I started this project by doing a blind guided walk for 30 minutes, 15 minutes inside the Parsons building and then 15 minutes outside on the block around the building. Throughout this walk, my object was to take in the space around me through listening, feeling, and smelling rather than just seeing. When I returned from my walk I wrote about my experience for 15 minutes, trying to grab onto all of the moments that surprised me or seemed like “punctuations”, what John Hull refers to as moments of transition. I noticed that my relationship with how I interpreted sound changed when I couldn’t see, and how each interaction seemed to have an emotional mark on me.
Here are my notes from my post-walk reflection
From this, I chose punctuation points or moments of transition that shared the same sense. I decided to concentrate on audio because it seemed the reoccur the most and had the biggest emotional impact on me. Heres a list of 4 punctuation points with possible symbolical gestures. I chose the top 3.
After narrowing it down to the top three I realized that they were not in proper order so I drafted my map making sure to reorder the gestures so it began with the first hallway, moved into the floor that was full of students and teachers, and finally ended with being outside and hearing sirens.
Here is my draft
To make sure my map was cohesive and that my emotional and auditorial journey was readable, I stuck to one aesthetic choice of trying to create a map that really emphasized line thickness, curve, and shape so I could show the differentiation between each punctuation point but still keep my aesthetic very streamline. My idea came to me from an online wind map I used to obsess over in middle school.
(http://hint.fm/wind/)
To mimic this look, I decided to make my gestures white on black paper.
Below are my finished product and key. At the beginning of my walk, I felt immediately anxious and like the walls were closing in. My voice bouncing off the walls sounded terribly sharp and I found this unsettling because I considered the Parsons building to be a space I felt comfortable in. This was extremely personal and in my head. From then I change floors and walked in a different hallway and my sense of self was actually merging into realizing I wasn’t only reacting to the world and people around me, but I was being reacted to as well. I felt annoying as I stumbled through the hallway where I could hear teachers discussing serious matters with students and almost a change of tone which I assume was directed at my lack of direction and inability to stay quiet. My last punctuation point on my map really feels like freedom from both of these anxieties. When I stepped outside I heard sirens and realized that the sound was not making me want to close my ears and almost seemed enjoyable to me. It was if I was free from the “harshness” of the siren along with the previous stressful punctuation points of my journey, as well as free from my visual perception of the flashing lights of the siren which I am now guessing triggers the reaction of me covering my ears.
