The Danger of a Single Story
Throughout my undergraduate years at university, I have lost track at the number of professors that introduce Ngozi Adichie's speech "The Danger of a Single Story" at the beginning of class. Yet, every time I think that this is the moment when I lose my mind after hearing the speech for the seventh time, I can't help but be moved again and again by Ngozi's perspective on the multifaceted aspect of stories.
Ngozi begins her talk by describing how her childhood was influenced by American and British novels. The cultural hold the West exerted over Africa, as well as the lack of exposure to African writers gave Ngozi the impression that literature should be focused on 'foreign characters', namely blonde and blue-eyed individuals. Ngozi could not imagine herself, an African, ever having a place within these novels because all she ever digested were experiences and caricatures of European people. It wasn't until she discovered the works of African authors that her perspective widened, or rather, her 'single story' of Africa blossomed into multiple stories.
Through this segment, Ngozi is able to characterize just how powerful media can be. Media works, such as books and movies are more than just entertainment; they are tools that be utilized to humanize certain groups of people (such as providing a multifaceted view on those living in the Western world), or dehumanize them (boxing groups of people into shallow stereotypes, usually from developing countries). Even today, we can see how powerful media really is in shaping identity and cultural perception.
I believe that being able to see multiple stories rather than a single story requires both a deeper understanding of the world around us, as well as the privilege to be able to interact with individuals from other cultures. Oftentimes, people must make an effort to step outside of the boundaries that have been set by circumstance. Take America's Chinatowns for example; despite displaying an authentic piece of China, certain historical reasons have rendered these areas as representations of only a small fraction of Chinese culture as a whole. Chinese populations living in southern coastal provinces, such as Fujian and Guangdong, had easier access to seafaring channels, meaning that today's Chinatowns are almost entirely consisting of Cantonese-speakers. As a result, an average American's perspective of 'China' would be heavily influenced by Canton culture: dim sum, Jackie Chan, and fried rice are all things that pop into mind when mentioning 'China' in the States. However, the influx of Chinese from other provinces in recent times have shaken up this perception (I remember the shocked expression of an American after revealing to him that my grandfather, a native of Inner Mongolia in North China, had never consumed rice in his life). In these cases, media representation is especially important in conveying the different sides of complex cultures, sides that certain people do not have access to.
I think that Ngozi hit the nail on the head when she states that when we reject the single story, we begin to realize that nothing can be accurately depicted with just one side. As media continues to evolve, I hope that more people will become accustomed to questioning media intention, and understand that a story can be told in many different ways.
Sound Collage
As a photographer, I often need a visual cue to incite inspiration for projects. This time, the visual cues were right outside my window. I woke up on Wednesday to discover the entire sky painted with a beet red color scheme, and immediately grabbed my camera to capture this once in a lifetime moment. It seemed as if the entire Bay Area was thrown into a color filter. I took my car out for a drive, and the entire ride felt like a scene from an apocalyptic movie. There was no one out on the streets, the haze from the wildfires blanketed the air, and a vivid deep orange-red hung in the air. Using these photos, I set the mood for the sound collage I wanted to create.
Personally, I received a kind of surreal, dystopian feel from my images. I imagined a deep humming in the background, coupled with 'hazy' intermittent noises. As I was sitting at my desk wondering what sort of sounds to use, I noticed the soft drone of my air purifier and humidifier, sounds that have been so common during my stay in California that I block them out on the regular. I recorded the raw sound on my phone, first of my humidifier, and second of my air purifier. I thought it was the perfect combination, since both machines were used to combat the poor air quality caused by the fires.
Recording of my humidifier
Recording of my air purifier
Recording of Bay Area News channel from Youtube on my laptop
After recording these three raw sounds, I imported them into audition and began playing around with the composition. I ended up using the humidifier recording as the main background drone, while the air purifier was layered over with intermittent appearances. The news recording was added to the middle section of the recording. For the humidifier recording, I added a reverb effect, as well as the radio broadcast filter to generate a deep hum. To the air purifier recording, I used the 'Far Away Sound' filter, as well as reverb (dry sound). Finally, for the news broadcast clip, I used the 'On the Telephone' effect, to generate a static-y feel. I then added several keyframes to fade the clips in and out as desired.
After playing through the initial version, I realized that the overall collage was still missing the 'dystopian' feeling that I wanted to create. I tried adding several other sounds (footsteps, bumps, etc), but the composition didn't feel correct. I thought back to the apocalyptic movies I watched, and decided that I should probably add an alarm of sorts, in order to generate a sense of urgency. Since I couldn't quite replicate this sound in real life, I went on Freesound and grabbed a short clip of a bass hum.
Freesound bass clip
I cut this clip into small splices and placed them in intervals throughout the piece. My mix track ended up looking this this:
I felt pretty happy at the final result, as I thought that it captured the feeling I wanted to create with my images.
Final Sound Collage