Why is it scary? Because we do not know what happens after death.
Why are we afraid of the unknown? Because it might be dangerous.
What if death is not dangerous? What if death was adorable instead?
What signifies death? The grim reaper.
What is cute? Puppies or Kittens…..
Now it’s time to use Runway. With their tools, and an a lot of pictures that didn’t meet our vision we arrive at this:
Description: Grim reaper having tea surrounded by cute kittens + crows in the background (there were a crows making a lot of noise here, so I had to add them in since it was stuck in my head)
One of my 5 alternatives projects to the topic of ‘space’ was a collection of sounds of different spaces or places, specifically the sound of silence in different places. Every room and street has a different sound of silence, and I wanted to create a catalogue of that. Most of the sounds were recorded between 6 and 7 am. The world wasn’t as quiet as I had expected, but I realized that these sounds can just as well serve as an “Audio Tour” of the little pocket of the world around me. These sounds have very few voices, and are very representative of the ‘background’ of these places. If you could hear a picture of an empty place, I believe this would be it. We often tune out these sounds, but here the background is the centerpiece.
In the 20 sounds below, I take you from my room to the trains, and then on a short tour of the streets around our housing at NYU Berlin. After each sound clip, I’ll try to provide a description of what I heard (I was initially just expecting to record silence, and only later realized that there were so many details to listen for). I’d recommend wearing headphones. If you hear something interesting, comment below!
1.Bedroom:
The room was quite isolated from the sounds outside, since my window was closed
2. Kitchen:
There’s a faint sound from the electronics (like the microwave). You can also faintly hear the birds chirping outside.
3. Bathroom:
There a droning sound that was also audible in the Kitchen. Here we hear it much better, with some faint chirping from the birds outside.
4. Silent Study Room:
We move out of my room and go into a “Silent Study room”. The room is dark. You can hear my clothes and a few creaks from my shoes. The birds are much more audible now.
5. Group Study Room:
Notice how although the room is virtually the same as the silent study room, the ambiance is very different. Other than the change in the background, you can hear the birds much more clearly, there’s a slight breeze coming from the windows, you also hear the occasional car moving on the road outside.
6. Moving outside the building:
As soon as we go outside the building, we are hit with cold breeze and the sound of birds. Midway through the clip, an engine sound emerges, which might be from a truck engine starting nearby.
7. Park:
We move from the building to the nearby park. It’s early morning, so there are birds everywhere. You can hear an assortment of chirps. I hear a crow there somewhere. There’s the sound of a vehicle moving on the road nearby. My shoes make a sound on the gravel.
8. Coffee Point:
At this point, I’m craving a coffee. So we move to the nearby coffee place. The background is slightly different from the other closed room’s we’ve been to. There’s a faint sound from the owner talking to a customer.
9. Police Station:
It’s time to make our way to the trains. We pass by the police station on the way. Here, we can hear my footsteps, some faint chattering of people, the sound of my clothes, and some wind towards the end.
10. Checkpoint Charlie Train Station:
We finally enter the train station. It’s a little windy. There are a few people walking. A train was leaving right as we enter. The sound of my footsteps is clear. There’s the sound of some liquid dripping nearby towards the end.
11. Train Incoming!
Our train is finally here! It’s the U6. You can hear the sound of the wind as it pushes it out of the way, the sound of the wheels on the tracks, and the sound of doors opening at the end.
12. Inside the U6:
Inside the U6, we hear the train accelerating and you can feel the floor moving. There’s a small ‘alarm’-type sound. You’ll hear the announcements on the speakers. See if you can find me clearing my throat.
13. Leaving the U6:
We’re out of the train now, at Stadtmitte station. The sound of the train leaving is similar to the train arriving, but it’s distinctive feature is the fading away at the end.
14. Stadtmitte Station:
Stadtmitte station is quiet compared to Checkpoint charlie. See if you can hear me moving. Here, the mechanical sounds of the station are easier to isolate.
15. Back at Checkpoint Charlie:
We’re back at Checkpoint charlie. There’s a lot of wind coming through the entrance. You can hear the train leaving during the beginning, and the footsteps of people.
16. Walking to get some groceries:
Now we’re walking towards Rossman, a grocery store to get some food. You can hear my footsteps clearly here, the birds are back, the traffic from the road ahead is audible. There’s a little construction work happening.
17. At the Rossman:
Now we’re outside the Rossman. You can hear me say that it’s closed under my breath (of course it is, it’s 6am). The traffic is very audible.
