R3

Acoustic Ecology is a topic that I've never thought about before. The idea that natural sounds in the environment are vanishing is not that large of a leap in idea, just one I have not made before. To preserve these sounds is definitely a noble cause, recording and establishing a record of these ever vanishing sounds will only help to promote and bring attention to the fact that they are vanishing. Establishing a large collection of these sounds will help to continue their noises even if the species becomes smaller in population, or worst case scenario, extinction.

Looking at this idea from my science background, it definitely has validity to it. The ocean is probably one of the most rapidly changing environments as a result of human activity, so recording as much of it and the sounds associated within make sense. They also can provide factual backing to influence arguments for conservation of other environments.

One of the downsides to technology evolving, new sounds arise and become more prevalent. Look at synthetic music, compared to two hundred years ago, trying to explain these sounds would be an impossible task. It only makes sense that in the future, there will be even more new sounds dominating a city environment at first, then spreading outwards. Additionally with the rate of technological advancements, new technologies are found daily producing a new effect, which in turn can bring new sounds. If one of these technologies is produced en masse, new sounds can start to dominate the landscape.

R2

Crowd-sourcing is a genius idea for tapping into many different people for accomplishing a big task through small increments. In it's essence, crowd sourcing is an incredibly simple idea, but when applied correctly and to a large amount of people, it can be an efficient engine producing amazingly large creations.

I think Wikipedia is the most impressive crowd-sourcing feat, having a constantly revised and updated encyclopedia readily available to many people is an invaluable tool. I don't use Wikipedia for actual scientific research in my oceanography major, but if I need to quickly read up on a topic and have a general understanding, I'll go there. While people sometimes say "just google it" most of the time google points to Wikipedia and that just shows how impressively large Wikipedia has reached. Also another cool fact about Wikipedia, you can download a text based version that can fit on a typical flash drive. So essentially, you can have the majority of human knowledge readily available at your finger tips thanks to millions of people coming together and collaborating and refining this encyclopedia. That's just impressive.

Crowd sourcing to create visuals is also a cool method of crowd-sourcing. It definitely removes all control over the visual aspect of what something will look like, but it can provide a unique touch to the video that cannot be replicated. The movies that were crowd sourced come to mind, such as the star wars remakes, and the Robocop remake where the film is given a completely new tone and feeling, but it still is the same exact movie as the original. Again just the little inputs from everyone helping to create a centralized product makes for a definite interesting visual and end result.

Crowd-sourcing is a genius idea that when applied right can be incredibly effective in distributing a large task over a large amount of people, which in turn makes the task each individual has to do, relatively small. It's a genius way to use the internet and a genius way to tap into millions, if not billions, of people online.

Synesthesia & Cymatics

Synesthesia is a very interesting and fascinating topic, the visualization of letters as colors, or numbers as colors seems fascinating, however that perspective only exists because I don't experience it. I feel like most people to some degree have an association with colors and numbers just from inherently growing up, at least that's how my mind works. I know that I don't have synesthesia, however I do associate numbers with colors mentally, my visual perception isn't affected at all. Research into synesthesia is fascinating just because of how it demonstrates that senses are intertwined and not free from influence from other senses.

It's applications into art and media are also very apparent, a couple of prominent musicians (like Kanye) say they have synesthesia and it helps to visualize beats and rhythms. I have seen an interview where Kanye looked at a painting and as a result saw a beat emanating from it. Finding natural rhythms and interpreting them into rhythms that other people can hear is elegant in a way. Hearing and reading about synesthesia is just plain simply cool. The whole concept is engaging and I can just easily get lost thinking about it.

Cymatics is also extremely interesting to think about. It makes sense coming from a mathematical approach, sound waves act as a wave and as result creates interesting visual patterns. The patterns that Cymatics creates are absolutely amazing, the complexity that occurs as a result of these sounds look amazing. I also like how they relate it to Oceanography and studying dolphin's sonar, anytime that the two worlds that I'm interested in (film and oceanography) collide, it makes me more engaged with the topic at hand. In the TED talk, the visualizations from the songs add another layer of complexity to an already amazingly complex system.

Overall, cymatics and synesthesia are an awesome topic to talk about and read about. It's a hidden beauty to the majority of people, those that experience synesthesia don't always know that they are, and cymatics is also a very new study. The topic is fascinating and I would love to explore it more and learn as much as I can about it.

1st Response Transcribe

I really like this style of film, I've seen types of these before in 302. It's a creative format of film, where its without a camera, just painting on the film stock while keeping in time with the music. The idea for the film is simple but it comes out in an elegant manner, it's captivating and visually interesting. At times its almost too chaotic on screen with too much changing between frames, but the music choice helps to move along the film and justify the changes in the frame. it's a very interesting film that leads me to think this class will have us producing something in a similar manner. One question I have is how do you match up the rhythm to the music on film-stock, it seems like a very tedious process.