design@ait end of year show

Just back from our end of year show. Really enjoyed it - a wonderful show from a great group of students. This was our first show on the main AIT campus in 22 years, and our new space looked great. Its' always so exciting to see the fruits of the students labour (and ours!) on those 8ft x 4ft boards at the end of their time with us. And there was plenty of exciting on screen work this year with 17 students in the digital media class. This year was special for me because although I've been on maternity leave for most of it, this was the first time I had taught every one of the qualifying students, and they're a great bunch of people. Good luck to them heading out into the big wide world!

(by the way there was live streaming of the opening which was fun to see and worked really well... I was getting texts from friends and ex students as far away as Denmark watching us there. Check out the blog

Couldn't resist

Couldn't resist posting this... It was recorded by my husband while I was out and my 4 year old son needed to tell me about "a bit of a pain" he was having... at bed time (always a bad time for pain/hunger pangs/anything that'll buy him an extra few minutes in the kitchen!).

The description is a bit synaesthetic... although my son is not!

MY WORK SPACE

work in progress... I'll write some background here soon

The Perfect Circle of Sound

Some of the Research into the Sense of Sound

As part of my research into synaesthesia I have also been investigating the 5 senses individually. In the previous post I highlighted something that very much tied into synaesthesia - sound creating form. Also when investigating the sense of sound I came across "The Solfeggio Frequencies"

This is an ancient scale and is a 9 tone sequence of electro magnetic frequencies. They were used in the ancient Gregorian chants and are believed to impart tremendous transformation and healing emotionally and spiritually. Sometimes referred to as "the perfect circle of sound" due to their immaculate symmetry of mathamatics and the sacred geometry in the vibrations of their sound frequencies.

The frequencies are: 174Hz; 285Hz, 396Hz, 417Hz; 528Hz; 639Hz; 741Hz; 852Hz

There are 111Hz between each one.

They are linked to the physics of creation - bio chemists use the electromagnetic frequency 528Hz to repair broken DNA - the blueprint of life.

I am thinking of using them to form some of the audio in my final motion piece on synaesthesia ... but lets not mention AfterEffects!

another part of the research so far

This is really quite amazing in my opinion... sound creating form....

hmmm maybe I won't need After Effects after all!)

And another installment... from neuroscience to cymatics to metaphor and language... all roads are leading to synaesthesia now. ... its all in the eye of the beholder!

a little part of the research...

Vilayanur Ramachandran

An interesting talk by one of the world's top neurologists about the creative centre of the brain, recognition, abstraction, metaphor, and synesthesia and how they relate to structures in the brain.

Research + Broadband = Progress?

So, this week has mostly been spent in frustration with my broadband connection. I had decided that the first thing to tackle would be getting my head around the technology and so that meant getting my hands on some software (After Effects) and commencing the tutorials once I had it up and running on my mac. There is going to be a phenomenal amount of learning to be done on this so the process (and progress) will be slow, especially initially.

The problem is that my broadband connection was not up to the task of the hefty download of Adobe's Creative Suite 5 Master Collection (rolls off the tongue doesn't it!). Thankfully, eventually, I was able to request a copy of the disks to be posted out to me from AIT, so am hoping to get them in the next couple of days. I've mostly spent the week watching intro tutorials (but admittedly without the software this was of limited use). This all culminated in a insomniac couple of nights spent feeling desperately out of date on my tech skills and a tad overwhelmed by the amount to absorb, strange to think that some research into neuroscience and cognition provided some light relief!

My research into synaesthesia has been more fruitful and it was serendipity at play reading the Sunday Times Magazine, where leading light into Synaesthesia research, VS Ramachdran, had an 8 page article into his work into neroscience (eventhough synaesthesia didn't get a mention!). His name has come up again and again on the subject and I've found a couple of very interesting and helpful articles by him. I also discovered there is on going research into it happening at TCD, so hope to make contact with the group involves when I've a bit more progress made. (http://www.tcd.ie/Neuroscience/multisensory/)

In summary (for those of you still awake through this whine), I've realised the following...

1. I'm not afraid of hard work, and there will be plenty of it

2. I need to polish up on my patience

3. The research stage of any project I tackle is always indepth and seems slow to manifest visual results, but inevitably the final visual piece is all the richer for it.

There's a strong sense of logic in my work and every mark needs to be backed up with meaning.

4. While immersing myself in After Effects and syneasthesia research I need to offset the weightiness with some hap hazard image creation.

Despite how this post reads I'm very enthusiastic, intrigued and optimistic about my chosen subject matter and the creation of the visual piece!