Week 8: Response to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Madi Eberhardt

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s, “The Danger of a Single Story,” is definitely one of my favorite ted talks that discusses an issue that is very important to recognize in society/media today. At first she describes while growing up in Nigeria, multiple British stories gave an impression on her. She states in her talk, “I did not know that people like me could exist but in Africa.” She then goes onto explain the interaction between her American roommate and herself in which Adichie was stereotyped to a single story that is often told about Africa. It is this single story that creates unnecessary stereotypes. By individuals only learning one perspective about another culture or place, it leaves an incomplete understanding of the culture or place. This stereotyping and unawareness leaves our society with a disconnect between the diverse cultures that surround us. I found it interesting when she mentioned the story about how her family hosted a boy, and even she began to stereotype her own culture.

I believe our media has a very significant role in this issue, as this is where we hear and learn about people, their cultures, and places most often. For example, Africa is often seen as being a poor country with starving children and having a lack of technology. Our media tends to stereotype cultures or places without even it being noticeable. The media and the messages it gives to its audience is so powerful, especially today. I wonder if it is the creator or the audience who should be more conscious of creating this single story, where does this issue start? I think it should start with each individual, as more people need to be more culturally aware and begin recognizing our biases/stereotypes with an open mind. Communication with others is so essential, and our society tends to lack this when it comes to keeping an open mind about the perspectives, values, and cultures around us.

April 1, 2019April 1, 2019

Danger of a Single Story (Thomas Waugh)

In the ted talk, “The Danger of a Single Story”, Chimamanda Adichie talks about how people commonly take one single story about something and make it out to be the only truth. I thought about the message of this talk and realized I can see it everyday with the amount of cultural diversity around me. Our school is full of individuals from so many different countries and backgrounds, and it is easy for people to generalize what a person is like based on stereotypes that they have heard. I think it is important to know that there are always multiple stories that exist and that people can’t understand everything and have to acknowledge this, keeping their mind open to the many stories that exist. I spent most of my life living in America, and I know that it would be easy for other people to perceive me as the stereotypical American. But I was born in Argentina, and also have a Japanese grandmother who exposed me to Japanese culture since I was a kid. Just as I know I am not a single story, I think every person and every place possesses many stories and can’t be defined by only one. Single stories told as the only can lead to great miscommunications and misconceptions.

April 1, 2019April 1, 2019

Audio Project – Julia Riguerra

URL: https://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jhr360/audioproject/index.html

For our audio project, Kat and I delegated the work between us such that I worked on the web design while Kat designed the audio. We decided on recording a reading of a poem, “Biography of Southern Rain” by Kenneth Patchen, which Kat then distorted and added other atmospheric sound bytes.

Because our main focus was the audio, I decided to design the website to complement the content of the audio and made the background a gif from the film Garden of Words, which heavily uses rain as a symbol. Since the background and the player are gifs, I decided not to include an author’s bio, as that would have been more distraction from the audio, and I felt that there wasn’t anything more that could add to the website, other than subtitles.

I initially had trouble with the subtitles not appearing, but I was eventually able to resolve my issues. I used the in-class exercises for coding reference.

I wanted to have the background be multiple images that would transition into one another, but I couldn’t find a solution that I understood with my current coding knowledge and decided not to pursue this.

Through this project, I was able to design a website, which I hadn’t done since before the comic project, as I’d been working on content then. I also designed the player in Photoshop and drew the gifs, and it was satisfying to see something I created functioning properly.

April 1, 2019

Week7–Audio Project Documentation by Jialu

link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~lag614/audio%20project/index.html

Our project tells the story of a little girl sneaking into her brother’s room where there’s a record shelf and on the shelf, she found some records of sounds of different places in Shanghai. The story of this little girl is inspired by Laila whose brother also has a shelf like this.

Laila made the HTML page and the sound of People’s Park. I collected and edited the sound of street food and the sound of The Bund.

For both of the mixings of sound, I used songs of Jimmy King as background music. Jimmy King was one of the top Jazz bands in Shanghai during the 1930s and it’s songs give me a mental image of the prosperity of the old Shanghai.

In the beginning of the street food sound, I used a sentence of Shanghainese which means “Did you have dinner?”. Then I mixed the sound of customers ordering food at the dumpling stand, BBQ and fried noodles together. It was raining when I went out recording these sounds, so the noise was a little loud. And it’s really hard to record very detailed sounds, since I didn’t want to interrupt others’ business. So after reduction of noise, I chose the clearest part and amplified it until it was loud enough to be heard.

