Entering to my first month of 2021 spring semester. It has been a great feeling that I have done quite a bit in the field of IMA. As I continuously exploring new topic and technology, it definitely feels quite overwhelmed about to make a plan for thesis. It’s certainly not a short time as we are entering to the later part of the program. In the discussion of study group with Michael and Parisa. I admire both their work where Parisa has progressed so much since her last version her web development – Streak, as well as Michael’s work always fascinated me where he combines new technological expression in his performance. My personal reflection upon the my works in IMA lowres is “vivid”, so did the creation of these works. Where I played with various topics and brought interactivities in their narratives. I attempt to facilitate different perspectives with a touch of sensible technology. It occurred to me that my works in the Connections Lab and Critical Experience were similar, in term of concept and motivation. Where I was trying to facilitate behaviors for a certain audience similar to myself and I enjoy doing so. More specific, to bring the technology to people and encourage people to meet the technology. Both work of entering the deep and ARRC created in the Fall semester showed an optimistic and welcoming gesture in the presentation.

In the early development and exploration of my thesis. I made a wish where I want to be brave and try something I’ve never tried before. I gained much confident after, much appreciated that Ruta supported me with her own thesis experience. After two weeks into the development of the concept, I have still put that in my mind. Before tapping into the topic, I started a casual mind map to reflect upon my status and listen to where my heart will like to for a journey. Followed reviewing Andrew’s tips on creating a mind map. I then started to initiate my ideation frameworks and contextual reasoning. They will be my partners when I am in doubt, to influence my work and support me along the way. Which they are – Is it an art practice or a design project? Am I the performer or a stage designer for this project? How would I want the audience to participate to the change? Meanwhile, I have also found Katherine’s introduction of case study useful. Am I trying to communicate, facilitate or reinvent? Most importantly, what is the topic I want to talk about? Like Sarah told me in the Fall term – it’s not your last project! I am now taking it right on!

In my thesis, I want to explore sound, to be specific explore in human perception of sound. Our relationship with sound is limited by the way we experience it. One example came from a personal experience is that I have always conceived my own voice to be lower than what it sounds (what others listen, such as a recording). This is because the lower frequencies were only transmitted through a bodily experience, hence the voice I heard of myself has layers and were filtered before I received it. This is also where a cognitive dissonance is developed in some cases. In psychology, voice confrontation, also called self-confrontation, is the phenomenon of a person not liking the sound of their own voice. This is something intrigues me and encourage to develop a project from. In the overarching theme of perception of sound, I am trying to identify a couple of area where I will further focus including voice confrontation. I have come to understand the idea of sound as object (in space), and the haptic sense of sound, the tangible side of sound could relate to this field of study. My goal is to develop the idea further to bridge my audience to several experiments of artistic and interactive experiences. There are currently two cases that are relevant to my current development of the project which they are Forty Part Motet by Janet Cardiff and Generating Music From Emotion by Hannah Davis. I have found several elements that I would peruse as experiments such as data sonicfication, multidirectional sound in space and haptic sense of sound to articulate my topic better.

The possible design experiments could be:

(apparently there are more than three)

  • An installation where you will experience both sonically and haptically of a sound
  • A sound distorted environment where your own voice is separated in various frequencies in separate channels
  • A space where you can only hear the high or low frequency of a speech
  • Getting a phone call from a stranger that has an identical voice of your own
  • Meeting someone who has almost identical voice to your mother
  • Experience a car accident simulation where the car is coming at you but you hear the sound from behind
  • Use your own voice as an atomic property to create objects
  • Something that alters your own voice
  • An application allows you to adjust your own voice in online meetings
  • Voice deep fake of your favorite song
  • Love my own voice – how?
  • How would a generative object look like if we in put our voice with a simulation algorithm?

Finally, I would also very much like to consider developing this project for even wider inclusivity. In my current thesis development board, I started with interviewing my father who has hearing loss since childhood on the topic of voice confrontation and gained valuable experiences from him. In any form of the sonic experience, I will consider and explore alternative experiments for hearing loss audiences in various degree.