Week 1 - Week 4 DS1 Communication Theory - Group Assignment

31/08/2017 Week 1-Week 4
Wynne Pankusya [0333258]
Design Studies I : Communication Theory
Group Assignment

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Instructions

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Progress

Group members :
1. Arailym Tulekova
2. Gan Pei Jane
3. Tiffany Kezia
4. Wynne Pankusya

Each groups were given a song for the assignment. The one that we got was "Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence". We are supposed to create a visual form where it could express the meaning of the song. The goal is to make the audience percieve the meaning of the song. 

Lyrics

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
No one dare
Disturb the sound of silence

“Fools” said I, “You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said “The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence”

After I heard and looked through the lyrics, I tried to do research for the meaning. The meaning that I've found is mostly about isolation and miscommunication. Garfunkel also mentioned about the actual meaning of the song, "The inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other.

Img 1 Research

I also elaborated the meaning of the song and added some sketches to brainstorm the idea for the visual form. From the main part of the song "Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk to you again" I found this very iconic and consist a lot of meaning that I could percieve.

Img 1.2 Elaboration of the meaning and sketches

Img 1.3 Elaboration of the meaning and sketches

I created my own vision of the meaning. I inherit the lessons from topic 1 until 3 to create the sketches I wanted to make. Thus later the visual form of it would show the meaning of the song.

Img 1.4 How I wanted to create. I mostly used metaphor to create the drawings

Img 1.5 First sketch

After a lot of feedbacks from Ms. Jinchi and discussion of contrasting ideas from each of the group members, we have concluded that we were going to create a "sketch book" as if it's a journal of a depressed person. With monochromatic colour I believe it would emphasize the feeling of the song more. Since it's a group work, the total of the book will be 4 pages with explanation behind it and each of the members will need to create 1 drawing for the book. Considering Ms. Jinchi told us that every vision from the individuals is different, we also divided the tasks for each person. In a form of storyline, we got these ideas as the final artwork:

Img 1.6 Finalized idea for the final artwork

The concept is to create a stroyline in a form of sketchbook. Since the ending would be filled of darkness, the border of each pages will gets darker and darker from the first one till the end. This marks the subject of the storyline finally meets the darkness his one and only friend.

Img 1.7 Explanation for my own artwork for the book

As we could use our own style to create the work (as long the subject looked the same), I did research for the illustration that I wanted to make.

Img 1.8 References

Img 1.9 Details

Img 1.10 Final sketch

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Reflection

It's quite difficult to do a group work as I also not knowing each members very well. I keep feeling that the whole thing would end up as a mess since there were changes in group members. I suffered a lot in combining the ideas of the members into one complete final work. A lot of diverse interpretations and ideas from the members made it even harder. Thus we tried to discuss more and get to finalized the work. And I need to comprehend more into the topic 1,2, and 3 in order to create the visual form of the song which the audience would understand and the message is decoded by them.  It was challenging but yet a great group assignment to start the first semester of Design Studies.