I feel like I can genuinely relate to Chimamanda Adichie’s Ted Talk. As she went on to tell the story of her roommate and how she assumed certain things about Ms. Adichie and felt sorry for her based on the fact that she was from Africa, I started thinking of instances of my own where people assumed things about me because of the way I looked, dressed, or presented myself. As an example, lots of people think I am Pilipino, Thai, or Hawaiian because I share similar features with people who identify with being these ethnicities. But, in reality, I am actually none of these ethnicities—I am mixed race. Another instance where people have categorized me into a single story is when they assume my parents are not divorced or that I was raised by both my mother and father when I was actually only raised by my father.
When I first saw that this video was assigned, I was curious because I had seen it before in a very different context. At some point early in the semester of my freshman year we watched this TED talk at a class gathering to think about how we understand one another. After rewatching it in the context of IMA, I see the TED talk also a call to action to creators of all types of media to be mindful of the stories they spin. Even when you yourself can only create a single story, you can create one that deviates from the usual single story and that tells another side of a truth. Hand in hand with our previous discussion about influence, it is easy for anyone creating media to create a story in the likeness of one that has already been told. A single story about Africa gets retold in part because the creators of new media base their story on the single story they heard before, and so the stereotypes propagate. The fact that her professor said her book was not “authentically African” also goes to show that when a new story is told in contrast to the usual single story, the audience might question it. It is tempting to choose to retell the single story that is already accepted and appreciated by the general audience, but it is more important– even the duty of media makers–to tell a story based on the truth they see, even when it may not resonate as well with the audience’s expectations. The reason these single stories are dangerous is not just because they don’t tell the whole truth, but also because they take away power and agency from their subjects and the audience of these stories ceases to see them fully as people.
I really enjoyed this ted talk, not only because of the story itself, but it also made me reminisce on my freshman year when I watched this in GPS.
Overall, I thought this was a interesting ted talk because the summary of the story is to look and understand things from multiple perspectives, and to not limit yourself to things you believe in. Question the beliefs of others not in offending ways, but understanding other’s stories.
For this audio project, my partner and I decided we wanted the focus of our project to be on creating ASMR sounds. ASMR stands for an autonomous sensory meridian response. In translation, this basically means the relaxing, stimulating feeling some people get down their spines, heads, and rest of their body from listening to gentle sounds.
It wasn’t until we received feedback during our project proposal to choose one category of sounds. After discussing ideas with my partner, we decided to focus on FamilyMart foods. I touched on this during my partner and I’s in-class presentation, but we agreed on what foods/drinks we wanted to use based on what we thought would make a diverse array sound effects for the user. We did not wish just to choose chips or only drinks because we did not believe these sounds would be unique enough. But, at the same time after doing some research (https://asmruniversity.com/art-of-asmr-tips-for-artists/), I found that often ASMR triggers involve people’s favorite foods or comfort foods such as potato chips, so this is another factor I considered when choosing foods in FamilyMart.
One of the leading roles I had in this project was creating and editing the audio. To generate the ASMR sounds I used three items. My MacBook Pro, Beats headphones, and a Yeti Microphone. I recorded the sounds using QuickTime Player which was previously installed in my laptop. I set the Yeti audio recording setting to bidirectional, which intakes sound from the front and back of the microphone. I chose this setting because after testing all the other functions, this was the clearest of them all. I also did some background research (https://asmruniversity.com/art-of-asmr-tips-for-artists/) and found that when recording ASMR and individual should be the opposite of angry when speaking or even eating food—remember the purpose of ASMR is to transmit a sense of relaxation. So, while recording sounds even though I wasn’t talking, while I was chewing, I attempted to make all my sounds smooth and flowing. One of the last tips I focused on while creating the ASMR sounds was my distance from the microphone. I learned that to pick-up better-quality sound, I must basically be touching the mic with my lips, if not the sound is not as clear. Sometimes I would have to restart a recording because I got too close to the microphone and accidentally hit it which created a thumping sound. As I went on to produce more sounds, the thumping happened less, and I could get through recording the audio quicker. In terms of editing the audio, I barely needed to touch the raw version of it. I used Finalcut Pro to adjust some of the levels of the, so the spikes were not overbearing, but other than that not much was done to the clips.
Another role I had in the creation of our project was designing the background for inside the store. I created the shelves from scratch using shapes such as triangles, squares, and lines in Keynote. The reason for having to develop this by myself was because surprisingly it was tough to find images of empty shelves on Google big enough for what we were looking for. I felt that designing the shelf was quite simple and straight forward, but the biggest issue we ran into was actually formatting the shelving correctly to make sure all of the food items fit properly and looked aesthetically pleasing. After spending a day or two sending the code back and forth with my partner cutting, cropping, and adjusting the size of the image we were finally able to make everything work properly!
Lastly, after my partner finalized the code, I was able to work on the design of both pages adjusting font color, size, style, etc. I also found and implemented some cute images of shopping carts to add to the buttons taking the user from the homepage and inside the store itself.
In general, my partner and I reached all of the goals we set for our project. I think if we had more time to continue working on this project in the future we could add more sound clips and maybe even look at what types of different foods convenience stores (such as 7/11) around the world have in them and create sounds based on those foods and stores and then compare and contrast the similarities. I had a great time working with my partner on this project and overall learned a lot and had a lot of fun!
YES! I remember this from the beginning of my first semester orientation week. In Chimamanda Adichie’s Ted talk, she discusses her own personal struggle regarding her own cultural background and her identity as a black woman from Africa. The main problem that she conveys is the problem with the perspective of people on someone else. This perspective can be limited as she described as a single story. The problem of having a limited perspective is its cause in the ignorance of other cultures and people. This lack of perspective came with historical foundation dated back during the colonial age where European powers colonized the African continent. The effects of colonization had a negative impact on African cultures. Not only it imposed western ideology but also ignorance such as African aren’t civilized through misinformation to their own culture. It had a long-standing influence till today where we still have such negative and single viewpoint on a certain culture.
The reason why I asked myself if I read this piece before is I want to emphasizes that this is related to all of us. As a part of the NYU Shanghai community, I have the opportunity to explore other cultures and we should take this opportunity for granted and appreciated it. Since we had this opportunity, we should take on a role to solve the problem that Chimamanda Adichie is addressing during her speech.
