RESEARCH METHODS

•  Observation

Figure 4. Noise in Subang Jaya SS15

SS15 is a small place which possess colleges, cafés and restaurants in Subang Jaya and it is easier to do the research in this place. The noise in SS15 mostly happened in the traffic area, especially the traffic jam timing in front the INTI College, Sri KL, roundabout and crossroad. Besides that, there are also happened in the Asia café and wet market.

• Online Survey

Using the survey method can be more understand about what the audience think about noise.

According to the result of the survey, most of the residents in Malaysia agree that the level of noise pollution is getting higher nowadays.

Noise and music are two conflicting sound. That’s why most of the respondents disagree that noise can be a part of music and some are still confusing. However, within the respondents who are agree with, explained that noise can be a part of music as long as it can make people to have certain mood. Besides that, some of the respondents also argued that the current music is also a form of noise and what’s important is how people makes that noise sound appealing to the ear or how unconventional items makes unique and unusual sounds..

The pie chart above shows that most of the respondents think that some noises can be a useful resources for people in some specific ways. Therefore, the result of the survey shows that the impression of the audience to noise is not really bad. Hence, noise has the potential to be a genre or elements of music.

 

Experience, Experiment, Exploration

Experience

Figure 7. Sketching while listening to the noises in SS15 market (produced by author).

Close the eyes and draw out the image after listening to the noises. Even though noise is a chaos, but they have their own specific sound, which can make people remember them, such as the different between the noise of fingers tapping on an empty and solid object.

Collecting and editing noise are a part to understand the flow of the sound waves and the possibility that the noises can make. By changing the frequency of the noise, some of the noises make people feel like beyond time and space, some are creepy and some sound like insects.

Experiment

Here are some experiment methods, to find a style and some graphic visual of noise music:

1. Sketching and making different style for noise music, such as sketching the style of noise music’s character. Every music lover has their own style in outfits, theme colours and haircuts because an individual’s favorite music genre is closely linked to his or her personality and music is such a significant part of people’s identity (Collingwood, 2016).

Besides that, there are also some texture collect, collage making, typeface making with different medium, such as colour pencils, Chinese ink and acrylic, which can create a chaos and disorder visual for noise.

 

Figure 9. Sketches, collage and typeface tryouts (produced by author)

 

 

2. Printing

 

Figure 10. Offset Printing Technique (produced by author)

 

Figure 11. Transfer Printing (produced by author)

Figure 10 and Figure 11 show another method to visulize noise, which can achieved the meaning of  “order within chaos” and create the beauty of noise to convinced people that noise is not as bad as they think.

The offset printing is created by different materials like acrylic and water colour in different condition, which means overlap another layer of colour on the previous layer that is in a dry or wet condition.

For the transfer printing, in black and white version, dip the Chinese ink on the water then use the brush and draw on the surface of the liquid, put a paper on the surface of the water and dry the pare, then the transfer printing is done. While for the colour version, just change the medium to nail polish.

Exploration

People always imagine but never seen the true look of noise. Here is one of the method to visualize the true look noise. The first experiment is putting some water colour or ink on a plastic sheet and use the speaker to vibrate and create the appearance of noise. However, this experiment failed because of some budget issue, like the sound waves that produced by the speaker is not strong enough. Therefore, Figure 12 shows another plan to create the visual of noise.

 

Figure 12. Plan B to create the true look of noise (produced by author).

1. Connect the speaker with the computer.
2. Prepare a metallic container with sand, make an empty space at the center.
3. Put the container on the speaker, on the noise in music player, record the changes of sand.

Figure 13. Analogue and catalogue (produced by author).

Figure 13 is the result of using the vibration of noise to create the visual of noise. Print screen the video that recorded and print it out, trace the outline of the sand. After that, digitalize it in computer, overlap the line to create a visual of order within disorder.

 

 

DESIGN DEVELOPMENT

Figure 5. Draft of the installation (sketched by author).

Figure 5 shows the design draft of the installation and an interactive installation is necessary to display the beauty of noise. Based on the behavioral communication model by Patrick Jackson, a PR Reporter, suggested a four-step sequential process, which make the audience to pay attention to the message or take action (Wilcox, 2005):

1. Awareness: The issue.
2. Latent readiness: The visual of the design, which can always make people pay attention but don’t always respond. They may hear the message but do nothing with it.
3. Triggering event: When the audience listened to the noise music and try to make some noise with the noise equipment by themselves, the message will deeply put inside their mind through their experience.
4. Behavior: The audience may change their impression of noise when they found out that noise is fun in some way.

Figure 6. Visual Reference of Noise

Figure 6 shows the visual reference of noise. The design of the installation will be retro style, which the visuals are created by using lines, shapes and waves to display the order within disorder in noise music.

Music, Sound and Noise

Music would not exist without sound, every musical note or tune is made of sound. Rudhyar (1984), the pioneer of modern transpersonal astrology, argues that in the past musical sounds are produced by the human voice and musical instruments, while noises did not belong to the field of music and nature’s sounds were used very rarely and only episodically. However, Rudhyar found out that recently their use has increased, which means music is ordered sound, noise is disordered sound.

Figure 2. The Noise Machine by Luigi Russolo.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the ancient life was silence until noise was born in the invention of machines in the 19^th century (Russolo, 1986). Russolo argues that from the beginning, music born with the purity and sweetness of sound, like vocal. Besides that, music grows ever more complicated today, the musical art developed with the combinations of more dissonant, stranger and harsher for ears. Thus, it comes ever closer to the noise. He also said that the musical sound is too limited in its variety of timbres. For example, the most complicated orchestras can be reduced to four or five classes of instruments, which are different in timbres of sound. Hence, people must break out of this limited circle of sound and conquer the infinite variety of noise sound.

Consonance and Dissonance in Music

Some chords have been considered stable and restful, others unstable and tense. Figure 1 shows the difference between consonance and dissonance. A tone combination that is stable is called a consonance, while the unstable is called dissonance. Its need a tension flow to move onward to the stable chord. A dissonance has its resolution when it moves to a consonance. A feeling of drama or surprise will happen when this resolution is delayed or accomplished in an unexpected ways (Kamien, 2015). Hence, in this way a musician plays with the consonance and dissonance move music forward.

Figure 1. Consonant and Dissonant Chord

Final Outcome

Upgrade the Design

papercraft & platform

People not really how the breed of cat looks like if they only see the laser cut outcome (pawble), by adding the feature of different type of breeds can make it better than let people imagine or guessing their appearance.

For the platform, in addition to stable the outcome, overall the design is following the style of the concept board, which bring out the warning feeling.

 

Laser Cut (Making Process)

I made my design into 3 layers with using the materials:

Acrylic & Plywood, A3 size, 4mm thickness.

RED: Cut out

BLUE: Vector Engrave

BLACK: Raster Engrave

 

 

Laser Cut (Design Idea)

This is the first idea of my design, The concept of transform the lunch box into a map plotting table with the information of the cats in SS15 Pasar.

For the second idea, I called this table as Pawble (a.k.a Paw-Table), which is the combination the paw, dining
table and the dining plate to make the outcome more personalise. Finally, I choose the second design as my laser cut outcome.

 

Infographic

This is my first tryout of my infographic design, which following the concept board. However, this design is too much information and less space. Some way some how, the information is not very clear and some of that make people confuse.

Hence, I divided them into 3 pieces of infographics and add more information. Besides that, I also change the title and subtitle to make the whole topic clearly.