This week the class was placed into groups to brainstorm ideas for the last assignment, originally I was placed in a group that wasn’t communicative. After some attempts at trying to brainstorm ideas with them I jumped ship and joined another group (Allegra, Ebony and Dana) because their brainstorming ideas interested me and I had previously worked well with both Allegra and Ebony in another group assignment.

Once I joined the girls group they took me through what they had brainstormed: The idea being to focus and investigate the power of social cues in regards to tone and facial expression and manipulated sound. For example, investigating stripping away the sound from words someone is saying on film and seeing what information can still be interpreted and received without the words. To discover the difference between what noise is and information is that really just social cues and what society has told us to pick up on. Further what emotion can be picked up through sound and tone, without it can is emotion there at all? And lastly using manipulated sound as a means to test if a viewer would be able to interpret what a person is trying to convey over film. Luckily two of the group members were fluent in other languages like Greek and Arabic, so taking advantage of languages would be a great way for the group to investigate communication further. Looking at languages in particular and honing in on the notion that even if you can’t understand that particular tongue you might still be able to pick up on the meaning of the words based on facial expressions and social cues.

Allegra forwarded me onto a particular article that back up our investigation. Michael Bull and Les Back’s article ‘Getting a Sense of Listening’ brings up that “sound, combined with an awareness of sonic presence, is posted as a powerful force in shaping how people interpret their experiences”. This idea is at the very core of what we are exploring, that sound in combination with social cue has a powerful force to create meaning for people to communicate without necessarily having the ability to understand word for word what the other is saying. Our group is really trying to investigate what sounds means for communication. Communication has so many facets to it, the words, facial expression, tone and more, my group want to explore and boundaries of this concept and use it to see how manipulated sound scan effect another persons understanding.