DESIGN FOR EAR
DESIGN FOR EAR
Masafumi Inaba MA Graphic Design Communication Chelsea College of Art and Design
INTRODuCTION Sound is everywhere. What can you hear right now? People chatting? A glass of wine? Someone’s walking? As John Cage mentioned there is no absolute silence, we always hear something. I’m always fascinated by the power of sound. For example, back in Japan, I always hear sound of cars in my room because there is a big road nearby. And in London, there is also a highway near my flat, so I hear almost same sound here. Since I always hear the sound of car, it makes me feel home. As a graphic designer, this experience led me to think that it is possible to capture the emotional power of sound in graphic design. And why does sound affect our emotion so strongly? This journal is about a whole journey of sound research in my MA course.
1
Q.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO CAPTuRE THE EMOTIONAL POWER OF SOuND IN GRAPHIC DESIGN?
Sound Visualization: Reserach Question
Summer is icumen in
Sound Visualization: History of Western Musical Score
Seikilos Epitaph
Neumatic Notation
Gregorian Chant
Mensural Notation
Sound Visualization: History of Western Musical Score
Composition X / 1939
Composition VIII / 1923
Composition VI / 1913
Sound Visualization: Wassily Kandinsky
‘A parallel between color and music can only be relative – just as a violin can give warm shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments. ’ Wassily Kandinsky
Composition IX / 1936
Composition VII / 1910
Sound Visualization: Wassily Kandinsky
Alter Klang / 1925
Sound Visualization: Paul Klee
‘TO EMPHASIZE ONLY THE BEAUTIFUL SEEMS TO ME TO BE LIKE A MATHEMATICAL SYSTEM THAT ONLY CONCERNS ITSELF WITH POSITIVE NUMBERS.’ Paul Klee
Sound Visualization: Paul Klee
Illinois: Visualizing Music / Jax de Leon
Sound Visualization: Information Graphic
16’28” / Hoon Kim
1
A.
WITH THE DATA OF SOuND, INFORMATION GRAPHICS COuLD BE ONE APPROACH TO ACCOMPLISH THE SOuND VISuALIZATION OBJECTIVELY. Sound Visualization: Information Graphic
Colour Code
Hue Circle of Major Codes C
B
C#
A#
D
A
D# E
G# G
C
D
E
F
G
A
Code C
F
F#
C+E+G
B
Code D
Code E
Code F
D + F# + A
E + G# + B
F+A+C
Code G
Code A
Code B
G+D+B
A + C# + E
B + D# + F#
HARMONY The link between vision and sound has been
relationship, the opposite colour of red is green
discussed for a long time. Issac Newton is the
which is a complementary colour, but it loses
first scientist who found out that the spectrum
its hue when red and green are overlapped each
of colour and sound had similarities. This is my
other. Although this finding was interesting, but it
first experiment to make a bridge between vision
is extremely hard to understand that red is code C
and sound. The interesting finding was that the
unless you have a synaesthesia.
relationship of 12 bars are similar to the one of a circle of hue. The opposite side of code C is code Code F#, which makes unsynchronized sound when you play it at the same time. Like this
Sound Visualization: Harmony
Harmony
Sound Visualization: Harmony
HAMLET
‘Hamlet’ was my first experiment in sound visualization. The story is reconstructed and focuses on the death of Ophelia. This project mainly visualizes the emotions of the characters. There are four pieces of visualized information on each page spread; photos from the film, text from the script, sound waves relatingto the actors’ voices, and background music. The colour bars on the top left are visualizations of the symphonic poem about Hamlet by Franz Liszt; the sound waves on the top right represent the actors’ voices from a BBC production of the play. The spread of colour bars and sound waves can be layered onto the relating images and texts below by folding over the page. The sound visualization enhances the emotions of the characters in the play.
