Sounds of silence...

So third year has started and we have our first brief!

Can silence be visual???  

"Research the possible concepts and visual potential of ‘Silence’ and with lateral visual experimentation attempt to conceptually interpret silence in any media or form. You are investigating ‘SILENCE’ a key semiotic conduit and vehicle for the communication of emotion, atmosphere and metaphor –the silent pause, the empty space , the open space for the audienceto ‘reflect’ and project into – You are analysing the psychology of persuasion."

I have to admit when I first read the brief I did start to panic a lot, as at first glance I had know idea how I was going to answer it!? However.....the lecture on Tuesday was a great help to me, seeing images brought in by the tutors began to spark ideas for me and get me thinking in a different way. During the lecture the first image that came to mind was this one I found quite a while ago (I have a sketchbook where I stick any images/typography that I like and that may be useful in the future)

I really love this image, I'm not sure where I found it but it immediately came to mind during the lecture as a representation of our thoughts...this inspired me to think more about what can happen inside our heads even when we are sat in silence. Thoughts that nobody else can hear.

Over the past few days I researched into the subject of silence, trying to avoid the obvious cliches. Looking for inspiration I started looking through my stack of creative reviews, grafik and design books to see if any images stood out to me. Below are the other images I took to my tutorial to show my visual representation of silence...

Shadows - your shadow is silent behind you, but can it be doing something you are not aware of? Maybe in reference to a past memory or something we are feeling that others are not aware of. I really like this image as it is a great representation of shadows behaving differently...this has led me on to look more into shadows and start to take photographs of some that I see to begin experimenting with.

An untitled image found in creative review by London based photographer 'Armando Ferrari.'  "The image features no action to speak of, yet it is a strangely powerful, arresting picture."  The scene in this image feels as though it is set for some kind of drama to unfold even though 'the space is empty.' I feel as though there would be an eery, expectant silence. Something is about to happen, "a sense of violence and menace."

The following two images are two that I found in my book "Area" by Phaidon (a book that I have owned for a few years and is always a great place to look at the start of a new project to find inspiration)  I love these images and feel they really have a sense of silence about them. There is no information on either image as to what it is about but the use of reflection and the image looks calm and relaxing.

This image is actually a poster for a Japanese department store, created by designer 'Nagi Noda.' I think this is a really beautiful image that looks peaceful and almost dreamy, you are unsure of the meaning of the image and it is open to your own interpretation. Although I cannot understand it the delicate hand drawn type at the bottom fits perfectly with the feel of the image.

After the lecture on tuesday Hitch mentioned the idea of time standing still and capturing a moment in time which is an idea I have began to look at it more detail. The following image is quite a controversial image of "the falling man" taken on September 11th, 2001. The man is falling from the twin towers. This image freezes a moment in time - a silent moment. In the photograph he is frozen in time, in his life outside the frame he drops and keeps dropping until he disappears...he is perfectly vertical, in contrast to others and he appears relaxed. He has not chosen his fate but he appears comfortable in this grip of unimaginable motion. To me this image represent silence as when you look at it  you are almost lost for words, although everything surrounding this man would be chaos and loud noise I imagine for him he is falling in complete silence.

There was a lot of uproar surrounding the release of this image with many people claiming they were the ones who took the photograph. It is quite ironic to think that in a moment of such tragedy and devastation people can resort to such things as arguing over who owns the rights to a photograph...