Chennon Roberts' Blog

The sound map was a challenge for me because I’ve never really tried to turn sounds into images. It’s a weird way of thinking. So, for the hour I spent listening to sounds, I was sitting in the outdoor area by the SCAD Museum. The black circle symbol is supposed to represent me and the direction I was facing. My back was to the road and on the other side of the street a building was under construction so the spiky grey and orange shapes represent those harsh grating noises. The grey scribbles that go in and out of view are the sound of a helicopter that kept circling the museum and surrounding area. The yellow squiggles are for a man laughing nearby, and I picture laughter as yellow which is light and warm. The pink lines represent the sound of a girl talking as she passed by. The neon green dashes that symbolize the beeping of a truck backing up. And finally my favorite symbols are the blue circular shapes gliding by which are the lovely sounds of seagulls. It’s a very peaceful sound and blue is a calming color, which explains why they look the way they do. There is also the hazy greyish-green all around the edges which is meant to be the constant buzz and hum of a busy city (car engines, tires moving on the asphalt, conversations, footsteps, wind, etc.).

I started out with a map of Ireland. I’ve always wanted to go and I hope to some day. I ended up highlighting every “Shannon” I found on the map because although it’s spelled differently than my name, it still has meaning. Then I cut slits around two places I’d like to go, one in particular being the city of Limerick. One of my favorite books is Angela’s Ashes and it’s a memoir of a man who grew up in Limerick. It would be my first stop if I were to go to Ireland. Anyway, I then tied the slits together with string and that was supposed to be symbolic in the same way tying a string around your finger acts as a reminder. The rest of the map I cut all up to look frayed. The outcome made me think of a dream catcher, which is appropriate since my “dream” had been the main focus up to that point. So I designed a dream catcher that is supposed to have a Celtic, Irish vibe and hopefully not seem Native American. I cut out Limerick from the map and kept it centralized, braided some green and brown string to dangle from the base and then tied some of the frayed strips of the map to the ends. To present the final product, I crafted a neat little hook that kept the catcher away from the wall so as not to make it flat. One comment during critique was that it would have added to the flow of the whole piece if I had braided strips of the map as well.

This is my ABC/123 project. It wasn’t very mentally challenging but it was difficult because of the limited amount of time I had to find all the letters and numbers. It’s easy to happen across something that resembles another thing, but when you have to go out and find these symbols before a due date, it’s just time consuming……and stressful. I had the most trouble with 2, 4, G and K. The easiest ones were probably 1, 3, 8,H, O, X, and Y.