Experience and Meaning

I come from a small seaside community in southern California named Carlsbad. Not many people have heard it but its what I’ve called home for most of my childhood. I sought out The New School for a change of pace and environment in the big city, a big step from my quiet life in Carlsbad. My first academic assignment in The New School was a very interesting one and it changed my perspective on a few things. The Experience and Meaning exercise was very relaxed. As a group, we talked about the ways we experience new surroundings. Half of my peers, including myself, explained how we are more likely to remember the landscape rather than the sounds we heard in our new environment. Other students expressed how they were more likely to remember the sounds from an experience in a new environment. Collectively, we sat in a small circle amongst the trees in Union Park and took a few moments to take in our surroundings.

Tony Hiss, one of the authors, shared how travel instigates wonder. Children have a great sense of wonder, and have the opportunities to experience the new. He compares this to adults when traveling to new places because they tend to overlook the small experiences their involved in in day to day life, and that this sense of wonder seems to only make an appearance when making a journey. What I believe Hiss means is that since travel, in its origins, is associated with difficulty, that itself invokes a sense of curiosity. In the times we live in today, that difficulty has been relieved and that curiosity is finally able to be sufficed. The takeaway is that by simply taking time in your day to stop and think and truly see your surroundings, you’ll experience a lot more than you would of. We see and learn things we hadn’t noticed before, or perhaps simply forgot over time due to repetition. I believe Tony Hiss doesn’t want us to take our experiences for granted.

R. Muray Schafer, another author within our reading, shared with us that the “world’s orchestra is constantly playing” and that we don’t have ear lids like we have eyelids. By that he means, we are able to block ourselves from seeing our surrounding but we aren’t able to achieve the same effect with sound. We simply cannot prevent ourselves from hearing out surroundings. However, ironically enough, we do not always listen to what is being made around us. Continuing, what I discovered from this Experience and Meaning exercise is by simply doing less, you get more. After closing my eyes, I was surprised to find myself focusing on various sounds that surrounded me yet I hadn’t noticed before. Light conversation between friends, the swaying of the trees above me, soft jazz music, and of course the background noise from the bustling city. My mind is drawn to listen to certain sounds immediately due to interest but others I don’t usually notice unless I gave them that second chance.

The Experience and Meaning exercise has helped me realize that if I want to get more out of my time here at The New School, I’m going to need to actively use my senses and be more aware in how I use them. While we are constantly using our senses, we become blind to things we tend to see everyday out of repetition. We take for granted various sounds and certain visuals we come across day to day. Why do we tend to overlook sights and sounds we come across everyday?

My name is Zachary Korecki. I am currently an Architectural Design student at Parsons School for Design in New York City. I am also interested in business, marketing, economics, interior design, and furniture design. I try to embrace individuality, sensuality, and obscurity within my work. I strive for, and esteem when, architecture and design is created to be much more than a functional structure. Design is much more than just the appearance of an entity, but has the power to influence the way an individual can act and feel. Design is a philosophy; I want to engage with it and learn.

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