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.