“Helen Keller, who was both deaf and blind, stated that she felt being deaf was worse that being blind because blindness isolated her from things, but deafness isolated her from people.”
- Bruce Goldstein, Sensation & Perception
I’m considering testing a social portal with just sound. Something like a telephone that is always on—transforming the sound space of one’s room by adding another.
Some of what I have focused on with my capstone, social portal, has been the notion that visual aids (non-verbal communication) adds to the richness in communication. By using a webcam I can accomplished that.
Yet, there is a different value with rethinking sound communication; bridging the same qualities of being a passive piece of technology. The idea came to me by two avenues and then reinforced by what i’m learning about the perception of silence right now.
1. There is currently an echo I hear through an experimental portal between me (in Ohio) & Christine (in California). Sound travels from Ohio through the portal to California & bounces off Christine’s wall back through the portal into Ohio. This is amazing. This echo couldn’t have happened before.
2. The bandwidth differences between the US, India, & Germany makes it very difficult and unreasonable to test a portal. Yet sound doesn’t consume as much bandwidth making it feasible to test.
Interestingly if I had researched whether a sound portal would work instead of testing it, I already know it’s one of the largest concerns with the current Social Portal. The current discrepancies between sound-spaces makes what could be white noise more like disturbances.
