Blog 2

       I had never heard of synesthesia before reading this assignment. It is fascinating to me that there are people who can see different colors based on what letter they are looking at or perceive numerical sequences as points in space. This phenomenon reminds me of the film Limitless starring Bradley Cooper. As Cooper’s character becomes smarter, he too, can see sequences of numbers and letters floating in space around him. In the article, the author explains that the people with this condition are typically gifted in other ways. People with spatial sequence synesthesia, for example, also often have greater memories and can remember events with much better detail.

       As for the TED video “Different Ways of Knowing,” I first felt that what the speaker Daniel Tammet was discussing would simply go over my head, but as I listened to him explain his thinking process, I soon found that I could comprehend and even learn from his methods of reasoning. What I did have trouble realizing was its relevance to our film class. As I thought more about it, though, I realized that as filmmakers, it is our job to find “different ways” of telling stories and exploit different, experimental methods and techniques to tell those stories in an original and interesting way.

       The video on cymatics was also very interesting to me. I had never thought about sound waves having a specific shape to them. Seeing the sand morph into different patterns and shapes depending on the frequency of the sound was pretty incredible to me. It opened my eyes to an aspect of the world that I never knew existed.

Blog 1: In Class Activity

The first thing I noticed about the film that we watched in class was how the sound of the music was synced with the images of colors and shapes. With each note, the image changed or evolved into something else. This technique is effective because it made me feel almost entranced by the chaos of colors and shapes paired with the melody. The technique seems like it would be difficult to pull off. Having to manipulate each frame seems tedious to begin with, but having to sync those images with a musical score sounds like it would take months to finish.

Something these images reminded me of was when I examined cells of different organisms under a microscope in Biology class. Often the things we looked at through the lens were just as vibrant and colorful as the images in the film. It always fascinated me that there was that much beauty in the world not visible to the naked eye.