Sound Visualization: HAMLET
Sound Visualization: HAMLET
Sound Visualization: HAMLET
‘All visual projections of sounds are arbitrary and fictitious.’ Murray Schafer
Since I had started to research on sound, I have felt that sound visualization tended to be subjective. To solve this problem, I chose information graphics because it is based on data, but it is also subjective in the process of coding and decoding. Then I found the quote above by Murray Schafer. He explained that if someone ask you to draw a sound, they can start to draw a picture of sound anywhere on the page. Even someone could visualize sound on paper, it would be extremely hard to read it. Then my research shifted to the relationship sound and vision. Sound Visualization
2
Q.
WhAT IS THE BEST RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOuND AND VISION?
Correlation Between Sound and Vision
SOuNDSCAPE A soundscape is a sound or combination
for a long time. Even though there are
of sounds that forms or arises from an
so many attractive sounds in daily life,
immersive environment. The idea of
people never pay attention to them.
soundscape refers to both the natural
Back in Japan, there was the culture
acoustic environment, consisting
that people went out and listened to
of natural sounds, including animal
the sound of crickets. However, now
vocalizations and, for instance, the
Japanese people hardly do that. We are
sounds of weather and other natural
losing the culture of sound. The study
elements; and environmental sounds
of soundscape is rediscovering values of
created by humans, through musical
sound. Then I started to think how I can
composition, sound design, and other
make people realize the importance of
ordinary human activities including
sound in life.
conversation, work, and sounds of mechanical orig in resulting from use of industrial technolog y. This idea is extremely important because soundscape describes what I have felt Correlation Between Sound and Vision: Soundscape
Correlation Between Sound and Vision: Soundscape
Listening Post / Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin
Correlation Between Sound and Vision: Listening Post
2
A.
ViSual IMAgeS COulD ENHANCE CONTEXT OF SOuNd.
Correlation Between Sound and Vision: Research Question
The Pursuit of Correlation in Sound and Vision ‘The sense of hearing was more vital than the sense of sight. The history of the tribe and all other important information was heard, not seen.’ (Schafer, 1977, p.10)
Critical Research Paper
Introduction ‘There is an ancient history of emphasizing vision rather than hearing in the Western tradition.’ (Goodale, 2011, p.3)
They say ‘Seeing is Believing.’ Since our primary information source is sight, people pay attention to what they see. As a graphic designer, I also spent a lot of time studying visual communication. In this visual world, people do not notice the significance of sound. However, Marshall McLuhan pointed out the importance of auditory information in his book ‘The Medium is the Message’. ‘The dominant organ of sensory and social orientation in pre-alphabet societies was the ear – “hearing was believing.” ’ (McLuhan, 1967, p.45) Before there were alphabets, sound was the most important communication tool. I realized the importance and the emotional power of sound in a charity concert for the Japan earthquake. Taro Hakase, the best-known Japanese violinist, played the violin to raise fund for Japan. In the end of the first song, some people started to sob, and I also felt something was grabbing my heart. Probably the tone of the violin was firmly connected to the tragedies of victims. This experience brought me a couple of questions. Why does sound arise our emotion so strongly? And is it possible to capture the emotional power of sound in graphic design? Is it possible to make a bridge between vision and sound? My research focuses on a relationship between vision and sound in terms of communication. As a start to my research, I looked into a history of sound visualization.
I. Sound Visualization 1. History of Musical Score A musical score is the oldest and most common sound visualization to share musical properties: pitch, length, and rhythm. With musical knowledge, a musician reads the intention of a composer precisely, even a slight emphasis on a particular note. My investigation on a musical score is finding the reason why it has been the most common sound representation since the Middle Ages. In fact, the history of musical scores showed a development of music and a method of coding and symbolizing sounds. Letter Notation
Critical Research Paper
The Seikilos epitaph, the oldest musical score,
This was the Five-staff notation which is still used
was found in ancient Greece around 2.B.C. In spite
nowadays. At this time, a score showed not only
of the beginning of musical culture, the ancient
a part of instrument but also an entire movement
Greeks already had systemized the way of writing
of all instruments due to the development of the
musical score. It is called ‘letter notation’. Letters
ensemble and polyphony music.
with a line and sign above the lyrics represents notes and melodies. Since the ancient Greek music was
The history of the musical score reveals how
monophonic, representation of melodies and pitches
notations were signified and shared the information
was enough information for singers.
of music. The notations minimize the all-sound information in a grid system and symbolize the
Neumatic Notation
sounds to decode them instantly. In terms of symbolization and rules, the development of musical
In the middle of 9th century, the Gregorian
score is similar to sign graphics. With all regulations,
chant developed polyphonic music. Polyphony is a
musical scores became the most understandable and
texture consisting of two or more melodies or voices.
precise sound representations since the Middle Age.
