Project 3 Design Concept

Design statement: Design is creating objects for artificial environment using natural language. Design is a translation of ideas.

From natural to artificial environment, we experience both sound and color at the same time. The farer we leave the nature, the more artificial world we live in. The sound we experience everyday is man-made or artificial work composed with emotion of musician and then bring emotional effect on our emotion; we experience color with our own emotion so that they have meanings for us.

Concept1-Experiment:

The aspect I have chosen to improve my concepts is the relationship between sound and color. I tried to look for their relationship presents in some place or some objects. The footage I have shot is a representation of sound effect in reality. The same image but different sound recorded in two different position. It presents a obvious distinct of results on the clip when sound is different.




Concept1:

Key words: Sign, perception, experience, interaction, function

Sound affects user’s personal perspective on meanings of color so that it becomes a signal of our emotion and then response to the environment. Our experience can be considered as an aesthetic sound and color experience.

The visual green spaces are visually created for people to experience the different sound but same color at different stage. Go through the spaces with natural sound and the one with artificial sound, green color has been given different meaning of itself by different response of users. The experience reflects the interaction between sound, color and emotion of users. The first room stands for the original environment and last two stand for the artificial environment. When we experience these rooms, we are loosing the nature at the same time. Artificial sound replaces original meaning of green color that presents in nature. The room with sound that captured from the traffic lights when it turns green is maybe considered as a green passage way due to the sound and color that has been defined in our mind. The sound and color has become a sign and symbol when they are applied in this special position. Also, they function as people desired.

Semiotics means a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages. Sound and color both express a perception of life by many ways. Meanwhile, the way they present interact with affection and sensation of people.





Concept2:

Key words: Movement, expression, interaction, transformation

Artificial sound and color is an expression and translation of people’s idea and emotion. We are experiencing and interacting with sound and color in everyday life. Also, we affect the movement and meaning of color and sound by our emotion, movement and activities. The video shows the experience of user who is dancing in front of light. It shows the interaction between sound which made by user herself and transformation of color which is made of shadow. It is interesting that the rhythm of sound and the transformation of hues in the shadow occur at the same time. Sound is made by the movement of user and the frequency of it depends on her personal behavior. Artificial sound is an expression and translation of people’s idea and emotion. Also, the movement of sound and color will emotional response in the viewer not only the user herself. Artificial sound also plays a role in the reality to evoke an atmosphere to affect the emotion of user. Sound is made to be a sign of design or a persuasion for an environment. Therefore, the function of sound and color are similar to each other.



Concept3:

Keywords: empathy, expression, aesthetics, emotion, characteristic, perception.

In dictionary, empathy means the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. It has the sense of projecting oneself into the position of another, of experiencing another’s feelings as one’s own. The complexity of expression using sound and color may sometimes become a design problem. “Many solutions to design problems require some assessment of the characteristics of the user” (Crozier, 1994). Consider there is a color selection machine and music composer for people to express their emotion at that time through placing the coordinate position of sound and color. For example, the high pitch sound partnered with the brightness color.


Reference:
Crozier, R. (1994). Manufactured pleasures: Psychological response to design. Manchester University Press.

Sound and color

The experience of color in the West has always been closely interwoven with the experience of music.

Some Greeks theorists considered "color"to be a quality of sound itself, together with pitch and duration.

What most impressed the Greeks,it seems,was the capacity of color,like sound,to be articulated in a series of regularly changing stages whose differences were perceptible in an equally regular way-for Aristotle and his school light and dark appear to have been cognate with clear and muffled sound or even high and low pitch.

The affective power of music depended on its status as action and its importance in that it provided the most comprehensive imitation of action in human affairs.

Reference: John Gage, the sound of color, P227 Color and culture.

Green

Green is the color of nature.
It symbolizes growth,harmony,and fertility.
Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety.
Use several shades of green for a fresh, springtime feel.
Green is life. Abundant in nature,green signifies growth, renewal, health, and environment.
Green is a restful color with some of the same calming attribute of blue.