The most difficult part of editing the sound of The Bund is organizing those elements together. I recorded a lot of sounds at The Bund and I didn’t know how to put them together to make them sound complete and harmonious. At first, I just put the sounds that I like together, and then I made adjustments according to my feelings. I really like the sound I recorded in the Peace Hotel at the very end of the mixing, which was Jazz music played in the hotel café. However, there were many people talking in the background and it’s hard to separate the music from the human voice. I tried my best to reduce the noise and amplify the sound of the music, but it still sounds a little bit weak.

March 31, 2019

Audio Project: Documentation – Jannie Z

Link: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~yz4970/week7/audio-project/audio.html

Description:

Our project is called “shut up and listen” . It’s a collection of human voice and object sound. We invited some people to our interview and recorded the sound of the objects and the story of this object.

webpage

(main page)

Me and Val collaborated on this project and it turns out wonderful!

Process:

Inspiration/Ideas:

I was inspired by the videos Leon showed us during the class. I related some of them to the other videos I have watched. I like watching ” 10 essentials” interviews of GQ magazine where they interview celebrities about 10 essential things they cannot leave without and ask them to explain the story behind them. And personally, I am obsessed with listening to stories. I like when people are telling their own stories. The tones, the paces, and the tiniest details could be recorded to reflect the people’s emotions. So I came up with the idea of this project, which is interview people about the object they feel attached to and the story behind it.

(my inspiration)

Audio:

Collecting Materials:

We almost started to collecting our materials right after we got the idea. I invited some of my friends to attend our interview. I recorded the sound of the object first and then ask them a few questions and the story of this object. We did these interview in the interviewees’ mother tone. In different languages and dialects: German, Chinese, English, Japanese… It’s very intriguing to see how they reveal their emotions subconsciously when speaking in their mother tone. And how wonderful they sound.

We used Tascam and shotgun microphone to record. And we did some of the interviews in the music room on 8th floor. It’s very quiet and the quality of the sound turns out really great.

Editting Materials:

We used Audacity to edit the materials we collected. I used some functions like fade-out and eliminate-noise to improve the quality of the audio. I also used different tracks to integrate the sound of the object and the interviewee’s voice. So they happen simultaneously. And when the volume is too high/low, I use Audacity to do minor changes. But I didn’t do very big changes to the volume because I’m afraid it will harm the quality of the audio.

Because I have to ask some necessary questions during the interview to keep the format of each audio consistent, my voice is also recorded in the audio. I used Audacity to edit them out.

Photoshop:

I took a picture of 7 white chairs in a white background and make it the background of our webpage. And during each interview we took pictures of the objects. Val did some photoshop to cut out the object and put these images to the background image.

background image

(background image)

We want to keep these objects mysterious and keep people guessing what these objects are by listening to the sound of the object. So we add shadow to the image of the shadow and when u click it it will show.

one object (one image of shadowed object)

Webpage Design & Coding:

We wanted to keep the webpage simple and make people focus on the audio. So we only have one page and put everything there. Subtitles are so important for our project and we learned how to do subtitles in class. We did subtitles for every none-English audio. Also, we created some div boxes to put the control and the subtitles inside. And when you click the object, the div box will show. We did this using display:none and display:block function. I also learned how to use images as buttons to trigger other functions.

We set the font yellow so it looks like those in the old movies. And the images are shadowed at first, but when you click them, the real images will show. We did this by using innerHTML function. Everything is simple and clear.

Post-Moterm:

Our project went out really great and I think it met my goal. It expresses my ideas and is beautiful and clean.

Problems:

Subtitles:

I had difficulty with subtitles first. It will stay on the first subtitle that I assigned. Because instead of writing “if / else if” , I wrote ” if/ if” . So that java will only check the first condition.

Audios:

Because our time and environment conditions are very limited. So we did the interviews in different environments. Some of them sound better without any noise but some of them sound not that good. And the volume is not consistent either.

What I Learned:

how to add subtitles on webpage
how to use Tascam and shotgun microphone to record
how to use Audacity
how to choose the environment of a recording place

Future Development if Possible:

To keep the audio quality consistent.
To make this full screen.
To create different interface when audio shows.