As the melodies had more layers, the information of the musical score needed to be more accurate. Instead
2. Sound Visualization in Fine Art
of using letters, Neumatic Notation utilized a line and dot as representations of melodies and pitches. This
After the investigation of the development
line played an important role to standardize the pitch
of musical scores, my research shifted to sound
of notations. As a development, Guido D’Arezzo,
visualization in Fine Art. Paul Klee was a pioneer
an Italian music teacher from 11th century, drew
of sound visualization in Fine Art. He was strongly
four lines in a musical score to show the pitch more
fascinated by the power of music. For Klee, a
clearly. This was a prototype of the modern musical
synthesis of music and art was tantamount to a
score. Although the pitch was shown visually, it was
full integration of his personality. Throughout
impossible to see rhythm.
his career Klee continued to work with and refine his concepts of pictorial rhythm. The roots of his idea on pictorial rhythm tracked back directly
Mensural Notation and Five-line Staff Notation
to his experience with Cubism. This connection
between rhythm and Cubist drawing aided Klee in
In the 13th century, the Mesural score was
establishing positive, productive new directions.
developed to illustrate rhythm. The solution of
It would not have been successful if he had
visualizing rhythm was to design different symbols
not met Robert Delaunay, the French painter. In
of notations. For example, a black dot with a
Delaunay’s studio, Klee saw his new painting,
white line had a longer duration than a black one.
“Simultaneous Window”, which Klee recognized as
In 16th century, musical instruments were taking
the most advanced painting at that time.
over vocals. The rhythm of music belonged to the rhythm of lyrics. Since musicians played the same accents regularly in instrumental music, a notation was divided into a bar with a vertical line.
Critical Research Paper
Delaunay proposed that depth is the fundamental feature of visual reality, that essence of visual depth is
the “rhythmic simultaneity” of light, and that the simultaneity of light consists in the harmony and rhythm of the colours that create vision. (Kagan, 1983, p.56)
3. Sound Visualization in Graphic Design It is remarkable that both Delaunay and Klee used the grid system and layering transparent colours to synthesize art and music. 30 years later, these techniques were applied to graphic design.
Delaunay loved the expressive power of
Josef Müller-Brockmann, Swiss graphic designer and
colour. He sought a means to control colour and
teacher, is best known as the father of grid system.
dissonance, so he could indulge that sensibility
His poster, Zurich Tonhallein 1955, is recognized
without turning out lurid, meretricious, anarchic
as one of the best-known sound visualization in
painting. He wanted to work with the entire
the history of graphic design. The grid system and
spectrum, and borrow from harmonies and
geometrical shapes were applied to reproduce the
tonalities of nature. The quest for power and range
music of Beethoven.
demanded the use of colour dissonance, in order to create active, vital harmonies, as opposed to the inert harmonies of traditional tonal painting based on a palette of low intensity. He sought a means to control colour and dissonance, so he could indulge that sensibility without turning out vivid, fictitious, anarchic painting. Multiple overlays of transparent colour automatically tend to compress the range of hue, value, and chroma, making it easier to avoid blaring dissonances.