18. Birds and Critters:
On the same road, we find a patch of grass and trees with a lot of birds. The sound of pigeons should be easy to make out. There are other critters too. As soon as I stopped recording, a fat mouse appeared out of the bushes with a huge piece of bread in it’s mouse. We stared at each other for a few seconds and then it squeaked away….
19. El Gino:
Now we’re at the pizza place near the housing.You can hear the cars and the birds. There’s a traffic light nearby, you can here it’s ticking over the background of traffic.
20. Back home?
We make our way back home and try to tap our cards on the sensor to get into the building. But it doesn’t work! I try a couple times till a guard let’s me in and tell me the sensors start working at 8am, so our cards don’t work early in the morning.
The premise of the book “Lateral Thinking” is fascinating and captivating, both for the artist and the scientist.
Bono states that most of education has so far been focused on vertical thinking (also referred to as logical thinking), where you reach a conclusion on the basis of a series of logical steps, each of which can be well justified. In addition to vertical thinking, the author advocates for development of lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is the process that allows us to take ideas and concepts in our head, and restructure their connections in our brain. This restructuring creates new information, new ideas and even strengthens our insight into previously understood ideas. This restructuring and building new connections is often how some people might describe creativity.
While readily understood in the context of art, this theme of rethinking and changing how we connect ideas in our brain is seen in new insights in the sciences as well. As Bono says, lateral thinking lets us dig holes in different places, while vertical thinking helps us dig deeper in one place. A restructuring of ideas lends itself to uncovering new discoveries, that can then be dug deeply into using the logical approach.
“What do you want?” was one of the most frequent questions that Markus Popp, aka Oval, asked us during our visit to him. He’s an interesting artist, and appears to hold strong opinions about the creative process.
There were many aspects of his process that I agreed with. He says that independent artwork often requires more grit and perseverance than working in a cubicle. In addition, one must constantly innovate and look for alternatives, since if you don’t, the number of people with similar talent, grit and ideas as you will shadow your work.
However, there were some ideas that I did not resonate with. He believes that you must have something that you’re after, a driving goal or ultimate desire of sorts, in order to push you to create good work. I believe that every artist has their own journey, and that journey does not always need a destination. Good art should be possible just through the virtue of curiosity, and shouldn’t require goals (like fame).
There were a lot of ideas swirling around this topic for me. There are 3 concepts that readily jumped out:
Space between objects.
Outer space
space between people (not the physical kind)
I decided to use a picture I took while I was on the S5, on my way to our housing in Berlin, as a base. This was the first time I the concept of ‘space’ came to my mind in Berlin. I am used to cities being crammed, and this was my first realization that Berlin was not such a city. The buildings and architecture were ‘spaced’. There was a lot of space to walk, to run, to ride and to see.
Here is the original picture:
A few years ago, I spent a some days in Sariska, Rajasthan, India. Sariska is a dark site, and as such is a great place to look at the stars. I edited the sky and ground in the image to a picture of a star trial (this is similar to a few pictures I captured, but alas I couldn’t find them in time). While incomplete without the context of creation, I wanted this image to signify space between people. People can live next to each other, even know each other, but at the same time be light years apart. This led us here:
Listening to Kermit is a creative process in itself. We’re imagining that an inanimate puppet, moved and voiced by someone whose identity is not the puppet, is an actual ‘person’. This leap of imagination is creativity. A full immersion into the concept of Kermit, so much so, that throughout the talk we do not even doubt his person hood.
I am looking at the talk from the perspective of creativity in the pure sciences, since that is the background I happen to most readily connect the talk to.
There are 2 concepts that resonated with me the most:
Having a Beginner’s Mindset / A Child’s mindset: This encapsulates everything Kermit said earlier about the creative process. It all boils down to not caring in the least about how things have been done, and being curious about how they could be. When we first learn something, we often try (and fail) at even the most basic parts of the art; but eventually our unique exploration consolidates into an understanding that is slightly different from the rest of the world. This is often how I try to see math, it’s the process of playing around with the theorems and proofs that ends up creating new information. It is not necessarily useful information, but it adds personal flavor to the picture.
Mistakes/Useless stuff today might be innovation tomorrow: Often pure math and physics are chalked off as having no real world value. The concepts are too esoteric. Almost always, the writers of these concepts also have no intention of their work having practical applications, it is a creative (and intriguing) expression for them. Einstein himself said that his work on Nuclear Magnetic resonance had no practical applications. But a little later, his work became the foundation of the MRI machine and went on to save millions of lives.
