First iterations
To begin my research, I started collecting sounds from my family and friends. I’ve always noticed how often we use sounds more than words, perhaps because of the immediacy they offer in expressing something. During my year abroad in the UK, my international friends and I often joked about our different ways of vocalising emotions and how these sounds reflect our identities and modes of expression. This inspired me to create a sort of sound archive, beginning with emotions and later categorising the recordings based on technical audio characteristics. These iterations helped me reflect on how sound can sometimes act as a cultural barrier, but also how, in many cases, it reveals cross-cultural similarities that allow us to understand one another even more deeply than words.
Given that sound is such a broad theme, I decided to narrow down my research and, as mentioned earlier, I chose voice messages as the main medium through which to develop my project. I feel deeply connected to voice messages because they are part of my daily life. They allow me to stay in touch with friends and feel close to my family, who live far away. While many people would find voice messages annoying (most of the time, let’s admit it hehe), I believe that hearing someone’s voice, rather than just reading a text, carries a much greater emotional weight and leaves a lasting impression over time. That’s why I decided to take one of my mom’s supportive voice messages to start with my practice.
Starting with the software Audacity, I analysed one of my mom’s voice messages and I explored the visual patterns of sound waves and the textures they created. I attempted to classify traditional sound characteristics, such as pitch and rhythm, unconventionally — focusing solely on the textures and deliberately ignoring the conventional visual cues typically associated with those parameters. This approach offered me a fresh perspective on the auditory experience.
This experimentation and interpretation led me to reflect on the possibility of creating my own, unconventional system — one that could propose new “rules” for how I could interpret and communicate sound visually. Even though I didn’t want to work with soundwaves directly, these iterations helped me develop new categories and made me reflect on how I could invent alternative ways of communicating my enquiry more effectively.