Upon small grid pages in his notebook, Müller-Brockmann began with a single square. Within this, he sketched rough shapes and lines signifying the text. Attempting to develop differing feeling of “rhythm” and “transparency”, he looked for a “logical connection” between the marks in the page and music. (Purcell, 2006, p.159)
Klee’s highest goal was the synthesis of
This approach is similar to Klee’s technique
construction and expression. Klee had come to see
for his painting. Like a musical score and Klee’s
pictorial polyphony as bound up in transparent
painting, the grid is a system to standardize spaces
colour depth. He began to create pictorial space
and make an order in layouts. As we see the
by overlapping and intersecting rectilinear colour
history of musical scores before, more rules were
planes, each exactly parallel to the plane of the
developed, as there were more sounds. Order and
picture surface. Klee experimented with a wide
sustainability make a replicable rhythm. Although
variety of pictorial formats that he considered
Klee and Müller-Brockmann were in different field,
polyphonic in one sense or another. But he had
the achievement of both them was quite similar.
already settled on the overlapping, parallel,
Both of them reproduce the rhythm and harmony
rectilinear-plane format. This indeed was a much
of music with using grid system. Interestingly,
more precise, logical, easily analyzable means of
Müller-Brockmann’s mathematical and logical
organizing colour depth and modulating colour
approach is strongly related to sound visualization
contrasts.
in Information graphic nowadays.
Critical Research Paper
Reading Sound
According to these finding about musical scores, Paul Klee and Müller-
Brockmann’s practice, the grid system is a key to create a rhythm in vision. In response to it, I designed three layouts, which have a same text from Hamlet, to see how layout and space affects our way of reading. The first layout is based on a sound wave of an actor’s voice from the BBC DVD of Theatre Play ‘Hamlet’. The second one has a borderline in outline of a square, and the third one has 10 divided boxes, which represents one second. The result is that if there are more lines, people tend to keep timing and space in their reading of the words. With no lines, people make silent because of the space between the words. However, in the third layout, people try to keep the timing. This experiment shows that the grid layout could change our way of reading. 3. Sound Visualization in Information Graphics Nowadays information graphics has become one of the most popular visual experiments among designers. With the development of technologies, we can access a huge amount of data more easily than in the past. Sound visualization is also often seen in information graphic lately because the technology can analyze the sound precisely. Designers use grid systems to keep the timing and rhythm and simple shapes, such as rectangles and triangles, to represent notations. These are strongly similar to what Paul Klee did in Alter Klang. The difference from Klee’s painting is that information graphics are based on collections of data. There are two good examples to show sound visualizations in information graphic. 16’28’’ by Hoon Kim is a representation of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream” speech. He created a system of representing vocal intonation by matching six colours of the spectrum- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple – to respective volumes and pitch. Another example is Illinois: Visualizing Music by Jax de Leon. This project is an experiment in taking an audio recording of music that is beautiful and personally meaningful to many listeners, deconstructing it from different vantage points, rearranging it, and building it again into visual interpretations. On the image, each square on the grid represents one second of the entire album and coloured squares indicate the subject of the lyrics being sung during each second. A similarity of these two projects is that both sound of King’s speech and the music are broken apart into the data of the sound and both designers create their own code and decode system to visualize the sounds. In addition to this, Since the beginning of my research, I have been feeling that almost all sound art and sound visualization tend to be subjective. With the data of sound, information graphics could be one approach to accomplish the sound visualization objectively.
