Author: Mirette Dahab

• Different
• Unexpected
• Unique
• Daring
• Uncomfortable
• Bordering on dangerous
• Creative
• ASMR, but not the relaxing kind.

five new interpretations of make 1:

1. Someone watching a documentary about animals at the beach while someone next to them is listening to music 
2. A lion at the zoo roars at a stray cat, but the zookeeper plays a dinosaur noise to silence both of them (weird right?), music is playing on the zoo speakers and the wave sound is from the the sea lion tank
3. The sound is from a living room, where person 1 is playing the piano, person 2 is watching a tik tok that was filmed at the beach, person 3 is trying to find the perfect roar sound to use for their project and the family cat is meowing because it’s hungry 
4. The sound is from a fictional game, the scene is set by the beach, the main character is a dinosaur that has to kill all animals in sight to win the game. The game has a soft melodic background music.
5. The sound is what is imagined in a woman’s head when her little girl retells her nightmare; it was 80 millions years ago when dinosaurs still existed, the girl was by the beach, cuddling up with her cat when they were attacked by the dinosaur

five possible things I could make of the fifth point:

1. A story narration 
2. A puppet show
3. A picture
4. A video 
5. A paper origami model

I decided to create with the picture representation of the fifth interpretation. I didn’t really have a visualization of what I wanted it to look like, but I forced myself to start anyway. I started adding the elements and moving things around, but i wasn’t really satisfied with the draft I had. It looked off to me. Below is the first draft I had.

I decided to start over. At this point, I still didn’t know what I wanted it to look like. I only knew what I didn’t want it to look like. I tried to more realistic looking elements.

Below is the final result I reached.

I really enjoyed Otis’s class visit today. Being a musician myself, I’ve seen plenty of artists perform different forms of music over the years. Otis’s style of music may not be very high on my preferences list, but I still really enjoyed his performance. You can see in the way he performs that he genuinely enjoys what he does and at the end of the day that is the most important thing because without passion, no matter how good you are, you can only do so much. I have never heard a live solo that sounded as multi-layered and diverse as Otis’s performance. The airy layers of his performance reminded me of a windy desert, the sounds of his finger on the metal keys, even though not really a part of the music, reminded me of the sound of strong rainfall. The array of different elements of music produced by his saxophone was absolutely fascinating especially knowing that it was all improvisation. It was also nice to hear from a musician in the industry about the different stages and challenges faced in music composition and production.

Growing up, my mom used to always tell me to think outside the box. As a kid I couldn’t really understand what it meant. What box? I was confused as to why some ideas are considered in the box but others are out of it, what criteria separates the ideas? she would tell me not to be scared to have crazy ideas because even if they’re wrong, it’s better than having nothing. I’m a very realistic person, I try to find the most realistic explanations. Everything has to make sense for me, so I was confused how having wrong ideas would lead to the right place at some point, it just seemed impossible. Now that I think about it, what my mom was trying to teach me is similar to lateral thinking. Having been introduced to lateral thinking, I understand that the point is in the process. It’s about losing those rigid patterns set by our minds. If we allow our minds to consider crazy cases, even if they seem impossible, we will reach the desirable solution. I see how this would also encourage and influence our creativity because I feel like our minds often suppress creative ideas by trying to be realistic and sticking to the familiar.

As someone with a very short attention span, TED talks are almost always so boring for me and I usually end up getting distracted. Having Kermit the Frog be the speaker is a smart way to make it more interesting. By applying Kermit’s own words to his video, the only reason anyone would decide to make a TED talk with an amphibian for a speaker would be because they thought it would have a positive effect on the audience, which reflects Kermit’s words that creativity is the desire for ridiculous optimism. I also particularly liked being reminded that creativity is not just for the arts but can be applied to almost anything. As a student in STEM, I often feel like there’s not much freedom to express my creativity, but I am once again reminded that creativity stems from the inside and it’s completely up to me to want to be creative, regardless of what others may believe or say. Towards the end, Kermit mentions collaboration of people with different expertise in creativity which further reminds me that as a person in STEM, I should be brave enough to be creative and ask people from different backgrounds and studies for advice when stuck.

By combining our drawings from class, we created an audio piece that represents the similar themes we illustrated, such as nature, particularly animals (lion, cat, dinosaur), the ocean, and a piano. Using Audacity, we modified the audio by adjusting the pitch and volume and incorporating fade-ins and fade-outs. We arranged the sounds to tell a story. In our interpretation, the lion and the cat are having a conversation where the lion asserts dominance, but both are then interrupted by a dinosaur.

All samples are downloaded from freesound and are in public domain.