Hello, it’s me, Ariana Cowan, from BA Graphic and Media Design. It’s funny that that’s not how I’ve been introducing myself anymore. The transition and constant switching of roles I have had to condition myself to for the past 5 months has given me great clarity on the responsibilities and capabilities I have as a student and as a working professional. My internship at Deloitte Digital has been an eye opener and has exposed me to the depths of the ways of working in a corporate landscape that is demanding and ever changing. We work with clients from industries like health care, life sciences, pharmaceutical, finance, e-commerce, fashion and luxury and the likes; and your constant interaction with such industry professionals makes you realise as a 21 y/o design student that your perception of design that university has helped shape is ever changing and iterative. To put my understanding into perspective I’d say design is a language understood globally but spoken very differently depending on the context it sits in. And you have to learn to speak in every dialect. Speaking of language, I introduce here my subject of interest and the topic that my Self-Initiated Project is based on. Language has been a topic that I have been very keen on exploring since the past year. My dissertation proposal also surrounds the topic of language and linguistics in design and how language influences our visual perception and thus interpretation of the image. Last year, for my Self-Directed Portfolio, I explored the topic of sound visualisation and aural interpretation. During the pandemic, we have all had to maintain and create relationships virtually, this made me realise the power of the human voice in aiding the process of forging bonds between people. I connected with a person virtually who today, is one of my closest friends. Our friendship was built on the pure exchange of human voice. And that to me is beautiful. The human voice is so much more impactful than we give it credit for and thus I want to develop my studies around this topic with greater depth. My Self-Initiated Project is an extension of my Self-Directed Project from last year. The outcome of the previous project was a 3D printed representation of the recorded voice of my friend. It mapped the duration and number of conversations we had. I created a prototype of the data graph of our recorded conversations and used 3D printing to design a tactile representation of the intangible concept of the human voice. Here's what it looked like The aim of the above project was initially to create digital visualisations from the voice. I was looking into generative art and found a few artists that inspired me to great extents but keeping my timeline and deadlines in mind I went down the path of 3D printing resulting in a physical deliverable. I want to use my Self-Initiated Project however, to now expand on this idea. I had many ideas in mind, on how to explore the sound of language and visualise it. The team I work with at Deloitte is very diverse and has people coming from different parts of world, from different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds, it makes the team so rich in culture and there’s a shared understanding and knowledge of the same. Collectively we speak around 20 languages, and when I hear Italian, German or Swiss German which is very different from German (I had no idea) it sounds so pleasant to the ears, there’s a certain rhythm in every language and when spoken, sits on the ears so well. It got me thinking how I could visualise this to depict the beauty of these languages visually to the hearing impaired. Of the many artists I came across, a few stood out to me as related inspiration to fuel my ideas. Steve Haslip’s work titled ‘Dialogues’ which is a piece of art inspired by phonetics is featured in the book ‘The Triumph of the Commons: 55 Theses on the Future’ and visually drew my attention as it was so similar to my ideas and one way of visualising spoken language. The work does justice to the concept in a straightforward way, but the aesthetic of the visual representation is what makes it an organic, all-natural piece of work with a very biological and scientific undertone. The piece itself also calls the viewer to make the connection between sound and lip movement, i.e. lip reading. As detailed and representative this work is, Christine Sun Kim, a Berlin based artist, who was born deaf, focuses her work on sound and challenges the barriers to the deaf community through her art. Her work is mainly in charcoal based mediums but channels her feelings as a deaf artist in the community and makes a statement and demand to be treated just like any other. The piece below (figure 2) is called ‘Deaf Rage’ and so innocently yet firmly makes a statement about the feelings evoked in the artist. I chose to use this as an example because it highlights the importance of representation in the creative industries and showcases the creativity that comes from the lack of it. Inclusivity must be practiced more consciously in environments both personal and professional. Our personal experiences are not just ours; we are all individually part of a society and community and thus our experiences are shared. My experiences can include and exclude individuals based on the community I am part of. For instance, driving a car to work every day makes my travel experience easier but contributes to the pollution and impact on the environment that indirectly affects some individual/community somewhere. For my Self Initiated Project, as an expansion on the idea of the physicality of sound, I chose to explore origami as a form. An experimental study into the art of sound and sound visualisation. From frequencies to folds, the Self Initiated Project explores the technicalities of sound and its translation to a tactile piece of art. By using audio recordings of people speaking different languages, with the aim of visualising language for the hearing impaired, I sued inspiration from the digital visualisations created and extrapolated those to a physical form. Origami follows uniformity. Sound assumes irregularity. The act of folding paper and using origami made me realise that one can forge an ideal piece of sound and/or its visualisation but in its natural form, sound is dynamic in nature, and thus I wanted to demonstrate this juxtaposition in a creative way. As a designer, having worked with my team I have noticed we are all conscious of our choices based on our morals and values. And each viewpoint is respected. That comes with a sense of empathy and sensitivity to people’s opinions and thus generates inclusivity. My future ambitions may not be crystal clear to me now but what I know for sure is that I want to be a designer who creates for good, makes an everlasting impact that matters and be able to bring people together to express themselves but also on a more specific note, be able to use my creativity along with an understanding of business strategy, as I have seen in my professional experience so far. And I believe that will only come from a deep understanding and appreciation of the human experience and capability. This Self-Initiated Project will help me position these ambitions and prioritise them because I know I will become more appreciative of my subject and be able to streamline design processes within the realm of digital and UI/UX disciplines, by up-skilling and collaborating with relevant industry professionals and educators, not only giving me ‘new agency’ but also to generate the same opportunity of ‘agency’ to every person I now interact with as a better designer than the day before.
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