Assignment 1A

I had a lot of fun with this project. My group got along really well, and all of us are quite easygoing people, so there was minimal stress associated with getting everything done. We got together and went to town recording the sounds of simple, everyday objects in Parker and Gabby's apartment. I was surprised how distinctive everything sounded. My fear at the beginning of the assignment was that we would fail to provide a diverse enough soundscape - I didn't want to let my peers down! However, as I listened through the headphones to the noise each object produced, watching the levels dance up and down on the H6, I realized every sound was entirely unique from the others. What was really cool was that the sounds the objects made often sounded really foreign, and without seeing the objects before me, I probably wouldn't know what most of them were just from sound alone! Putting them all together and listening to them in succession was fascinating for this reason because the objects were alienated even more without the ability to see them - sometimes I forgot altogether what I was really listening to!

In 6x1, we discussed both cymatics and synesthesia at length. Before that, I was not familiar with cymatics, but I think it's amazing. Nature is so crazy - everything seems so random and without order, but natural phenomena seem to never fail to produce beautiful, intricate patterns all around us. Just like every single snowflake is unique, it seems that every cymatic pattern is as well. I would absolutely love to play around with one of the metal plates they had hooked up to the keyboard. I want to see what my favorite songs look like in the sand. I think it would be so beautiful.

I was sort of familiar with synesthesia prior to this class and 6x1, but hearing about it never ceases to make me extremely envious of those who possess it. Perhaps in some cases it could be seen as a handicap, but I think it's incredible. To have the ability to "see" songs and paint them would be so cool (I want to commission Melissa McCracken to paint me a song!); more practically, I have heard that those who associate words and numbers with color have impeccable memory - something I desperately lack. A girl in my creative writing class several years ago was a synesthete, and by the end of the very first meeting she'd already memorized all of our names (Ryan is blue.) It's also crazy how many different forms synesthesia can express itself in. For a long time I had the notion that it was only the combination of vision and hearing, but imagine being able to smell a word, or taste it! Overall, synesthesia seems to just make life more interesting and vivid. But perhaps I am ignorant on the matter. I wonder if there are synesthetes who see it as an affliction, and if so, I wonder why.