Critical Research Paper
4. HAMLET: Sound Visualization Experiment ‘Hamlet’ is my first experiment of visualizing sounds. This is a book project which focuses on the death of Ophelia from Hamlet by William Shakespeare. My aim on this experiment is making resonance of sound information which means creating enhancement of understanding contexts by sound information. On the spread, there are four information: images from a Hamlet movie by BBC, original texts by Shakespeare, sound waves of actors’ voices, and graphic representation of symphonic poem by Franz Liszt. The spread can be folded into four, and the page of voice sound waves overlaps Shakespeare’s text, and the Music one could be layered on images from the movie. Actors’ voice sound waves represent the characters’ emotions. Putting this voice information on the texts, they become more emotional in order to shapes and colour of sound waves. The translation of Liszt music was not as easy as voices. Scientists, such as Isaac Newton, discovered the relationship between colours and sounds that both of them have a similar frequency. For example, frequency of red is similar to Code C and the one of yellow is similar to code E. I used the colour chart based on Newton’s theory to visualize Liszt’s music. The notation by Franz Liszt is translated into colour bars which based on Newton’s theory. My idea on this spread is enhancing emotion on the images by overlapping the colour bars like Klee used transparent colours on his paintings. However, it is not successful as voice information because there is no strong connection between the colour bars and the images. Although it is not successful, I found that a patter of melody could be appealing visually than musical scores. Colour bars clarify the movement of melodies more apparently than the musical score. The hardest part of this experiment is establishment of informative synthesis between vision and sound. I created nine-box grids based a unity of information graphics by using different kinds of information. Like Klee and Müller-Brockmann, the grid system is the best solution to make the synthesis on the layout of the images. The grid controls all the information even though they are quite different. The synthesis makes information more condensed, and gives the narrative more emotion. The finding in this project brought me a one basic question. Is the fusion of sound and vision possible to describe emotional power of sounds? The biggest problem of sound visualization is the translation from musical language to visual language. Especially information graphics, designers use their own code and decode methodology to make sound representation. When the audience decodes the sound, it depends on how they read sound with keys which the designers created. Therefore, contexts of the sound are missing through this process. Then, I came across with this quote by Murray Schafer, a pioneer of Soundscape.
Critical Research Paper
‘All visual projections of sounds are arbitrary and fictitious.’ (Murray, 1967,p.127)
Although there are many artists trying to visualize sound, there is always one problem. Sound visualization tends to be subjective. Even they could make sound visible, it is extremely hard to read sound from visual.
When it comes to translating to translating the mathematical rhythms and concordances of music into geometric forms, however, problem of repetition often arise. The danger with any visual art aspiring to the universal form of music is that frequently descends into beautiful but ultimately meaningless gestures or motifs. (Purcell, 2006, p.158) The quote exactly describes what I faced on the Hamlet project. The project made me realize how hard it is to visualize it objectively and to keep the emotional power of sound. My aim of this research is finding the best position for sound and vision, translating sound to vision was not a successful way to achieve my point. Then, my idea about sound shifted to that sound should be sound. John Cage mentioned ‘One must be disinterested, accept that a sound is a sound and a man is a man, give up illusions about ideas of order, expressions of sentiment, and all the rest of our inherited aesthetic claptrap (Mcluhan, 1967, p191). In the next section, I investigated the difference between sound and vision.
Critical Research Paper
II. The Difference between Sound and Vision In the first section, the research proved that translating from sound to vision does not keep the emotional power of the sound. Then, what is the best position for sound and vision? McLuhan said, ‘When the visual image is of high definition or intensity, we complete it by providing sound. That is why, when the movies added sound track there was such deep artistic upset.’(McLuhan, 1964, p292) Since sound and vision affect our perception differently, sound and vision could have complementary relationship. This section focuses on the different effect between sound and vision and how they complete each other. 1. The Effect of Sound Improve Memory Performance
The mimetic form, a technique that exploited rhythm, meter, and music, achieved the desired psychological response in the listener. Listeners could memorize with greater ease what was sing than what was said. (McLuhan, 1967, P113) One of the best effects of sound is improving our memory performance. In language acquisition, copying sound is the most common method to learn new language. For instance, babies start to copy what their parents say to learn language even though they do not understand the meaning of the word. In fact, the babies with good ears learn word quicker. In addition to this, listening is strongly related to writing. My English teacher in Japan told me, ‘ It is quiet hard for Japanese student to pronounce R because Japanese language does not have the pronunciation. Students, who cannot tell the difference of R and L, often have miss spelling on the words such as ‘Really”.’ Actually the research below explains the interesting relationship between memory and sound. My parents shared with me the interesting story how the visual recall my sound memory when I was a baby. I started to speak words when I was an eight-month-old baby. Comparatively it is fast for an eight-month-old baby to start to talk. This is because my parents read me a story every night. They said I memorised what they say with a picture of a book. Every time I saw
Critical Research Paper
the picture, it reminded me of the sound of the
services. This aural marketing has started back in
story. Thus, hearing replicable sound strongly
80’s and now you can see and hear it everywhere.
