water in the real world such as rain, showers, or a sink. 

Process

My partner and I originally wanted to create something involving water as a means of acknowledging the presence of water in almost everything humans do on earth. As our world is sustained by water as a base for life, we wanted to create a fun, amusing and warm sounding project using various water sounds. We finalized the idea by each gathering various water sounds such as a toilet flushing, rainwater and a shower turning on. From this point, we took the original samples and thought about how we could make them more clear sounding and crisp. Afterward, I took the original sounds gathered and tweaked them in a sampler in Ableton Live. After all the sounds were clear, I added a music aspect to the water sounds and made each sound into a melody. After this point, my partner worked on a basis for the code and we both put our components together. Once we created a working link, we both added simplistic visuals to go along with the water theme. We then used a hover effect to create our main audio interactivity. By hovering over each corner of the screen, different types of water sounds play. We tried to link a second page with new water sounds but could not figure out the final code. As a result, we ended up using two separate links. Both my partner and I worked fairly equally on the code. Although I focused heavily on the audio aspect, all ideas came from my partner as well as the idea to sample water in the first place. 

Post Mortem 

After we finished the project, we felt happy with our final result. I feel that we most definitely reached our goals of creating a musical melody out of water sounds and incorporated this nicely into an interactive site. However, due to limited time, we were unable to extend the project to be longer and include more layered water sounds using music-box. As well, we did not figure out a way to link the two final pages together. Despite this, we accomplished our primary goal in creating a hover-effect for the different sounds and making a very fun water-themed project. 

After watching and listening to Chimamanda Adichie’s talk, I felt a lot of personal connections to her story as well as how real of an issue her story is. What stood out and struck me as powerful was the fact that she drew white characters with blue eyes in her fictional stories as a child. Despite her being of Nigerian descent, the fact that she only learned of storybook characters as white people shows how dangerous only understanding one perspective can be. Chimamanda’s upbringing in British school is extremely interesting as she only learned of humans in one sense, through a British understanding. Similarly, I think of my own childhood in growing up in Shanghai and really only understanding Chinese culture. Despite being half American, I was raised surrounded by Chinese culture and therefore as a child, viewed the rest of the world as the “same” as me. However, like Chimamanda, once I grew up and saw other parts of the world, I quickly realized how dangerous stereotyping can be. What this specific case relates to Chimamanda’s speech is the importance of not assuming an understanding of someone or something. As Chimamanda grew up, read more Nigerian books and learned about her own culture more in depth, I felt that her awakening to the true nature of her culture was incredibly fascinating. I felt that as she learned not to just follow one perspective on information, she gained a greater sense of meaning and clarity of herself and of other cultures. What this speech also made me think of is how situations like this relate to our own society and learning. As many of us continually learn in a foreign environment (Shanghai), we must carefully acknowledge and consider the mass influx of various cultures around us. Rather than assuming we understand someone, it is important to ask questions, converse and fully learn about different cultures and societies. When we engage in activity like Comm Lab in creating websites, we must learn to communicate in ways that do not present a single-sided perspective that is hard to understand, but instead offer an inclusive view to a worldwide audience. In this sense, like Chimamanda, we can create a more diverse, intricate and knowledgable society. 

Kenny G’s rendition of Auld Lang Syne stands as a recollection of American history up until the modern day, focusing primarily on the negative aspects of American culture. However, the purpose of this focus is to show that despite all of the bad in our world, there is always hope for future generations. The video’s incorporation of Kenny G’s performance of Auld Lang Syne is very effective in creating a strong sense of emotion throughout the video. The compilation starts with a focus on 1940’s America, during the WWII era. It highlights events such as the Holocaust and the American struggle to find peace as a means of showing how emotionally and physically damaging certain world events can be. As the video continues, the focus shifts to events such as segregation in the 1960’s and the death of Martin Luther King Jr. As well, famous icons such as the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe are shown during their primary impact on American culture leading up to their eventual deaths. Following these scenes, other famous figures such as President John F. Kennedy are shown to highlight their impact on America. Eventually, Kennedy’s death is also shown as tragic and shocking. However, what is interesting about the video’s movement throughout time is that despite a large focus on the deaths of incredible American icons, their overall legacy and contributions to American society stand as more important. The video itself ends with Kennedy’s quote explaining the torch being passed onto the future generations. In this light, I feel that the video intends to make people feel emotional towards the tragedies in American culture not to have them feeling sadness or grief, but to challenge them to take a step forward in making America a better place every day. I feel that the video intends to leave viewers with a sense of hope for the future that the very idea of having a future in the first place is in their hands. As long as we do not simply give up on life and become lost to our own sadness of the past, we can always create a better society and a better world. 

After reading the Molotov Man article, what struck me as interesting and really powerful was the idea of an artist/photographer seeking to create art that speaks to people as a symbol. While many artists create powerful and moving pieces, I felt that both Joy and Susan’s work to create a symbol out of the Molotov Man was very daring, but nonetheless effective in displaying a message. I feel that their message was not to just “enjoy looking at this painting” but to stop and think about what the painting represents: a movement an time period in which rebellion ruled certain parts of the world. By creating a painting that shows an angered man with such detail, the artists created an image that seemed to me even more powerful than the original photo. Although the original photo was powerful by itself, I thought that the painting held even greater significance. With many cases in art and re-creating an image, the simplicity combined with detail creates a space for questioning as to what the image stands for overall. Therefore, with the Molotov Man, after understanding the history behind it, I feel that the painting created an entirely new movement in which Joy and Susan’s work sparked massive interest. By focusing on what looks like an oil-based style of painting, I feel that Joy was able to capture a sense of extreme detail to making the photo look realistic, but at the same time, make the painting her own style by adding blue/black elements to the background. This style immediately made me think of the overall message to be aware of the history of the photo and why people were in rebellion against other countries, government, or in protest to relay their own messages. As well, the artistic approach taken by Joy creates a sense of deep emotion that I could immediately feel after seeing the image. Upon first glance and going back to look at the painting, I could feel the Molotov Man’s anger and even felt scared myself. Therefore, I can see why this specific painting sparked a movement for other artists to re-create and personalize this image without proper permission or acknowledging copyright. The image itself stands for rebellion and protest, so it is almost expected that other artists would re-create the image without permission as a personal statement of their own.  

After watching and listening to Christine Sun Kim’s TED talk on sound, I felt more aware of how different people hear and feel sound. Although Christine is deaf, her use of sign language was very interesting to me in the sense that she feels and understands sound on a deep level that most people cannot comprehend. As she cannot physically hear, I thought that her use of sign language and ASL to communicate sound was fascinating. I better understood how sign language can be used as a method in communicating sound. As many people would expect deaf people to ignore sound completely, I thought that Christine’s way of using her own written language to understand sound shows how she can truly understand music even though people might think she cannot.

As well, I better understood how methods like using sheet music can be used heavily for deaf people so that they can fully understand how a certain song is played and presented. One thing that I really liked about Christine’s presentation was her statement of comparing sound to money as a “social currency” that could lead to a more “inclusive society.” I feel like Christine’s use of ASL and her methods of understanding sound are much greater than the average person who can hear. 

Therefore, I feel like now I will pay more attention to the ways in which people hear or feel sound and think more about whether or not they truly understand it like Christine. As a musician, I value sound highly and feel fascinated by how much Christine understands and how confidently she learns how to have her own understanding of sound.