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The psychological meaning of green on professor Max Luscher's color card test which is widely used by psychologists:

Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace.

Negative: Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation.

Experiment1 sound of color

If a movie loses its color and sound, we can judge the situation through the context and body-language of the characters, but we can not get more detail and emotional response directly through the black and white. And in common, black is an emotional safety color that its meaning depends on our association.

totoro s+c


green papaya s+c


The world is colored by colors and we experience them everyday in our life. We have emotional and subconscious response to color due to our primary knowledge and association of color. Actually, color has no sound to tell people the true meanings of themselves. “Naming colors is one way to manipulating their psychological impact” (Fraser & Bank, 2004, p.20).

What is the sound of green which has meaning of harmony, rest, environmental and peace? (Professor Max Luscher’s color card test) The sound and color function together in the Green Papaya clip evoke a summer and restful feeling, the sound tells natural meaning of the green color. Then, I mix up scenes of a cartoon movie that are vitally and happily. After watching this clip without sound and color, the one edited with sound and color will be more understandable and acceptable. The sound in this clip evokes a healthy and environmental meaning as the natural green appears in this clip.

Experiment 2 color of sound

If sound can tells the meaning of color, is color able to present the effect of sound?



I change the sound effect in Green Papaya clip to evoke another effect on this clip. What is color for the eerie and gloomy sound? I try to find one hue of green to corporate with the sound. The color of this clip is changed into vivid green. Vivid green usually evokes health and vitally yet, when works with eerie sound, the color has quite different implication. The same scene but applied with different hue of green and eerie musical sound, the outcome clip evokes a gloomy atmosphere. At the same time, vivid green here will be considered as a gloomy color. Also, it is considered that vivid green may functions other meanings when it is affected by other sound effect. Color presents the sound well in this clip although it is the result of sound effect and our emotional response to the sound and color actually.

In this experiment, sound plays an important role rather than the color due to it has powerful moral effect so that it gives a directly impact on people’s emotion. Meanwhile color affects the vision of the scene to evoke the atmosphere effectively.

Short conclusion: Sound and color is a closely relationship between each other. Sound is able to present the meaning of color; color also has capacity to function as a decoration of the sound effect. When they both work together, we response to them not only through our vision and association of color but also directly impacted by the information given by the musical sound. And sometimes sound defines the meaning of color.

Experiment 3-expression of mood

In this experiment, I mix the 3 footages that edited before to see what result will be. I find that there is a transformation of different hue of green even just 3 of them that are green, dark green and vivid green. Also, there is another transformation playing at the same time which is the pitch of the musical sound. We response to color and sound at different stage of the clip, so that our expression will be transformed constantly during the experience of sound and color in this clip.

“The experience of color in the West has always been closely interwoven with the experience of music……Some Greek theorists considered “color” to be a quality of sound itself, together with pitch and duration” (Gage, 1993, p.227). Our vision experiences the pitch and duration of different hue meanwhile we experience the different pitch and duration of the musical sound.

Following with the pitches and duration of sound and color, does our mood also have pitches and duration at the same time?

Experiment 4 wave of sound=wave of mood?

I record a video to show the running waveform of the mixture musical sound and find it is interesting that the waves running up and down, closely and sparsely. The sound wave of cartoon clip runs as a medium wave, wave of sound in Green Papaya clip runs as a lower and steady wave and wave of eerie sound rise and fall frequently.

Green papaya original sound waveform

eerie sound waveform

3 different sound wave

cartoon music

green papaya music

eerie music

mix soundwave

The waves of these 3 parts layered together will become an interesting pattern. It seems like a reflection of our mood when we watch this clip. And it is interesting that the pitch and duration of my mood is similar with the wave of the sound when I watch this wave clip. If we say the wave of sound equals wave of mood, how about the wave of color?

Reference

Reference:


Fraser, T., & Bank, A. (2004). The completely guide to color. ILEX

Gage, J. (1993). Color and culture: Practice and meaning from antiquity to abstraction. Thames and Hudson.