can improve memory. Moreover, when the sound
McDonald’s ‘I’m Loving it’ or Intel’s five-tone are
comes with the visual, the performance increases
the most well-known sound logos in the world.
rapidly. Andrew N.Meltzoff, an American
There are two reasons why the aural marketing
psychologist and an expert on infant and child
is so popular now. One is that sound logo has a
development, did a study to find out how sound
less commitment. Without sound, the audience
and vision improves infant’s memory.
need to sit and watch the television, but you can be anywhere if there is a sound. Another fact is
We tested 18 – to 20-week-olds in a simple reading task. Infants were presented with a film of two faces side by side. One face was articulating the vowel /a/ and the other the vowel /i/ in perfect synchrony with one another. We played one of the vowel sound, either /a/ or /i/, out of a loudspeaker midway between the faces. Infants were allowed to visually examine the faces for 2-minutes while listening to the soundtrack. The result showed that the infants close to look longer at the face that matched the soundtrack they heard.’
(Meltzoff, 1999, p.255)
the use of the emotional power of sound. Sound designers create the sound carefully to give a good impression on listeners. Oilie Raphael said, director at Delicious Digital which is a company specialising in digital video and motion graphics.
Sound is unconsciously logged by consumers and creates an emotional trigger, linking a product a pleasant memory. Music makes us feel particular emotions, and, because hearing does not require the same focused attention as looking, it allows sonic branding to reach the parts of the brain that other marketing tools cannot reach.
(Baker, 2010) Enhance Visual Contexts It is important that he mentioned sound can
We can’t shut out sound automatically. We simply are not equipped with earlids. Where a visual space is an organized continuum of a uniformed connected kind, the ear world is a world of simultaneous relationships.
reach the point which marketing cannot reach
(McLuhan, 1967, p.111)
humanity on its brand. Sound has a power to
because it means sound could change a context of the visual. For example, the Intel’s logo gives us the feeling of sensation and revolution. At the same time, it also has a cool and mechanical feeling. However, the five-tone add fun and appeal to our emotion stronger than the visuals.
Sound has a wider range of recognition and adds another context of visual. A sound logo is
2. Emotional Response to Sound
a good example to show this. A sound logo is a non-conventional trademark where sound is used
Sound is everywhere in an ordinary life. John
to perform the trademark function of uniquely
Cage pointed out that there is no absolute silence
identifying the commercial origin of products or
in his work, ‘4,33’ in 1952. He had the idea of the
Critical Research Paper
felt not only comfortable but also felt being like
as its model, has shown us exactly how forms and colours are released from their adherence to the external appearances to things and are reinscribed within the pathos of life.
a robot because of the lack of communication.
(Henry, 2009, p.117)
piece in the silent room, Harvard University. In the silent room, it was not absolute silence. He could hear his internal sound, such as a heartbeat. As my experiment, I spent a day with earplugs. I
Of course, visuals arouse some emotions, but it is sound that amplified emotional feeling. To show
3. Sound and the Visual Synchronization
how sound arose emotion, the theory of music therapy explains the effect well. There is a general
Then, what is the best correlation between
consensus that music is capable of arousing
sound and vison? One of the best works to show
emotion in those who interact with it.
the relationship between sound and vision is ‘Listening Post’ by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin.
Music has the power to evoke strong and significant emotions in a wide cross-section of the general population. For instance, in a survey of the crying behaviour 331 North American adults it was discovered that 63(8%) of the 800 crying episodes reported were triggered by music. (Sloboda, 2005, p.215)
Although music psychologists are
still investigating exactly how music affects our emotional feeling, there is another artist who was fascinated by the emotional power of music. He is Wassily Kandinsky. One of his most important concerns is the generality of music. Music immediately expresses our feelings. Music formulates the generality of the affective tonality within a plurality of distinct experiences. Its universal power of expression comes from copying pleasure and pain through the greater or lesser overcoming of the clash between dissonances.
