idea sheet

Here is the letter i wrote to try and get people interested. i think this is about the 6th version.

G’day!

I am a second year industrial design hearing student, whose task in a studio subject is to respond to a call by the City of Melbourne to investigate sound in the city. I need your help to develop an ‘intervention’ or installation detailing the role and sound experience of deaf and hearing impaired people in the city (i.e no sound cues, vibrations, colours etc). I would like to turn this information into a visual instalment.

So far I have been exploring sound and space within the city with regards to ‘feeling’ sound. I have used a speaker system to amplify vibrations in order to be able to feel them tactilely. For this I have used sound recorded in the city. I feel like I need to move forward to describe sound as experienced by deaf people. As a hearing person, I can’t fully empathise with someone who is deaf or partially deaf, and so I am asking you to be part of this project.

I have already spoken to a partially deaf friend (she studies Linguistics and Auslan at Latrobe) and gained some insight into how she perceives sound. I also talked to her about interpreting an Auslan version of a deaf person’s city experience into English and the some of the subtleties of the language.

Still, I feel like an outsider looking in on a world that I don’t understand. I wish to at least understand a little what it is like to be deaf in the city, and to rework these emotions, senses, and beliefs in order to display something which not only publicises the deaf person’s experience but is also a piece of art. From my work so far I feel I would like to more accurately describe city sound experience according to emotion etc. I have made contact with Melbourne poet, Kate Middleton, to take this description and turn it into an poem. My current aim (though I will wait to see where this goes) is to develop a piece simultaneously in English and Auslan to produce a similar poem in each language, and display it as a video feed of an Auslan poem on the streets of Melbourne. It could help to branch the gap between hearing and Deaf culture and community.

I have done some brief research into deaf community and culture, technology, attitudes towards it, problems with design regarding unintentional disregard of deaf needs, Auslan and growing up with deafness.

My early thoughts of a display are guided by ideas of naïve bravery, so I hope I don’t seem arrogant or ignorant, I’m interested, open and eager to learn. I would truly like to create something important. But first I need some insight. The work I have done so far is noted on my blog (see below) but it is mainly tactile sound work.

If you are interested in helping me out (or know someone who is), being part of this exciting and different project, drop me a line at s3078511@student.rmit.edu.au . Please also note your email on my table so that I can contact you. We will have a discussion or forum session in the near future (probably in a week or two) to better understand the deaf experience of sound in the city, and hopefully bring that to light in the city of Melbourne.

Regards,
Ben Landau

Attached:
My blog:
http://www.lagomdesign.blogspot.com
Project brief
http://silenceandotherways.wordpress.com/files/2006/07/silence-and-other-ways.pdf


Project Abstract (as given to me by the lecturers)
This studio is a collaboration between Sial, Industrial Design and Landscape Architecture. The City of Melbourne has invited a project to focus on sound and the space in central city. They invite exploration and possibility rather than concrete outcomes. This exploration is entitled “fermata” and your work will set the scene for a larger project that will evolve over time.
The collaboration will expose students to a range of disciplines, ways of thinking, techniques, technologies and workspaces in the belief that working outside of ones discipline exposes assumptions and opens up unknown possibilities. It also requires one to navigate through different ideas and ways of approaching problems.
The studio environment will focus on design as a way of learning and rather than privilege product, the studio will be set up as a laboratory for investigation into sound and the city. The studio will be highly structured through a series of events, whereby intense periods of production will occur (rather than set up the learning as an even linear process) and these will define the non-contact periods whereby students will be self-directed.
Our approach considers the possibility of inverse effects, silence as a way of knowing sound, doing though not doing, knowing when not to design and the potential of the mistake. This approach is carried through to assessment whereby lecturers no longer play the role of assessors but become facilitators to student learning, students are required to self assess. (See assessment)
The studio will focus on four mediums only for communication: the event, the book, the blog and the model. Landscape/sound is physical, but more importantly, it is a cultural construct.



i hope people think that its a worthwhile project. if i cant get the content together then theres no point. i think the part of the brief which i am best answering is the last bit 'Landscape/sound is physical, but more importantly, it is a cultural construct. '