Visualising Sound

For this quick project we had to visualise sounds in a pictorial format. Looking at  works from Ori Gersht, Daniel Palacois and Andy Huntington, I decided that trying to complete this task in their kind of approach of the subject would take far too much time than the two hours I had been allocated. Trying to think fast I decided to download a free wave management program onto the computer and by using a microphone I could tackle this task in the time allocated by using the screensaver function on my laptop, a microphone and my phone.

The first pictorial example I used was just 3 seconds of nothing. This was the easiest of the 3 examples to do as I only had to place the volume control onto zero and just record for 3 seconds and This gave a flat line from the computer and is shown above. I just put a heading on top and this completed the first task.

The second example I used was created by moving the microphone along a rough surface and this gave the wave visualisation as above. Again I added a headline to show what the wave visualisation represents. This turned out to be another easy exercise to complete.

The last example I did not like doing at all. This involved pricking myself with a pin on my finger and recording the noise I made when I was in pain. This gave the wave visualisation above. I did make sure however that I used a clean pin for this exercise and made sure I didn't bleed too much.

Overall, I think I could have come up with a better quality examples if I had more time to do it in. This was the first time I have tried a combination of making visualisations by taking pictures of my laptop through my phone and then using a screensaver again to come with the final result. If I did have time to experiment further I would have come up with better quality photos than the result that I have achieved. It has given me however, better ideas to complete this task the next time I have to do such an exercise.