In their shared reference to the internal development of pathetic subjectivity with its indifference to the world, painting and music are the same. The entire development of abstract painting, taking music
The work displays uncensored fragments of texts from public internet chartroom s and bulletin boards on 200 monitors and computer-synthesised voice reads the texts. The project has started with a simple question, what might 100,000 people chatting online sound like?
The power of Listening Post emerges from the artists' skill in pooling their combined philosophical, artistic and technological interests to achieve an exceptional distillation of collective interests as well as 'the content and patterns evident in different information channels'. Mark Hansen's computer programmes collect, sample and process thousands of live online public conversations which are then sorted by theme, while Ben Rubin's voice-synthesiser tones and sound effects respond to shifts in the data streams, carefully building up the musical score. Together these activities go beyond simple redisplay or reinterpretation of data patterns, to create something 'that expresses the meaning of data gathered from the internet'. (Redeler) Critical Research Paper
While sound in contemporary art tends to be a mood maker, sound, voice synthesizer, and the visual are strongly connected in this project. Although the voices from the chat room are extremely private, the synthesized voice makes the voices of the chat room anonymous. 200 displays show numerous information from the internet, and the sound add anonymous texture on the texts. This effect strongly enhances the context of the project. The sound completes the texture of the visual. This relationship is completely different from sound visualization in graphic design. Converting sound language to visual language cannot enhance the context of the project because sound and vision communicate us differently. That is to say, sound visualization in graphic design remains merely a way of visualization. Conclusion My whole research began with sound visualization. The first problem was the arbitrariness of its visualization approach. Although the Müller-Brockmann’s practice led me to information graphic, I found out that it loses the context of the sound in the process of visual translation. Such as Paul Klee and f Müller-Brockmann, it is possible to reproduce the harmonic structure on the painting and graphic from sound, but it extremely hard to transfer the emotional power of sound to visuals. ‘Listening Post’ shows the best correlation between sound and vision because sound enhances the context of the visual. It is not necessary to translate sound language to visual language compulsorily because sound loses its context in the process such as language. The relationship between sound and vision is similar to the one of a complementary colour. Namely, although they lose their hues when they are layered on each other, they are enhanced by each other when they are next to it.
Critical Research Paper
Bibliography Barker, J. (2007) Sonic Brand [Internet] Available from http://www.communicatemagazine.co.uk/currentissuemenu/1660-sonic-branding Kagan, A. (1983) Paul Klee / Art & Music. Ithaca, (N.Y.) London: Cornell University Press Goodale, G. (2011) Sonic Persuasion: Reading Sound in the Recorded Age. United States, ,University of Illinois Press McLuhan, M. (1967) The Medium is the Message. Harmondsworth, Penguin McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding media: the extensions of men. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Meltzoff, A.N. (1999) Origins of Theory of Mind, Cognition and Communication. United States. Michel, H. (2009) Seeing the invisible : on Kandinsky. London, New York : Continuum, Purcell, K. (2006) Josef M端ller-Brockmann. London : Phaidon, Schafer, M. (1994) The soundscape: our sonic enviroment and the tuning of the world. Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books Sloboda, J. (2005) Exploring the musical mind: cognition, emotion, ability, function. Oxford: Oxford University Press Redler, H. Monument to the Present [Internet] Available from http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/galleries/~/link.aspx?_id=822C31BCD5734CDE94E701 ED170F4909&_z=z Further Reading Kelly, C. (2011) SOUND. London : Whitechapel Gallery ; Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press Klanten, R., et al. (2008) Data Flow : Visualizing Information In Graphic Design. Berlin : Gestalten Klanten, R., et al. (2010) Data Flow 2: Visualizing Information In Graphic Design. Berlin : Gestalten, Tufte, E.R. (2001) The visual display of quantitative information. Cheshire, Conn : Graphic Press Tufte , E.R. (1990) Envisioning Information. Cheshire, Conn : Graphic Press Tufte, E.R. (2006) Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire, Conn : Graphic Press
Critical Research Paper
‘The dominant organ of sensory and social orientation in pre-alphabet societies was the ear - "hearing was believing." The phonetic alphabet forced the magic world of the ear to yield to the neutral world of the eye. Man was given an eye for an ear.’ Marshall McLuhan
Design For Ear
3
Q.
