Rather than considering myself as an artist or designer, I prefer to acknowledge myself as a creative. I feel that over the past four years of studying Moving Image Design at NCAD, I have neither achieved artist nor designer status. I believe that attaining such status requires a profound understanding of what it means to be an artist or designer. I think that arriving at such conclusions so early would limit my perceptions of both disciplines. I hope to further discover the elusive qualities of art and design as I continue my creative journey. I am content with considering myself a 'creative' because that journey may take a lifetime.
My years of studying in NCAD allowed me to discover my interests in experimental animation and music. I am drawn to the nature of movement and sound, and I would like to further explore how they can both be depicted through means of translation and elaboration. I want to focus on environmental sound, and sound we don't dedicate much thought or consideration towards.
I have also suffered from sound sensitivity from the age of 8. It began with bodily sounds such as sniffling, breathing and chewing, but further progressed to a multitude of arbitrary triggers. This made school incredibly difficult; I don’t remember the majority of primary school lessons, because my focus was dedicated to whoever had a sniffle that week. This made my early school years especially lonely. As I got older, I realised that my sensitivity to sound was incurable, and that I had to change my attitude towards sound in order to make my daily life bearable. I began to consider all sounds as music, and that the sounds I dislike serve as dissonance that allow for me to further appreciate the environmental soundscapes that exist in the background of our daily lives. This unorganised soundtrack exists in the forefront of my life, and I choose to be grateful for it.
This has led me to develop a fascination with the nature of sound. Sound is objective - sound is made as a result of movement, however slight or significant. Sound cannot be seen, but it is objective - it exists, and there's no disputing it. Despite this, the interpretation of sound is entirely subjective, and as a result of that, some sounds are considered objectively pleasant because of collective subjectivity - this is something that I would like to dispute, but with what we consider unpleasant sound.
I want to explore commonly disliked sounds. I want to record them, rewind them, stretch them, distort them, rearrange them - anything it takes for me to understand why they are disliked and how I can relate them to the sounds I dislike. How can I make a pleasant narrative using commonly disliked sounds, and how could I do this with the sounds I dislike? Could I ever make something remotely pleasant or digestible out of sounds that have alienated me for most of my life? How could I visually represent this? What would all this look like?