Concept pivot: from noise visualization to sound visualization

The direction shift was the defining move of this week. The project had been running as a “visualization of Singapore’s noise” at the end of the previous semester. Faculty feedback at that review suggested reframing the work away from noise and toward the distinct sound of each place. Noise is perceived as something negative, something to be removed. Sound is a medium that carries the identity and atmosphere of a place, and it is positive and experiential. Accepting that reframing changed both the tone and the purpose of the project.

The project needed a specific reader to write toward. Two groups were defined this week. The first are people who want to travel to Singapore but cannot visit in person because of time, money, or situational constraints. The second are people preparing for an upcoming Singapore trip who want to learn something beforehand in order to create a deeper and more memorable travel experience. Both groups share a relationship to the city that is mediated rather than direct, and both are underserved by travel media that communicates almost entirely through the visual.

The final goal of the project was established this week as producing a program that allows users to experience Singapore’s spatial characteristics and sonic identity within a digital environment. This framing held two things in tension, the spatial and the sonic, and later weeks would return to that tension repeatedly.