HOW CAN I MAKE AUDIENCE REAWARE OF HIDDEN ATTRACTIVE SOUND IN dAily LIVES? Design For Ear
Her Long Black Hair / Janet Cardiff
The Forty Part Motet / Janet Cardiff
Design For Ear
Witness / Susan Hiller
L’Hote / Sophie Calle
Design For Ear
‘Hearing is a form of touch.’ Evelyn Glennie
Touch the Sound / Evelyn Glennie
Design For Ear
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A.
TOuCH AND DEtAch We hear sounds from ever ywhere. Whether they are comfor table or uncomfortable, we used to spend time to enjoy listening to sound of nature. Back in Japan, there was a culture which people went out to listen to sounds of crickets under the moonlight. However, the modern culture attached a high value on the visual culture and pushed the sound culture to the corner. My final project is about reconsidering significances of sounds in daily life. The aim of the project is letting audience re-recognize the existence and meaning of sounds in life. As a graphic designer, I created synesthetic visuals which enhance the meaning of sound. With the process of hearing and seeing sounds, you would rediscover the value of the sound.
Design For Ear
sound is curiosity sound is boredom sound is contact sound is disconnection sound is protection sound is violence sound is encounter sound is loss
PORTFOLIO
SMILEY Basic Idea
Walter Benjamin says ‘Aur a is destroyed by the process of mechanical production.’ in The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I understand the sentence because a copy of Mona Lisa on a fax paper is not as strong as the original one. Then I started to think an opposite meaning of the sentence. What kind of things gets more aura as you see more? I looked around my room, and I noticed I’m surrounded with companies’ logos. The more you see logos, the stronger the branding is.
History of logos Logos starts from Heraldry. In Heraldry almost every parts have some meaning, which is based on native cultures. I looked into global companies logos, and found out the design of logos were based on their own culture. However, as the companies get famous and global, the logos became simpler, and lose their nationalities. This evolution of logos is similar to what Benjamin said. The bigger the companies are, the less the originality of logos is.
Paradox of Globalization How can I show how globalization degrades orig inal values? Then I came across with a book ‘No Logo’ by Naomi Klein. The book is basically about how global companies manipulate people to buy their products. As I read the book, I found some paradox about Globalization. Some people are against products by global companies such as GAP or ZARA because they degrade native cultures. On the other hand, other people like them because they are same quality and cheap. This paradox is the power of Logos. Portfolio: Smiley
Portfolio: Smiley
FISH SHUN Series
SHUN Series. Shun means the latest style in a season in Japanese. Japanese people call fish in season ‘Shun no Sakana’. Like Shun fish, fashion also change styles every season. This illsutration is an experiment of fusion of fish and fashion.
Portfolio: ON / OFF
ART GLOSSARY How do you define Art? Art Glossary is a quarterly magazine, which focuses on new def initions of words by artists. Technolog ies g ive us more opportunities for creations, but definitions of art and design are more board and blurry than they used to be. The main question about this project is what your personal briefs or philosophies about your works are. We will collect the answer from artists and designers form different categories, and the collection of the definition will become an archive of the new definition such as a dictionary. Art Glossary was founded by Lio Yeung, Masafumi Inaba, Cedar Zhou in 2011. Currently Lio and Masa study MA graphic design communication in Chelsea College of Design and Art.Cedar currently study MA applied imagination in the creative industries in Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. We are strongly passionate for graphic design, and are doing our best to succeed in publishing this magazine. Looking to contemporaries in other countries, we are keen to see the way in which other creatives arrive at their ideas – the process, the inspiration and the art. Portfolio: Art Glossary
Portfolio: Art Glossary