[UNIT 2] POSITIONS THROUGH DIALOGUE – WRITTEN RESPONSE
My inquiry focuses on how a visual communicator can represent the visceral experience of sound, with particular attention to how sound fills space. The reason I focused on this exploration is personal. Sound and music always my interests, and I have respect for the sound as an experiential medium. However, I feel that there is no proper visualizing method that can captures the essence and space-filling nature of sound. The final project in Y1 term aimed to address that gap and explore new ways of visually conveying sound.
Initially, my work focused heavily on symbols as a means of representing sound visually. This approach was based on the idea that symbolization, a key principle of modernist design, provides a universal language that transcends individual interpretation. My intention was to develop a similar method, one that could organize sound into visual symbols to convey its depth.
To develop this work, I engaged in dialogues with Franca Lopez Barbera, an Argentinian designer and researcher based in Berlin, and Donghyun Kim, a Korean designer based in New York. Franca’s feedback helped me reconsider the direction of my project and led to important shifts in my approach. While Donghyun’s insights further developed my ideas.
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During a 1:1 dialogue with Franca Lopez Barbera, she feedbacked this approach. She pointed out that my work seemed stuck in the process of symbolization, and that I was overly focused on creating a visual system to “decode” sound. The most important advice I think was that sound does not need to be tied to symbols in order to be represented visually. One of the feedback was to let go of the symbolic framework and instead explore the essence of sound itself, focusing on its visceral qualities. That means there are many other ways to represent sound visually without relying on predefined symbols.
In my dialogue with Donghyun Kim, he highlighted the importance of the project’s practical application. He thought the sequence of my project was already strong and suggested that the next step should be to consider potential use cases. According to Donghyun, targeting specific scenarios and creating examples of how the project could be applied in real-world contexts would be key to advancing the work.
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This project is reconsidered the purpose – I think its both of dialogue’s feedback. My initial approach was concerned with creating a fixed system for visualizing sound. What I truly wanted was to express the wonder of sound, not just reduce it to a set of symbols.
The key insight from these dialogues is that my work could move beyond a symbolic system and instead explore sound in a more direct, experiential way. Franca’s feedback urged me to embrace the visceral qualities of sound, while Donghyun’s focus on practical applications made me think about how this could be executed in real-world scenarios.
Moving forward, I plan to experiment with different approaches to sound visualization. Rather than creating a fixed grammar of symbols, I will explore visual methods that can better convey the lived experience of sound—its movement, rhythm, and capacity to fill space. I am also interested in experimenting with non-traditional media and interdisciplinary approaches, such as combining visual design with sound installations or interactive media. My aim is to create work that can evoke the physical and emotional impact of sound, rather than simply codify it into visual forms.